Apple Core Rot: Too Many Crashes with macOS Catalina (“Unexpected S5 Entry”)

Readers keep mentioning crashes with macOS Catalina. I’ve seen too many myself.

Here, all I did was try to eject an SD card—no response then the Mac Pro crashes. I don’t know what an “unexpected S5 entry” is. I just know that Apple has a pattern for years now of rushing products out the door without testing adequately.

This kind of thing is so unbelievably unacceptable—an OS should run for months at the least without trouble, as my servers running macOS El Capitan have for years—24 X 7 X 365.

I am not the only one seeing this problem as I found another baffled user on the web with the same issue.

macOS Catalina —yet another kernel crash

Insanely Fast Data Integrity Checking with diglloydTools IntegrityChecker Java

More about diglloydTools IntegrityChecker.

Below, on a 16-core Mac Pro and suitably fast drives, total SHA-512 hashing throughput can exceed 7.5 gigabytes per second—here, the OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD is not quite fast enough! Another icj on another SSD is needed to max-out the Mac Pro.

The “fast” 3.2 GB/sec internal Apple SSDs are far from fast enough for full icj performance on 8 CPU core machines. Reasonably recent 6 core machines might almost be fully utilized.

diglloydTools IntegrityChecker java processing files on OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD

How to Add File/Folder Access Permissions for Java in macOS Catalina

See also How to Add File/Folder Access Permissions in macOS Catalina.

With macOS, Java can be in various places.

When installing a JDK*, it goes into /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines. For example, here are two JDKs installed:

diglloyd-MacPro:MPG lloyd$ ls -1 /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/
jdk-13.0.2.jdk
openjdk-13.0.2.jdk

* Using a JDK is prefered, because separate Java runtimes are poorly supported, and are generally old, like Java 8

Adding permissions for Java in macOS Catalina

Adding permissions for Java (e.g., the 'java' executable) is done the same way as for any other application. The only confusing thing is what to add, where.

For a JDK installed in /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines, the actual binary 'java' application is found several levels down:

/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/openjdk-13.0.2.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java

So that’s what needs to be added, as shown below.

Location of java executable on macOS for installed JDK

Giving full disk access to an application in System Preferences => Security & Privacy

How to Add File/Folder Access Permissions in macOS Catalina

Using macOS Catalina to start is quite the headache—among numerous bugs, I’ve had to click Allow dozens of times to allow perfectly normal applications to read the very files I want to work with.

This Apple approach to security comes with a risk of sorts: the numerous dialogs are so obnoxious that users will quickly train themselves to click OK, just to rid themselves of the damned nuisance factor. The “boy who cried 'wolf'” problem.

Then when something important comes along, OK will be clicked just as before. Thus, it is a very poor approach by Apple, in a practical sense of what actually will happen*.

* Ditto for entering password on iOS, where there is tremendous “friction” to using a good secure password—just too much of a hassle.

Adding permissions for an application in macOS Catalina

To grant Full Disk Access to an application, it needs to be added in System Preferences => Security & Privacy. You can also grant partial access in Files and Folders.

Applications like Carbon Copy Cloner and diglloydTools IntegrityChecker need full access to do their jobs. But if operation only on a restricted set of files/folders, then partial access via Files and Folders is just fine (and preferred, if you have the patience for adding things one-by-one).

Giving full disk access to an application in System Preferences => Security & Privacy

For Mac/Windows/Linux/etc — diglloydTools IntegrityChecker Java version 1.3b5 Now Available — Includes Automated Install Script for macOS users

diglloydTools IntegrityChecker Java version on any computer with Java—Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. More about IntegrityChecker and why every professional should be using it.

Buy diglloydTools

IntegrityChecker Java version (icj) 1.3b5

This version is the culmination of three weeks of coding for 14 hours a day even over the holidays. A tremendous amount of effort has gone into this version of icj, including researching how to deliver performance that very few native-code programs can match. icj makes use of CPU cores and disk I/O speed like very few programs can.

Just posted is diglloydTools IntegrityChecker Java version 1.3b5 (if downloaded before 16:00 Pacific time Jan 19, please download it again a minor error was in the jdk download script):

License and download page...

This is a beta version but well tested (and IntegrityChecker only reads your files anyway!). It will likely become the official release version soon.

Installation

Version 1.3b5 builds includes an install script for macOS that both installs IntegrityChecker Java (icj) and also optionally installs Java itself. All you have to do is answer "yes" or "no" when prompted.

Documentation/help

Documentation is currently inadequate and is coming soon. For now please see the overview page.

If you need support, please copy/paste the text from the Terminal window—don’t send screen shots as they are very large and frequently contain too little information.

Improvements/additions

• Automated installation script for macOS.
• Even higher performance, particularly on hard drives. On a 16-core Mac Pro and suitably fast drives, total hashing throughput can exceed 7.5 gigabytes per second. The “fast” 3.2 GB/sec internal Apple SSDs are too slow for full icj performance on 8 CPU core machines and reasonably recent 6 core machines.
• Auto-detects whether the drive is an SSD or hard drive, an optimizes accordingly. For technical reasons this cannot always be known; use --optimize HDD if icj incorrectly decides the drive is an SSD.
• Improved handling of special files, permissions issues, etc.
• Greatly reduced per-file memory usage (however, due to the extreme performance, memory usage may still rise quickly when the Java virtual machine has no time to garbage collect).
• icj saved my 700 gigabytes of wasted space via its "dupes" command, which finds duplicate files (I had inadvertently downloaded several of the same large photo shoots this year). It determines which files are most likely the original/best ones to keep by dates and by existence of sidecar files, etc. Super-cool is that it emits commands that can either clone the duplicates (in effect leaving them there as before but eliminating 100% of the duplicate space usage) or commands that remove the duplicates. Cloning does require APFS on macOS however.
• icj can compare two folder trees, so for example it is possible to see if a folder one one drive is the same as on another.

Quick intro

Most people are not comfortable with the command line. It is simple to use.

1. Open a Terminal window (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal).
2. Type "icj" followed by a space followed by the command (e.g. verify or update).
3. Type a space after the command, then drag anything into the Terminal window from the Finder (a folder or multiple folders, or a volume or even multiple volumes).
4. Press the RETURN or ENTER key.

In step #3, you can also type in the desired item(s) instead.

Usage tips

• To stop (forcibly kill) icj in a Terminal window, type control-C (control, not cmd).
• To temporarily suspend icj in a Terminal window, type control-Z. To resume, type "fg" (foreground).
• The macOS file cache can steadily degrade performance as it caches absolutely everything that icj reads. There is currently no technical way to tell macOS to not cache when reading files from a Java program. To enable icj to flush this cache, run icj using "sudo" as in:
  sudo icj verify MasterData
• Spaces matter in file, folder and volume names. So you want to verify the volume "My Stuff", the volume name must be quoted, like this (include the straight quotes):
  icj verify "My Stuff"
  This is a nuisance, so it is better just to not use spaces in volume or folder names that you use a lot, e.g., “MyStuff”, not “My Stuff”.
• You can run icj in more than one Terminal window. So if you want to simultaneously operate on three different backup drives (such as to verify), just open three Terminal windows and start icj in each window, something like:
  icj verify Volume1
  icj verify Volume2
  icj verify Volume3
• You can "detune" icj if it is desirable for it to use less CPU time buy specifying few threads and buffers. For example, adding these options will limit icj to just two hashing threads and four I/O buffers:
  icj verify --threads 2 --large-buffers 4 MyData
• If you want to verify things one after another to restrict CPU and/or memory usage, the best way is separate invocations. This command works fine, but it does the three items as one job:
  icj verify MyStuff Work MasterData
  Instead, use a ";" to separate the commands, like this:
  icj verify MyStuff; icj verify Work; icj verify MasterData

Overview of commands

Typing "icj" or "icj help" in Terminal will show this summary.

diglloyd-MacPro:MPG lloyd$ icj
# icj version 1.3b5 @ 2020-01-19 13:00
# Copyright 2018-2020 DIGLLOYD INC. All Rights Reserved
# Use of this software requires a license. http://macperformanceguide.com/Software-License.html
# Sun Jan 19 13:23:05 PST 2020
Available commands:
verify      verify hash values
status      summarize files that are new, or of changed size or date
compare     compare: compares two folders for equality
update      update new and date/size changed files, forget missing items
update-all  update hash values for all files, whether or not they already have hashes
update-new  update only files lacking hash values
clean       remove all hash data files
dupes       show duplicate files: options --size  --types type[,type]* --emit <rm|clone|nop>
empty       show empty files
sha         test hashing speed: options --size 1M --sha SHA-512 
version     display the version and other information
help        show help, specify which command such as 'help verify'
Manual at https://diglloydtools.com/manual/integritychecker-icj.html    

Example commands

Lines that start with "#" are comments. These examples assume a folder called MyStuff and a volume (entire drive) called Work.

