OPTION UP

The top of the range 2019 iMac can be ordered with some alarmingly healthy specs. For the sake of a bit of frivolity, let’s order the most spanking iMac Apple can provide on a custom order basis. No doubt we should kick off with the 27-inch model, then lace it with the best processor on offer. A 3.6GHz eight-core Intel Core i9 processor that’ll boost up to 5.0GHz if you push it. That’s an I9-9900K with 16 threads, so Logic Pro X is going to run 16 plug-in meters — plenty of gumption for as many instruments or processors you care to throw at it. Apple will sell you this for $640 — a processor that’ll cost you $859 off-the-shelf. For an additional $1600 you can have 64GB of 2666MHz DDR4 RAM, which feels a little iffy when you can buy 64GB of 3000MHz DDR4 RAM for 800 bucks. Apple tax, I guess. Storage-wise you could sit with the standard 2TB of Fusion Drive storage, which for all intents is a combined SSD and traditional hard drive. Quick-ish, but not as quick as an SSD. If you want 2TB of proper SSD you can add $1760 to that custom order. Now here’s where that Apple tax rears its dainty head again. Personally, I need a 2TB drive for my system drive, and SSDs of that size aren’t the cheapest. When I initially considered an SSD for my workstation rig a 2TB SSD was about $900. However, recently I’m feeling like it’s time to make the leap, as I can pick up a 2TB SSD for as little as $339. Why is a 2TB SSD in a new iMac $1760? What’s all that about? Even a 2TB M.2 SSD is about $700. It’s a hefty fee for sticking a drive into a machine. Finally, let’s add the upper option GPU, with the Radeon Pro Vega 48. Hell, you don’t need this for audio work, and if you’re doing graphics intensive work, that choice will primarily come down to what software you use. Anyway, Apple want $720 on to to whack that card in. Regardless, we now have the best custom iMac you can buy, excluding the iMac Pro of course.

Cost? $8269.

I’ll let that sink in. $8269.

There’s no denying this machine would keep up, nay, plough through countless professional pursuits, but for that kind of money I’d be building something from scratch, or, rebuilding a 2012 Mac Pro. The iMac is still a platform I prefer to avoid. I really can’t see the value. In the meantime I think we’re all still waiting on a truly customisable Mac Pro. It’s coming soon. ‘Soon’, Apple says.

HANGRY ANIMATIONS

New Macs aside, here’s a little tip for speeding up old Macs. I came across this recently when attempting to get MacOS Mojave running on my ancient unsupported MacBook Pro. While I did get it up and running it became pretty obvious Mojave uses a stack of graphics resources. Slow and glitchy doesn’t cut it. It was at this point that I started looking for a way to turn off some of the GPU-hungry animations in MacOS. It didn’t take long to stumble across the website, defaults-write.com.

At defaults-write.com you’ll find dozens of terminal commands for all sorts of augmentation in MacOS. Some are specific to particular versions of OS X and MacOS while others can be used on most versions. Of most use with my Mac Book Pro were terminal commands killing pointless animations, such as the Dock animation delay, and animations used when opening and closing windows, and commands making all animations faster when using Mission Control. You can even accelerate the animation speed for playback when adjusting window size in Cocoa-based applications. If you’re a Safari user you can disable delays when loading web pages, which does speed up the application, or you could use Google Chrome. What I’d like to know is why Safari is so slow in the first place.

Instigating these changes is dead simple, you simply copy the command then paste it into Terminal, an app you’ll find in your Utilities folder. Some commands will ask for your account password, others won’t. Then if you don’t like the change there are Terminal commands to reinstate the default settings. Give it a go. You’ll be surprised how snappy your machine becomes, and just how much of the OS is bogged down with pointless feel-good animations.

Equally as enjoyable has been the Vintage EQ Collection. The Neve, API, and Pultec recreations are brilliant when you consider the price countless other plug-in developers charge for this style of EQ clone. While these are very good EQ models, at first the ‘fixed’ frequency points of the Pultec and Neve EQs look infinitely variable. However, if you click on the actual displayed EQ points the variable pots jump to those traditional frequency points immediately. Incidentally, if you’re looking for the older, dare I say, vintage Logic EQ plug-ins, such as DJ EQ, Silver EQ and Fat EQ, hold down the option key when selecting an effect/processor and you’ll see the additional menu for ‘Legacy’ plug-ins.

For more sauce you should investigate the additions of Step FX and Phat FX. Step adds rhythmic multi-effect processing using step sequencers and an X/Y modulation pad. Phat FX purports to make your tracks ‘bigger and bolder’ using a pile of nine separate effects that claim to add ‘warmth and punch’. However the great thing about Phat FX is the LFO and envelope follower mod sources. With these you can quickly modulate the 23 parameters from the bandpass filter, the 34 standard filter options, distortion, compressor, Mod FX, and the Bass Enhancer. This plug-in offers hours of fun and copious modulation possibilities. Possibly days’ worth when you start messing with the X/Y modulation pad.

Retro Synth has also been expanded to include 18 different filter designs. These range through various styles with adjective filter descriptions such as ‘Lush’, Creamy’, ’Sharp’, ‘Gritty’, and ‘Edgey’. Oh, and ‘Lush (Fat)’. ‘Peak Creamy’ is excellent.

Good ol’, not-so-old Alchemy has seen some improvements, too. Aside from the addition of numerical value editing, there are 12 new synthesised formant filter shapes and the ability to add a side chain input as a source for envelope followers.

All said and done, Logic Pro X 10.4 and the recent 10.4.2 and 10.4.3 iterations really send Logic Pro X into the realm of best bang-for-buck DAW ever conceived. Worth so much more than Apple’s paltry asking price. My only fear is that Logic Pro X 11 will necessitate an upgrade to macOS Mojave. Here we go again.

BEAT BY THE HEAT

My initial experience with Mojave on my ageing lappy was that it was slow. Like… really slow. Because of the increased GPU requirements my Intel HD Graphics 3000 CPU-based graphics really took a beating. The good old multicoloured pinwheel reared its smug colourfield too often for me to consider staying in macOS 10.14. It’s possible 10.14 would be AOK on my 2011 MacBook Pro if I installed it on the SSD, but I used the secondary hard disk installed in the machine as a test. I wasn’t keen to overwrite my SSD operating system. Long story short – this laptop