# ensure that hashes exist for all files on volume Work
icj update Work
# ensure that hashes exist for all files in folder MyStuff
icj update MyStuff
# ensure that hashes exist for all files in folder /Volumes/Work/Photos
icj update /Volumes/Work/Photos

Apple Core Rot: macOS Catalina Fails to Update Critical Security Settings

I reported on this bug perhaps a year ago: no number of software update cycles updates security settings leaving Macs exposed and vulnerable.

The proof is running 'software update' at the command line, which shows that a bunch of security stuff had not been downloaded!

While I had not had Install System data files and security updates turned on I did/do have “Check for Updates” turned on. I have enabled Install System data files and security updates because apparently no check is made unless you also automatically install. Dsign insanity.

diglloyd-MacPro:JavaVirtualMachines lloyd$ softwareupdate -ia --include-config-data
Software Update Tool
Finding available software
Downloading Gatekeeper Compatibility Data
Downloading MRTConfigData
Downloading XProtectPlistConfigData
Downloaded XProtectPlistConfigData
Downloaded MRTConfigData
Downloaded Gatekeeper Compatibility Data
Installing Gatekeeper Compatibility Data, MRTConfigData, XProtectPlistConfigData
Done with Gatekeeper Compatibility Data
Done with MRTConfigData
Done with XProtectPlistConfigData
Done.

Caution for Those Working with Color-Calibrated Displays: macOS Catalina Resets Display Profile

In addition to the maddening maximum brightness problem, there is a worse problem: macOS Catalina frequently resets the color calibration for displays.

Apple Core Rot permeates every aspect of macOS today, with rushed-out calendar-driven crapware system software updates on an annual basis, followed by a dozen “updates” which are all the bug fixes for bugs that should have been fixed before release. Quality control is not a priority at Apple.

After reboot, macOS Catalina sets the display profile to the wrong profile

When there is a mismatch between the display profile and the actual state of the display, color will be wrong.

There are three possible states the display could be in with this situation. I presume the situation is #1, but I am not sure of that:

1. The current state of the display matches the selected profile. In this case, color are accurate but the calibration is wrong (color temperature, contrast, gamma, etc). For anyone who bothers calibrating, that’s a non-starter; the whole point is some consistent rendering.
2. The current state of the display does not match the selected profile. Colors are incorrect.
3. Both the current state of the display and the profile are wrong. Colors are incorrect.

An application cannot know what the actual current calibrated state of the display is (that would be an API and security problem). All it can do is ask the operating system what the color profile is for the display, and render color from the source space to that profile appropriately.

Reader Comments: macOS Catalina vs Mojave, Drive Initialization Hanging/Crashing

See also: Major Data Loss Today — But Luckily I Had Just Made Several Backups.

As it stands, I have three 8TB SSDs that I am unable/afraid to put into “production” use on my 2019 Mac Pro, for fear of seeing them wiped out. I do have two of them installed, but I just don’t use them except as “canaries” for now.

Professor of Mechanical Engineering David T writes:

I am in agreement with your assessment of macOS Catalina. So far, for me it is a stinker.

I recently purchased a MacBook Pro 16”, which comes with Catalina. While I very much like the increased memory, storage and processing speed that comes with this laptop, I wish I’d been able to downgrade to OS 10.14. That has been running reliably on my previous computer.

However, with Catalina, I have had significant reliability and disk crash issues associated with SoftRAID and things as simple as initializing volumes. Attempting to initialize a volume in SoftRAID under Catalina 10.15.2 has never worked correctly, and results in a hung system, and frequently a hard crash requiring a power-off restart, with the disk in question left in an unusable state, no longer recognized by even Disk Utility. The troublesome drives were on Thunderbolt 3 directly connected to the 2019 MacBook Pro running Catalina, housed in an OWC Thunderbay 4 enclosure.

The disk is only fixable by initializing it under OS 10.14. So I have been managing disks under my old 10.14.6 system, with no problems. Hard errors associated with drives are really scary, and for now I’m not trusting Catalina for any critical storage and backups.

I’m not letting Catalina near my main photos disk at this point, and just running anything critical under my older system. Really unfortunate.

Maybe your issues are also related to bugs in Catalina that cause problems with SoftRAID and volumes?

Then there are the many other buggy behaviors in Catalina, like the display profile coming unstuck after waking from sleep, and requiring to reset that in ColorSync. Waking from sleep is also more random that under 10.14, in terms of how the system comes up.

Also, as you’ve noted, many older software versions no longer work. For as much money as Apple is minting from so many activities, one would expect (demand) that they should provide a rock-solid OS.

For me, reliability and lack of strange errors is way more important than all the new sort of fluff that they stuff into each new OS. I wish management at Apple would make their OS integrity and dependability a first-order deliverable. Well, that’s my two cents. I’m hoping that 10.15.3 might fix some of the worst of this stuff, but we’ll see. But right now, I would gladly switch back to Mojave. I should have waited on my MacBook Pro purchase until Catalina was more reliable. In the future, I’l never buy a new Mac computer until the OS is at least at version 3 or 4.

MPG: I completely agree on the reliability comments. As a professional, my view is that Apple demonstrates a disdain for professionals and corporate customers or anyone who gets work done on a Mac (vs those who use Apple stuff as entertainment products).

I’ve been writing about Apple Core Rot for 7 years now—at some point an ethical/moral line is crossed between making mountainous piles of money and respecting/serving customers. It is my view that the the line has been crossed. But since Apple is mainly a phone company I don’t expect changes other than plenty of lip service public relations—show me the money, so to speak, and Catalina speaks volumes. The pain iOS 13 caused me and many others is a bad sign. Clearly the financial incentives at Apple do not value quality software.

In a way, I am glad that Catalina appears to not be responsible for the total data loss I encountered recently. I know that because three RAID stripes were instantly wiped out on the 2019 iMac 5K running macOS Mojave around XMAS. But that is macOS Mojave 10.14.6, and quite possibly whatever the bug is got into revisions of Mojave and then Catalina.

GPU and Thunderbolt 3 Bandwidth: Why the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X Might be a Better Choice than the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II: Display Stream Compression Support

As I write this, Apple still has not made available the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X graphics card option, but it might be worth waiting for. Here’s why.

As noted in previous posts, running a 5K display eats up nearly half of the Thunderbolt 3 write bandwidth, and a 6K display eats up about 75% of the write bandwidth—you’re stuck with a Thunderbolt 3 bus running at USB speeds (for writes).

About that Dual 6K Display Support on the Apple 2019 MacBook Pro 16-inch

Understanding Thunderbolt 3 Bandwidth

Display Stream Compression (DSC)

Along comes VESA standard Display Stream Compression (DSC), which can cut the bandwidth losses up to 75%, claiming visually undetectable compression of the video signal.

DSC is available with the AMD Radeon W5700X, but not available in the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II or AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, as per Apple specifications, below. The W5700X can also support three 6K displays, whereas the Vega II can support only two 6K displays (not that I anticipate that being an issue for most of us!).

So (price difference aside), you’re left with a crummy choice, either (a) 50% greater GPU compute speed and a degraded Thunderbolt 3 bus, or (b) inferior GPU compute speed and a superior Thunderbolt 3 bus.

Thus except for hard-core video users who will probably use multiple GPUs anyway, the AMD Radeon W5700X looks to be a better overall choice if used as the single video card. A lot depends on whether you have high-performance needs on that bus and/or enough other Thunderbolt 3 busses available.

If the W5700X is installed versus the 580X then there are presumably 3 busses total, two on the card itself on one on the top of the Mac Pro (versus on on the card and one on the Mac Pro with the 580X base video card).

Supposing one buys the Mac Pro with the 580X and then adds the W5700X... presumably one has 4 busses (not five), because the Mac Pro ports on the case can only be mapped to one card or the other.

With four busses via two graphics cards, the DSC issue may be moot for users with one 5K or 6K display, since the other 3 busses area all unmolested. If so, then the Vega II is just as attractive, since one degraded Thunderbolt 3 bus out of 4 is just fine. But... if two 5K or 6K displays are added, then two busses are degraded, leaving two busses at full speed.

What I am likely to do

Pricing is a factor for sure—if the W5700X is around $1200 (half the cost of the Vega II), I might go with that. Along with the 580X I already have installed, three full-performance Thunderbolt 3 busses is enough.

However, I don’t want to regret dumbing down an already large investment in my workflow for the next 3-4 years, so this is steering me towards the Vega II GPU. Things like Gigapixel AI are painfully slow, so if the Vega II can run 50% faster than a W5700X (maybe, maybe not), then that is a huge bump up.

AMD Radeon Pro W5700X specifications, per Apple

• 40 compute units, 2560 stream processors
• 16GB of GDDR6 memory with 448GB/s memory bandwidth
• Up to 9.4 teraflops single precision or 18.9 teraflops half precision
• Four Thunderbolt 3 ports and one HDMI 2.0 port on card
• Two DisplayPort connections routed to system to support internal Thunderbolt 3 ports
• Support for Display Stream Compression (DSC)
• Support for up to six 4K displays, three 5K displays, or three Pro Display XDRs
• Full-height MPX Module fills an MPX bay and uses extra power and PCIe bandwidth

AMD Radeon Pro Vega II specifications, per Apple

Lacks support for Display Stream Compression!

• 64 compute units, 4096 stream processors
• 32GB of HBM2 memory with 1TB/s memory bandwidth
• Up to 14.1 teraflops single precision or 28.3 teraflops half precision
• Infinity Fabric Link connection enables two Vega II GPUs to connect at up to 84GB/s
• Four Thunderbolt 3 ports and one HDMI 2.0 port on card
• Two DisplayPort connections routed to system to support internal Thunderbolt 3 ports
• Support for up to six 4K displays, three 5K displays, or two Pro Display XDRs.
• Full-height MPX Module fills an MPX bay and uses extra power and PCIe bandwidth

Eye-Burning Bug in macOS Catalina on 2019 Mac Pro: LG 5K Display Resets to Maximum Brightness Every Reboot

Update: it gets WORSE; see Caution for Those Working with Color-Calibrated Displays.

There are so many bugs in Catalina that I could spend weeks writing them up.

Here’s one that is not just eye-popping (literally), but of great annoyance to me as a photographer—I need the display to remain stable and predictable.

After every reboot, the LG 5K display goes to maximum brightness.

For all I know it is not specific to the Mac Pro or Catalina either, but I don’t intend to test in other situations.

After reboot, Brightness of LG 5K display is always set to maximum

Erik K writes:

We had this same exact issue with an iMac Pro when they were first released.

Bought 2 machines and one of them was useless to us with this issue.

After a long time with Apple support, they said it was a known issue but there was no solution at the time. Eventually I was able to convince them to take the machine back if I ordered another and it was problem free. Ordered another, it was fine and they took the problem one back.

Sorry to see the issue is still around.

MPG: I was getting eyestrain today, working intensely, until I realized it was caused by the brightness on the LG 5K being cranked all the way to maximum again. Apple Core Rot.

Stephen S writes:

I took delivery of a 16” build to order MacBook Pro 4 days ago. It’s going back tomorrow due to this bug. Luckily, I’m within the 14 day no questions asked return period, so the return will be hassle free. Yah, I spoke with Apple support and they don’t have a solution. Could be hardware. Could be software. Could be a confluence of both (that’s my best guess after seeing same symptoms on a Catalina 15” unit but only on rare occasions where I plug or unplug external displays. So…. Thank you for publishing your note. It gave me the confidence to speak to Apple and refer to other people experiencing the same issues (there are discussions online as well). So unfortunately I won’t have a new laptop for my upcoming trip.

...when the computer is connected to the LG 5K the internal display will frequently set itself to 100% brightness. Not 100% of the time, but frequently enough on restart or startup from being off.

I tested the 16” MacBook Pro and LG 5K Ultrafine. I’ve had the Ultrafine since 2017 used with a 2016 15” MacBook Pro. No display issues up to and including Mojave. Observed behaviours: On reboot, sometimes both the built in and the LG jump to 100% brightness. Sometimes only the built in. It does *not* do this on every reboot. It’s frequent, but unpredictable. I haven’t noticed a pattern yet. Maybe there is one, dunno.

Sometimes brightness jumps when waking from sleep (not just restart or shutdown/restart) on one or both monitors. On occasion, the screen reboots at 100% and resets itself to a proper brightness when the OS X log on screen on the LG is passed. Weird. Rare. Seen twice. My best guess is that there is an interplay between stuff in Catalina and how it plays out on different model Macs. As a control, I upgraded my old 2016 15” MacBook Pro to Catalina.

The 2016 15” MacBook Pro has never reset brightness through reboots, shutdowns and wake from sleep during dozens of tests the last two days, or 3 years of use prior. However, If I unplug or plug in the LG or otherwise change things up it DOES shoot the built in display to 100% now that Catalina 10.15.2 is running on it. So, I’m thinking Catalina is a factor in this new behaviour on old hardware. Duh.

My best guess at what’s going on: I think it’s related to Catalina, but severity may depend on different variables that are hard or impossible to know (ie: what hardware it’s being run on, or even if there is a flaw or out of tolerance with hardware somewhere. Thus, on the 16” this behaviour is exacerbated, happening very frequently (I searched Internet forms and this has been reported since November) - but form postings are anecdotal and I give small credit to them. Which is why I was glad to see your blog post.

My plan: I think a software upgrade could fix this, but since the ownership experience sucks and I can return it without penalty (within 14 days of purchase) that’s just what I’m going to do. I can’t justify the cost of a 2019 Mac Pro. And I would like a decent preforming laptop for travel.

Last thing. Unless there was something like a non-spec hardware part supplied during build out, it amazes me that Apple did not test this issue. The MacBook Pro with an LG 5K Ultrafine - no other third party hardware. Not even a cable. And they sell them both. Geez. It pisses me off that NONE of the reviewers, idiot YouTube Apple Surrogates or anyone jumped on this.

But, then again, I’m assuming the issue is universal or widespread. It may not be. Last, but not least, based upon the suggestion from a level 2 Apple Support rep, I created a new volume in my APS container and used recovery mode to re-install macOS Catalina. I skipped all customizations during first time setup. So essentially I had a brand new out of the box Mac with no configuration except Administrator Account name and password and it still didn’t work properly - after booting the screen brightness on both monitors was 100%!!! It’s up to Apple to fix this. Not me. I spent over $6,000 Canadian and over 20 hours of config and trouble shooting :)

Show stopper? - a qualified yes. It takes about 15 seconds per screen to reset brightness using a screen shot with the proper slider displayed for reference. So it’s a hassle especially if it happens many times per day - but it’s not critical to my work. I still have my NEC for colour correction which is unaffected by the bug in Catalina. But it’s annoying as hell after spending $6K.

Here’s my qualification: The computer was ordered Jan 7, arrived Jan 14. I have until Jan 29 to return it “no questions asked” as part of Apple’s Sales policy, not their Service policy. It’s much harder to get a replacement through Apple Service later. They have to make the determination to replace it, not me :) Since I am able to get a full refund until Jan 29 then yes, why would I suffer through such a defect with no known resolution? So I’m lucky in that way. I’ll wait a few more weeks to see if there is a Catalina update which “fixes” this. I don’t need the better computer urgently. Maybe Apple will release newer versions of the smaller MacBook Pro that would be tempting? Maybe an updated iMac Pro? (Which likely won’t be my choice anyways). I hope all that made sense!

MPG: witness the colossal waste of customer time and effort (“20 hours”)—Apple manure-grade quality control has also cost me dearly in the past few years.

The Apple Pro Display XDR features extreme brightness capability. It could be very unpleasant and a serious professional work problem if it just goes changing the calibrated/chosen brightness and resetting the display profile. The stink of Apple Core Rot gets ever stronger.

Of amusement to me is a premise I see all the time, reflected in “NONE of the reviewers, idiot YouTube Apple Surrogates or anyone jumped on this”. The fact is whether it is cameras or computers or cars, 90% of “reviewers” are incompetent at basic observation and 99% want the next thing to review, and thus will not spend a word on ‘minor’ issues. That’s the way the game works, and it’s why very few companies loan me gear for review—cheerleader reviews for large gullible audiences are the ticket (in other words, a process of pure unadulterated marketing masquerading as reviews). There is little integrity in the review process, and once you understand that, you’ve understood the world a lot better, and there should be amazement in the other direction—seeing issues pointed out.

2019 Mac Pro: Detailed Analysis of Phase One Capture One 20 Performance, GPU and CPU Utilization

My review of the 2019 Mac Pro now evaluates performance of Phase One Capture One 20, a raw converter used by many professionals.

Capture One 20: Export to JPEG (Phase One IQ4)

Includes a detailed performance analysis of GPU and CPU utilization with the GPU both enabled and disabled.

I need a GoFundMe or something like that to fund the purchase of an AMD Radeon Pro Vega II, so I can weigh in on how it performs in Capture One 20 as well as many other apps.

2019 Mac Pro: export max-quality JPEG, CPU vs GPU speed

diglloydTools IntegrityChecker Java version 1.2b2 Incorporates SHA-512 for Major Performance Boost

diglloydTools IntegrityChecker Java version on any computer with Java—Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. More about IntegrityChecker and why every professional should be using it.

Buy diglloydTools

IntegrityChecker Java version 1.2b2

Just posted is diglloydTools IntegrityChecker Java version 1.2b2.

License and download page...

This is a beta version but well tested (and IntegrityChecker only reads your files anyway!).

Version 1.2b2 builds on the major performance improvements of IntegrityChecker version 1.1b10 by adding support for SHA-512 hashing.

It had not occurred to me that SHA-512 hashing would be faster than SHA1, but testing shows that SHA-512 is about 80% faster than SHA1!

Speed is now so fast that IntegrityChecker Java will be I/O limited on recent Macs, even by the extremely fast internal SSDs. There is some actual speed benefit, but given the icj is now I/O bound, the is an about 80% reduction in CPU usage.

CPU usage while running IntegrityChecker java

OWC Mercury Accelsior M42 PCIe SSD: Running Two of Them Independently — Awesomely Fast (but don’t stripe 8 blades yet)

I am running two 8TB OWC Mercury Accelsior M42 PCIe SSDs in the 2019 Mac Pro. High performance SSDs like this are impossible on any other Mac. I am using them as separate volume, created (as shipped) by striping the 4 blades into a RAID-0, using SoftRAID.

These are awesome, capable of 6 GB/each and supremely fast for large or small transfers. Hardly anything can use that kind of speed, but there are exceptions, such as Integrity Checker.

RAID-0 striping

Note that SoftRAID users must take special steps to allow the current version of the driver to run (installing the latest driver won’t accomplish anything by itself). Turn off Secure Boot by booting into Recovery Mode, then reboot again and allow the SoftRAID driver to load in System Security preferences.

I do not intend to stripe 8 blades across the two cards, because failure of a single blade would mean loss of the volume (in RAID-0 stripe mode).

There is apparently a kernel-panic issue if attempting to stripe all 8 blades of the two cards into one RAID. So don’t do that (for now). SoftRAID folks are going to track it down and fix it.

Also, parallelism is reduced more and more for small files as the number of blades in the stripe is increased—not necessarily a win for mixes of files. For example, if a 128K stripe size is used, there is no striping parallelism with files 128K and smaller—everything is read from one blade. A 256K file still would use only 2 blades, a 512K file 3 blades, etc. For large files all is well, but RAID-0 striping doesn’t help for smaller files.

RAID-4/RAID-5 fault tolerance

For those concerned with fault tolerance, SoftRAID can use the 4 blades in RAID-1 mirror, RAID-4 and RAID-5 parity mode. I think this is a poor choice PCIe SSDs, for several reasons:

• Loss of 1/4 of the usable space in a 4-blade stripe (one blade capacity used for parity).
• Use of RAID-4/RAID-5 incurs parity calculation overhead, using considerable CPU cycles.
• Use of RAID-4/RAID-5 slows write throughput unduly due to the parity calculations, particularly for writes. But it also slows it for reads, since reads come from 3 blades, not 4.

Using 8 blades instead of 4 blades in RAID-4/RAID-5 would double the CPU overhead and have a major impact on speed that largely defeats the value proposition (unless it is purely about a single large fault tolerant volume). If you actually have an application that needs the performance, chewing up a couple of CPU cores this way makes no sense at all.

SoftRAID striping of 4 blades in OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD

Stuff I'm Adding to my 2019 Mac Pro or Already Have

Memory wish list • Deals on OWC

$4199 OWC 84TB OWC ThunderBay 6 RAID 5 6-Drive Enterprise HDD Storage… in Storage: Hard Drives

$2400 SAVE $130 = 5.0% OWC 56TB OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID 5 Four-Drive HDD External Storage… in Storage: ThunderBay

$480 SAVE $120 = 20.0% OWC 14.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro 7200RPM Storage Solution with U… in Storage: Mercury Elite Pro

$1200 OWC 192GB (6 x 32GB) PC23400 DDR4 ECC 2933MHz 288-pin RDIMM Memo… in All Other Categories

$1950 OWC 8.0TB OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD Storage Soluti… in All Other Categories

Apple 2019 Mac Pro: Display Will Not Re-Sync with NEC PA302W after Coming Out of Sleep + Base Video Card vs Other Cards, Thunderbolt 3 Ports

On the 2019 iMac 5K and 2017 iMac 5K, I ran the NEC PA302W as the primary display, with the built-in display as the second display. This combination has worked for years using the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock (and more recently with the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock), albeit with macOS Mojave and earlier OS versions.

When up and running, everything is perfect on the Mac Pro. But when the Mac Pro comes out of display-off mode, everything goes haywire:

• The NEC PA302W does not black out when it ought to; the backlight stays on all night (unlike the LG 5K next to it). This means burning out the backlighting much more when I don't want the machine sleeping, but I also don’t need the screen lit up(turning it off is a poor option, as it scrambles everything on the desktop and rearranges the Arrangement settings).
• Frequently (not always), the display cannot regain sync, getting sync for a fraction of a 2nd, then showing “No Signal”, over and over. Powering the display on/off does not fix the issue. Very annoying is that once fixed, desktop icons are scrambled.
• Sometimes a reboot is required, and sometimes that reboot puts the display into dumbed-down 1920 X 1080 mode, unable to run at 2560 X 1600. The Arrangement is also reversed and the menu bar moved. A second reboot usually fixed it, but one has to go into Preferences => Displays to choose 2560 X 1600 again, then redo the screen Arrangement.

I say “display off mode” above, because I cannot get the Mac Pro to enter sleep mode, even choosing it explicitly.

I am driving the NEC PA302W via the DisplayPort on the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock. Possibly the Dock has an issue but that seems so unlikely—all it does is pass through the Thunderbolt 3 display signal and the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock has been bulletproof for years.

I have an HDMI cable coming tomorrow so that I can connect the PA302W to the AMD Radeon Pro 580X video card, which currently is useless to me (has only two HDMI ports).

2019 Mac Pro sometimes fails to sync up properly after reboot

Peter C writes:

I've had issues with the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock and both the 2019 MacBook Pro and the (newer) 16" MacBook Pro when coming out of sleep. My display (Dell P2415Q) briefly wakes up and then goes back into power-save mode. I can resolve this by unplugging the dock from the laptop for a couple seconds and then plugging it back in. There aren't any combinations of Energy Saver settings I've found to avoid this. I recently started using Amphetamine to solve this display/dock problem. I feel bad about the wasted energy, but am not worried about its impact on the life expectancy of my display.

A second problem: the dock's ethernet port seems to stop working when the laptop wakes up. The lights are off. Unplugging the ethernet cable from the dock and plugging it back in resolves this issue (you can readily see the port's lights come on). I didn't ever notice this until I left WiFi turned off. I avoid this now by selecting "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off".

I spent time with OWC support on this. Resetting PRAM and SMC didn't solve the problem, nor did the replacement dock they sent me. They didn't seem familiar with this issue.

MPG: somehow I don’t think the issue is specific to OWC docks; this all started with macOS Mojave with the 2018 Mac mini. I am all but certain these are Apple bugs.

Kent C writes:

I am seeing something very similar that I was attributing to a 10-year-old Mac Pro and just as old graphics cards, and still likely be due to age, but sounds eerily similar to your article.

- Early 2009 MacPro4,1 (purchased new 2009-12)
- ATI Radeon HD 4870 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
- Mac OS X 10.9.5
- BenQ SW2700 display (purchased 2017-07)
- main display, via Mini DisplayPort Viewsonic VX2025wm display (purchased 2006)
- secondary display for Adobe software palettes, via VGA to DVI converter

No docks involved.

I normally turn off both displays at the end of the work day to conserve both electricity and lifespan, allowing the displays to be off 10-12 hours per day. Upon turning them on one morning in late November or early December, the newest display (BenQ) turned on but was not recognized by the computer.

Rebooting did not help, but has helped on occasion since then.

System Preferences > Displays > Option key + “Gather Windows” button = “Detect Displays” button will sometimes work. If the Detect Displays button works to bring back the BenQ display, it will always lose it’s scaling. Sometimes rebooting will allow the scaling to be fixed. Sometimes Detect Displays button will allow the scaling to be fixed. Sometimes switching between “Best for display” and “Scaled” options will fix it.

More consistently, I have found that moving the mini DisplayPort cable from one graphics card to the other will get things working—sometimes without having to fix scaling.

Randomly will have to fix the Arrangement as to how the displays are aligned and which is the primary. Because I have had some significant work deadlines, my temporary solution has been to leave the monitors on 24/7 and be sure the screensaver is running during “off” hours.

MPG: Apple Core Rot across a decade?

Greg M writes:

So I just got my Mac Pro today. I've noticed you have the same screen as me, the NEC PA302W monitor. It doesn't work for me either.

I tried everything I could. HDMI to HDMI cable is the only cable I was able to get it to work but at the low resolution. I can only get 1080p at most. See the print screen attached.

I called Apple tech support and chat with them for over 2 hours. We tired resetting my Mac (when you start your computer you have to hold option+command+R+P) but that didn't help. I tried all other ports and cables to no avail. Nothing else works.

I even bought USB-C to HDMI cable for like $40 at BestBuy. I connected my monitor and it works but again, at very low resolution. I don't know what seems to be the problem?

I created a ticket with NEC display tech support to see if they know anything about it. If not, now they'll be at least aware of the problem.

Apple tech support has elevated the issue to an engineering team to see if they can help, or at least know what maybe a problem ( or what adapter to get).

When I connect my monitor to my older MacBook Pro via DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort (that looks like thunderbolt 2) cable, I'm getting native resolution of 2560x1600. And, I used this same cable with my Mac Pro late 2013 (the cylinder) again running my monitor at its native resolution. I had Catalina installed so I don't think it's the OS that causes the problem.

It looks like Apple didn't bother testing their video cards with monitors that have lower resolution than 4/5/6K. If you found some resolution please by all means shoot me a note, let me know how to fix this. I see lots of interesting adapters that perhaps can be used to get the resolution of 2560x1600 but it's impossible to tell which one to get, and if it's going to work at all.

MPG: All these problems did start in my experience with the 2018 Mac mini, which as I recall introduced a new Thunderbolt 3 chipset. Two suggestions, both items are on my wishlist for port expansion page:

• Try the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock; while I’ve had the issues I’ve discussed above, when its sync'ed up, it works right all day long.
• OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dual DisplayPort Adapter.

The OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock is also VERY useful for adding USB-A ports.

From NEC:

So it looks like they’re using native HDMI from the video card? The HDMI onboard on the PA302W doesn’t do native resolution. You have to use DisplayPort to get native resolution.

No USB-C video to DisplayPort?

MPG: I presume the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dual DisplayPort Display Adapter would do the trick. But losing ports by plugging in a dead-end dongle is an unattractive option, though it's not so bad if it can sit at the end of a TB3 chain.

Bottom line is that the 2019 Mac Pro base video card SUCKS, with no Thunderbolt 3 ports and two crappy HDMI ports that don’t work with at least one pro display (as per above). Well, all of the Apple video cards suck, because none of them have anything but HDMI ports and Thunderbolt 3 ports (none on the base card)—very poor interoperatibility requiring dongles or additional hardware. Shame on Apple for such brain-dead design that as I am finding, doesn’t even work right.

Greg M writes:

Well, I've got the adapter today and it did not work. I connected to USB too (because the cable has HDMI and USB-A on one end). I guess it needs both but it didn't work anyway. The monitor just turned on and off every two seconds but the screen was still black. The power light changed from orange to blue, as if it wanted to turn on, but the screen remained black, and turned off. So yeah, that was going on for a while and I just disconnected all. Bummer...

Well, I guess we both have to use our docks. Apple called me today and asked me about the issues, and how I solved it. I explained I used my dock... They did elevate the issue to engineering group, so maybe they can fix the problem in the future. I mean, I have HDMI to DisplayPort cable which should work but doesn't no matter what I try and no matter how many different adapters I use. Apple really screwed this up as if they didn't care about anyone with monitors having less than 4K resolution. I detest 4Ks, and I've had one before. It's a horrible idea to try to post process images on high res monitors as you know (and even wrote an article which I skimmed through). So I returned it and got this NEC that now we can barely get it to work. Such a shame.....

MPG: Greg is referring to a hybrid USB-C + HDMI contraption cable.

Today I received Warky USB-C to DisplayPort cable. It doesn’t work at all, not directly into the Mac Pro, not to the Thunderbolt 3 Dock USB-C port, and not off the LG 5K USB-C port—300% FAIL.

Iam M writes:

I have a new 12 core 2019 MacPro with the base 580X video card

My pair of PA302W monitors are connected via HDMI, and I have no problems with boot or sleep. They run at 2560 x 1600, but only at 30 Hz.

I was able to choose that resolution by clicking on the Scaling button with the Option key held down in the Displays System Preferences. That will enable the 2560 x 1600 option. I believe the 30Hz vs 60Hz is an issue with HDMI I do have one problem with the primary monitor occasionally going to ‘snow', which requires turning the monitor on and off. Otherwise, no problems:)

MPG: 30 Hz is not a solution, and I am skeptical of “no problems”—give it time and experience—also a 5K Thunderbolt 3 + a PA302W is a different scenario entirely (Thunderbolt bus is directly involved).

I can get mine to work 50% of the time by default, and 90% of the time if I hit the keyboard sequence a certain way (when the screens light up, immediately hit the ESC key and the the ENTER key).

Apple 2019 Mac Pro: Apple’s Intel Xeon W CPUs Have a Lot More Cache than Intel Specifications

On-chip cache memory is critical for performance, because main memory is relatively slow compared to CPU clock speed. That’s why high performance CPUs always have more cache memory than consumer CPUs.

Intel specifications differ in two key ways from the specifications given by Apple:

• Apple states 4.4 GHz Turbo Boost for the 16/24/28 core CPUs, vs 4.6 GHz in the Intel specifications, about a 5% difference.
• Cache memory is considerably larger as stated by Apple than Intel specifications state.

See Intel PDF: PRODUCT BRIEF Workstations powered by Intel® Xeon® W-3200 processors.

UPDATE: reader Martin P remarks that “Apple just added the L2 Cache 1MB per Core to the Level3 Cache Intel is stating”; see Wikichip.org.

UPDATE: looks like the 4.4 GHz vs 4.6 GHz difference is “Max Turbo Frequency” vs “Intel® Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 Frequency”, the latter being a few cores that happen to be a bit better than the others. It is unclear if macOS supports scheduling on these particular cores.

Apple specifications

 8-Core 16t 3.5GHz Intel Xeon W-3223  Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz,   16.5MB  24.5MB cache
12-Core 24t 3.3GHz Intel Xeon W-3235  Turbo Boost to 4.4GHz,      19.25MB 31.25MB cache
16-Core 32t 3.2GHz Intel Xeon W-3245  Turbo Boost to 4.6 4.4GHz,  22MB    38MB cache
24-Core 48t 2.7GHz Intel Xeon W-3265M Turbo Boost to 4.6 4.4GHz,  33MB    57MB cache
28-Core 56t 2.5GHz Intel Xeon W-3275M Turbo Boost to 4.6 4.4GHz,  38.5MB  66.5MB cache

Are Apple’s specifications wrong, or does Apple use some special chip variant?

Including lots more cache memory might raise chip price significantly, given that the yield of chips with a lot more cache might be lower.

Apple 2019 Mac Pro: MUCH Slower CPU Cores than 2019 iMac 5K, but Lots More of 'em

Well, lots more cores if you get a 16 core Mac Pro . Thus my updated advice is to buy ONLY a 16-core (or 24/28 core if warranted). An 8-core or 12-core Mac Pro is marginal in terms of CPU performance relative to the 2019 iMac 5K.

My testing shows that for single-threaded stuff, a CPU core in the 16-core 2019 Mac Pro is up to 30% slower per core than the 2019 iMac 5K.

Consult with me (Lloyd) and I’ll help steer you to the best machine for your own specific workflow needs at the lowest cost, professional or you just want the best (which might or might not be the Mac Pro). Along with whatever add-ons and backup procedures and related stuff you need to sort out.

Which means that unless 8 or more cores are used, a Mac Pro is a losing proposition for many types of work. It will be GREAT for video processing and similar, GREAT for expansion, but a quadruple-expense headache with inferior interactive feel for many types of work.

Recommended Apple 2019 Mac Pro (add OWC memory)

Macs wish list • Deals on Apple

$15799 Apple Mac Pro in Computers: Apple Macs

$12799 Apple Mac Pro in Computers: Apple Macs

That said, there are lots of little things I do that actually do take a lot of CPU cores. Do they add up to a net win? I am dubious and that will take some time to answer. Some examples:

• Rebooting my development web server—see the CPU history image below.
• Focus stacking assembly—but not retouching where the Mac Pro is big loser with noticeably inferior response time.
• git gc (git is a repository system)—but I do this infrequently.
• IntegrityChecker—up to 60% faster—but it just doesn’t matter much as I can do other things.

Stuff I'm Adding to my 2019 Mac Pro or Already Have

Memory wish list • Deals on OWC

$4199 OWC 84TB OWC ThunderBay 6 RAID 5 6-Drive Enterprise HDD Storage… in Storage: Hard Drives

$2400 SAVE $130 = 5.0% OWC 56TB OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID 5 Four-Drive HDD External Storage… in Storage: ThunderBay

$480 SAVE $120 = 20.0% OWC 14.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro 7200RPM Storage Solution with U… in Storage: Mercury Elite Pro

$1200 OWC 192GB (6 x 32GB) PC23400 DDR4 ECC 2933MHz 288-pin RDIMM Memo… in All Other Categories

$1950 OWC 8.0TB OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD Storage Soluti… in All Other Categories

In short, if you are looking for workflow speedups, the biggest speedups might look good on paper, but the inferior interactive response time in which only a single core or a few cores are used will have you buying an iMac 5K as an accessory, just to improve the response time issue. This may in fact be how I operate at home, placing the iMac at 90° to the Mac Pro display, and connecting two two with 10 gigabyte ethernet in order to share files.

2019 Mac Pro: two reboots of development server

Apple 2019 Mac Pro: a Quick Look at How I Configured the Beast

Here’s a quick look at how I have configured the 2019 Mac Pro so far.

I have to say it is a lovely machine on paper, but with the 2019 iMac 5K CPU cores often running about 30% faster, the iMac 5K is in effect equivalent to a 10 core Mac Pro. And the iMac 5K is ALWAYS faster (on CPU tasks) unless at least 8 cores are used. So don’t go buying a Mac Pro unless you need all the expansion options.

Consult with me (Lloyd) and I’ll help steer you to the best machine for your own specific workflow needs at the lowest cost, professional or you just want the best (which might or might not be the Mac Pro). Along with whatever add-ons and backup procedures and related stuff you need to sort out.

Memory

See also: 2019 Mac Pro: Tips for Upgrading Memory.

FOR SALE: few photographers need more than 96GB, so my upgrade pain is your grain: 48GB as 6 X 8GB of Apple RDIMMS from 16-core Mac Pro $450 or best offer (just to go from 32GB to 48GB costs $300 when buying a Mac Pro, so that’s half price!) Contact Lloyd.

The heck with hugely overpriced Apple memory—I decided to upgrade to 384GB of OWC memory, as I anticipate the Mac Pro will be a 3+ year investment in my workflow. In for a penny, in for a pound, in the USA or Britain.

Besides, to mix the 48GB of Apple memory (6 X 8GB) to work with the OWC memory, the modules have to be installed the exact opposite way of what the Apple technote claims*, otherwise the Mac Pro just blinks red and won’t even attempt to boot. I wasted hours trying to get Apple memory to work with OWC memory due to these faulty instructions.

Below, 12 X 32GB RDIMM modules in the 2019 Mac Pro. Memory bandwidth in this configuration is outstanding.

One undesirable effect of using 384GB memory instead of 192GB: fan noise which was whisper quiet rises enough to make it noticeable vs barely perceptible.

* The Apple technote states that lower-capacity modules should go into the lower-number channels first—the OPPOSITE of what works. Instead, install the higher-capacity modules first, in the lower channels, then install the lower-capacity Apple modules in the higher numbered channels. From the technote Install and replace memory in your Mac Pro (2019):

Starting with the lowest capacity pair of DIMMs, install your DIMMs in identical pairs from smallest to largest [MPG: largest to smallest] capacity in order of the memory channels:
Channel 1: Slots 5 and 8 Channel
2: Slots 3 and 10 Channel
3: Slots 1 and 12
Channel 4: Slots 6 and 7
Channel 5: Slots 4 and 9
Channel 6: Slots 2 and 11

2019 Mac Pro: 384GB memory

Ports

The base Mac Pro configuration SUCKS as far as ports go. There are a miserly two (2) USB-A ports on the Apple I/O card, so a USB hub of some kind is all but mandatory. The four Thunderbolt 3 ports are awkwardly placed—too high up the rear and on the top all make for a looping/drooping cable mess and make it difficult to use 1/2 meter cables, so the net result is a mess. Plus the video ports are HDMI only—where is DisplayPort. Total brain dead design in terms of neatly connecting stuff up, and a design that incurs additional costs for adapters and docks. How hard could it be to at least add one built-in Display Port and 4 USB-A ports?

You’ll want the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock or the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock, because you’ll need the USB-A ports and and you’ll likely need DisplayPort or Mini DisplayPort and an SD card reader too.

Another issue is that by connecting a 5K display such as the LG UltraFine 27MD5KL-B 27" 16:9 5K IPS Monitor (see below), a big chunk of data bandwidth is consumed on the TB3 bus, which means one Thunderbolt 3 bus can never perform at full speed (for writes); see Understanding Thunderbolt 3 Bandwidth. Which means in effect that the base config that leaves only a single full-speed bus (assuming you don’t add another 5K or 6K display in which case you’re totally hosed without adding more video cards in order to get more TB3 busses/ports).

So if you add a 5K or 6K display, in effect you’re much forced to buy one of the higher-end video cards to get full speed Thunderbolt busses, or live with HDMI—which you cannot do with the LG 5K display since it only uses Thunderbolt 3 input.

Thus only decent solution is to add one of the higher priced video cards, which adds more Thunderbolt ports (4 more ports and two busses). I am waiting for the Radeon Pro W5700X to be offered, but it is still disappointing: no DisplayPort or Mini DisplayPort ports, only one HDMI port. But it does have four more Thunderbolt 3 ports on two more busses, and that means one of those ports (or any other on the Mac Pro) can dead-end itself into an adapter like the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dual DisplayPort Display Adapter, or you can add on the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock or OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock.

I am not looking forward to higher fan noise from a high-powered graphics card. Maybe Apple will offer the option to buy another I/O card, or some third party will.

Counterpoint—with 16TB of internal SSD, maybe I don’t really need that much external Thunderbolt 3 bus speed any more—for what exactly? My 8TB OWC Thunderblade can sit on the unimpaired TB3 bus and the solution for fast storage is already in place with the dual OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD cards. So only if I were to add the Apple Pro Display XDR (which pretty much nukes the bus) would I need another video card with its extra TB3 busses.

Displays

I attached the NEC PA302 via the DisplayPort port on the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock.

The LG UltraFine 27MD5KL-B 27" 16:9 5K IPS Monitor is attached via Thunderbolt 3, which eats up a big chunk of the data bandwidth on the TB3 bus. If you want a high performance system, that bus then needs to be relegated to lower performing items—it’s not going to perform for nifty stuff like the OWC Thunderblade.

There is nothing 'Pro' about the AMD Radeon Pro 580X graphics card and it particularly sucks because it has no Thunderbolt 3 ports, as do all the other cards. And you need those extra ports/busses because of the data bandwidth loss from the 5K display.

2019 Mac Pro: dual display setup

PCIe slots

Here’s where things pay off: high performance SSDs that are impossible on any other Mac. I installed dual 8TB OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD cards. Each one can do over 6GB per second sustained across its entire capacity by striping the 4 blades into a RAID-0.

Because of the Thunderbolt 3 bus issue disgust [sic] above, the entry level AMD Radeon Pro 580X is going to have to go, and be replaced by either the Radeon Pro W5700X (not yet available as I write this, pricing uncertain), or the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II. The W5700X should be 1.6X faster than the base card, and the Vega II should be 2.5X faster than the base video card (1.5X faster than the W5700X). But those figures are theoretical—real world tends to dumb things down.

Don H writes “I don’t know what plans you have for the remaining PCI slots, but if you’re not going to fill them all what if you moved the Apple I/O card down to the lowest available slot?” and that is a good idea (slot 2 looks appropriate)... but for a lousy two USB ports? Given the Thunmderbolt 3 bus situation with the 5K display, I’d just rather replace the stock video card with W5700X or Vega II. Of course it then seems silly to let the unused video card sit there doing nothing but being a 2-port HUB.

2019 Mac Pro: PCIe cards

Stuff I'm Adding to my 2019 Mac Pro or Already Have

Memory wish list • Deals on OWC

$4199 OWC 84TB OWC ThunderBay 6 RAID 5 6-Drive Enterprise HDD Storage… in Storage: Hard Drives

$2400 SAVE $130 = 5.0% OWC 56TB OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID 5 Four-Drive HDD External Storage… in Storage: ThunderBay

$480 SAVE $120 = 20.0% OWC 14.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro 7200RPM Storage Solution with U… in Storage: Mercury Elite Pro

$1200 OWC 192GB (6 x 32GB) PC23400 DDR4 ECC 2933MHz 288-pin RDIMM Memo… in All Other Categories

$1950 OWC 8.0TB OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD Storage Soluti… in All Other Categories

Apple 2019 Mac Pro: OWC 32GB Modules Show 1/3 Higher Bandwidth than Apple 8GB Modules

Memory bandwidth is especially important for more CPU cores and/or fast ones because it can constrain how quickly data can be accessed by each core. The 2019 Mac Pro in 16/24/28 CPU cores configurations needs all the bandwidth it can get.

With different memory configurations, how is memory bandwidth affected?

In the MPG review of the 2019 Mac Pro:

2019 Mac Pro: Memory Bandwidth

MAJOR Performance Improvements to diglloydTools IntegrityChecker Java version 1.1b10

Just posted is diglloydTools IntegrityChecker Java version 1.1b10.

Runs on any computer with Java—Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. More about IntegrityChecker and why every professional should be using it.

Buy diglloydTools

License and download page

This is a beta version but well tested (and IntegrityChecker only reads your files anyway!).

Version 1.1b10 is backward compatible with prior versions but older versions are not forward-compatible with updated folders of 1.1b10 due to the addition of missing folder support (see below). In other words, do not run older versions once this version updates folders.

Changes

• Folders are now tracked, so that if an entire folder anywhere in the hierarchy goes missing, a warning is emitted.
• The 'dupes' command is now much more useful. It emits 'rm' commands that can be copied/pasted in Terminal to remove unwanted duplicate files. Use these commands with care, since icj cannot know for sure which duplicate should be considered the primary. However, an apparent primary is selected by date and intelligent use of the name. Saved me 600GB! (I had somehow had multiple downloads of some very large raw file shoots from my trips).
  

Performance

Optimized for extreme performance.

• Major performance enhancements (up to 5X faster, depending on CPU cores and speed of the drive). Performance is highly optimized for SSD, but should be considerably better for most hard drives too.
• Concurrent loading of folder hash files is up to 3X faster.
• Throughput can hit 4.6GB/second on the OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD, and about 2.9 GB/sec on most Apple internal SSDs (8 core systems).
• Total throughput hits nearly 3 gigabytes per second on fast 8-core Macs such on an 2019 iMac 5K or 2019 MacBook Pro (assuming a very fast SSD such as the internal SSD). It is now fast enough that CPU power on 12 core or more machines should outrun SSD speed, that is, icj is I/O bound unless an SSD can deliver 4GB/sec or more.
• Throughput both for mixed-size files and large files is now very close to the limits of SSD speed (as tested on 2019 iMac 5K 8-core on its fast internal SSD)
• A performance bug is now fixed that resulted in unpredictable 2X to 3X performance losses on the same workload (instantiation of threads in thread pool was not being triggered reliably).
• Performance on hard drives has been improved by up to 3X. Due to API limitations, hard drives still do not perform as well as hoped.
  

CPU usage while running IntegrityChecker java

2019 Mac Pro: Hardware Elegance, macOS Crapalina Belongs in the Toilet

To my eyes, the 2019 Mac Pro is the most elegant and beautiful Apple product ever designed. I mean that—nothing else compares.

<diatribe rating="PG17">

But the Mac Pro is hardware that comes with turdware (macOS Catalina). Damn, let me run macOS Mojave instead of macOS Catalina because Crapalina shits the bed (a rough translation of a European expression).

What a nightmare from a software perspective, due to macOS Catalina and the Apple contempt for users manifest in removing 32-bit support, and that’s just for starters. I have now spent an entire day unfucking all sorts of problems all instigated by Catalina. More like 20 hours.

• How many security dialogs have I had to do? Maybe 100? For WHAT exactly? And the task NEVER ends. Don’t get me started on synthetic.conf and myriad other side effects of the security changes—and it’s going to get worse, much worse, by mid-year as Apple doubles-down on code notarization. I’d bet there are many IT departments that are very very busy right now, and universities and similar probably have all sorts of custom software that Crapalina effectively destroys. The contempt Apple shows for users knows no bounds. How hard is it to include a VM at least for compatibility?
• How many ordinary users know what to do in response to any of the myriad security dialogs, how to go fix problems deep in System Preferences. Apple is thus training ordinary users to always just click out of desperation the closest thing to “save me please go away I am sick of this hopeless stuff impossible to understand” button. This is not going to turn out well. And that’s setting aside all the stuff that is now broken and just doesn’t work and the huge cost of paying for “upgrades” to some of that.
• SoftRAID requires disabling Secure Boot due to a last-minute Apple clusterfuck anti-design decision. What good is Secure Boot if you cannot even use it? There exists no alternative to disabling it. Most users probably are running SoftRAID version 5.6.8, because macOS Crapalina won’t run the newer version, even if installed unless special steps are taken, e.g., to disable the very feature that is causing the problem—and this is an intimidating process for most.
• My accounting software is dead in the water (32 bit). I will have to use it on the 2019 iMac 5K for now. It is $500 to “upgrade” to a version with unknown issues and with absolutely no new value. That’s like tossing 25 $20 bills over the edge of the Grand Canyon while farting in the wind.
• SpamSieve cost me 5 hours or f'ing around to get it to work (I blame Apple Mail not SpamSieve!)—turns out that the Mail folder (my own#$*#$*#$* data, not Apple’s playground!!!) cannot be stored anywhere but the boot drive, or Mail extensions won’t load. Thanks genius Apple engineers! You all ought to have your pay cut in half for the brain-dead user interface that shows nothing about why things don’t work—you folks with contempt for people who use your crappy software. All you had to do is to put a little message in there like “Extension not loaded because not in the blessed Apple storage location”, or some such—just about anything but nothing. JFK. Kudos to SpamSiever developer for adding a warning in SpamSieve version 2.9.39b2 that warns of this issue.
• I am now forced to use Adobe Dreamweaver CS latest version. Adobe should be ashamed and contrite—it is a friggin' clusterdump of problems—scattershot reorganized to make for a nightmare transition, useless crapware features, ignores previous settings so everything has to be redone, keyboard shortcuts that don’t properly update if replacing a shortcut, basic features like linking to a file don’t even have a shortcut, features that don’t work right such as opening current file in a web browser, OS incompatibility (cmd-` is assigned to a DW command, but that is a system-wide shortcut), inability to recognize which site is being worked on without manually changing it, the Properties palette is still the same irritating screeen-occupying ultra-wide headache—all for $20.99 per month (versus $0 for version 5.5, which is 32-bit and won’t run). Total SHIT that Adobe is milking for $252/year while doing nothing to fix the obvious problems—and I say this having tried this version 4 years ago! I have to look for some other HTML editor—Dreamweaver always was, always has been total crap, but it’s crap I had been used to in v5.5.
• System won’t wake up out of sleep properly (sometimes it works). I actually have to plug in a wired USB mouse directly to get it to wake up (USB wired mouse or keyboard not connected directly is not working).
• Apple’s tech note on memory installation is just wrong for mixed-size memory modules—the opposite of what works. And Apple’s 8GB modules are 1/3 slower and 3X more expensive than those of OWC.

There is a LOT more, and that’s what I’ve been doing with little sleep for days. But I don’t want to spend my life writing blog posts on crapware when I have real work to do—maybe you dear reader are lucky and can enjoy macOS Catalina. I’ve made (most of) my peace with it, but it has come at great cost.

Thank you, Tim Cook for your staff that shows incredible disrespect for users of your products, going way back to the Final Cut Pro fiasco. This ain’t right—total Apple Core Rot but in a judgment/usability sense.

</diatribe>

Al K writes:

Thanks for your Crapalina diatribe. I’m a geezer, and I take care of a lot of geezer Macs. I’ve universally told my geezer “customers” to avoid Catalina like the plague.

Apple doesn’t sell an upgradable computer for hobbyists like me—or one with a matt display that would cost me less than $7K.

Adobe doesn’t have a software model that works for hobbyists like me.

When I installed High Sierra on a Mid-2010 Mac Pro that I recently bought on craigslist for $50 (it looks and runs like new), it wouldn’t load my Spyder4 Pro display calibration software (Datacolor stopped support at 10.12).

For hobbyists like me, who don’t have unlimited software and hardware budgets, greed is killing the cat. I’m going to stick with what I have.

MPG: lots of used Macs out there at big savings, such as used Macs at OWC (OWC also sells new Macs regularly).

OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD: Fasted SSD MPG has ever Tested, by 2X

The OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD has 4 slots for M.2 NVMe SSD modules. It is shipped with SoftRAID to combine those 4 modules into a single volume.

As tested here, it was configured as a single RAID-0 stripe volume. It is also possible to configure it as 4 individual volumes (one per blade), or dual 2-blade volumes, or a RAID-4, and a variety of other possibilities, all courtesy of SoftRAID. Super fast and easy no matter what.

In the MPG review of the 2019 Mac Pro:

OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD in 2019 Mac Pro

Fastest SSD that MPG has ever tested, by far. And it is fanless and thus silent.

Apple 2019 Mac Pro: Not All Memory is the Same Speed, Mixing Sizes Not so Good

Memory bandwidth is especially important for more CPU cores and/or fast ones because it can constrain how quickly data can be accessed by each core. The 2019 Mac Pro in 16/24/28 CPU cores configurations needs all the bandwidth it can get.

With different memory configurations, how is memory bandwidth affected?

In the MPG review of the 2019 Mac Pro:

2019 Mac Pro: Memory Bandwidth

Geeking Out on New Year’s Eve, with 🍾Bubbles

What better way to spend New Year’s Eve than setting up a 16-core Mac Pro, along with champagne? Well, at least if you’re a mathematics and computationl science with 3 kids in college

So far, the Mac Pro has not gotten any of the bubbly, which is best for both of us.

Dang, what a beautiful machine. I rank it as the most elegant and beautifu product ever designed by Apple. And it’s whisper quiet even if I have it up on my desk (which I do, temporarily). First impressions say “double home run”. Maybe a triple—let’s see how it performs.

But dang—updating (out of the box) to macOS Catalina 10.15.2 take a long arn time, though not until 2020, thank bubbly.

Memory for Apple 2019 Mac Pro

Memory wish list • Deals on OWC

$5000 SAVE $1000 = 16.0% OWC 768GB (12 x 64GB) PC23400 DDR4 ECC 2933MHz 288-pin LRDIMM Me… in All Other Categories

$3580 SAVE $420 = 10.0% OWC 512GB (8 x 64GB) PC23400 DDR4 ECC 2933MHz 288-pin LRDIMM Mem… in All Other Categories

$2730 SAVE $270 = 8.0% OWC 384GB (6 x 64GB) PC23400 DDR4 ECC 2933MHz 288-pin LRDIMM Mem… in All Other Categories

$1830 SAVE $170 = 8.0% OWC 256GB (4 x 64GB) PC23400 DDR4 ECC 2933MHz 288-pin LRDIMM Mem… in All Other Categories

$930 SAVE $70 = 6.0% OWC 128GB (2 x 64GB) PC23400 DDR4 ECC 2933MHz 288-pin LRDIMM Mem… in All Other Categories

$500 OWC 64.0GB PC23400 DDR4 ECC 2933MHz 288-pin LRDIMM Memory Upgrad… in All Other Categories

Storage and Ports for MacBook Pro, Macs and PCs

Port Expansion wish list • Deals on OWC

$2199 OWC 8.0TB OWC ThunderBlade Ultra High-Performance Gen 2 Thunderb… in Storage: SSD	$1279 OWC 4.0TB OWC ThunderBlade Ultra High-Performance Gen 2 Thunderb… in Storage: SSD	$500 SAVE $30 = 5.0% OWC 2.0TB OWC Envoy Pro EX with Thunderbolt 3 - Rugged High-Perf… in Storage: SSD	$450 SAVE $50 = 10.0% OWC 2.0TB OWC Envoy Pro EX USB-C NVMe M.2 SSD Solution in Storage: SSD	$1900 SAVE $130 = 6.0% OWC 48TB OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID Ready 4-Drive HDD Storage Solutio… in Storage: ThunderBay	$1430 SAVE $80 = 5.0% OWC 32TB OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID Ready 4-Drive HDD Storage Solutio… in Storage: ThunderBay	$1210 OWC 24TB OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID Ready 4-Drive HDD Storage Solutio… in Storage: ThunderBay	$480 SAVE $120 = 20.0% OWC 14.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro 7200RPM Storage Solution with U… in Storage: Mercury Elite Pro
$288 OWC 8.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro 7200RPM Storage Solution with US… in Storage: Mercury Elite Pro	$8 SAVE $7 = 46.0% OWC USB-C to USB-A (USB 3) Adapter Cable in All Other Categories	$50 SAVE $25 = 33.0% OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dual DisplayPort Display Adapter in All Other Categories	$295 OWC 14-Port Thunderbolt 3 Dock with Cable - Space Gray in All Other Categories	$329 SAVE $21 = 6.0% OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock in All Other Categories	$50 SAVE $129 = 72.0% Tripp Lite USB 3.0 Charging Hub 7+1 Port Hub with Dedicated Char… in All Other Categories	$40 SAVE $20 = 33.0% OWC USB-C Travel Dock - Space Gray in All Other Categories

Displays for MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, etc

Macs wish list • Deals on Apple

$5999 Apple 32" Pro Display XDR 16:9 Retina 6K HDR IPS Display (Nano-T… in Computers: Displays

$4999 Apple 32" Pro Display XDR 16:9 Retina 6K HDR IPS Display (Standa… in Computers: Displays

$1478 LG 27MD5KB-B 27" UltraFine 16:9 5K IPS Monitor in Computers: Displays

$1296 SAVE $200 = 13.0% LG 34WK95U-W 34" 21:9 UltraWide 5K Nano IPS Monitor in Computers: Displays

$1549 NEC PA271Q-BK-SV 27" 16:9 Color-Critical IPS Monitor with Spectr… in Computers: Displays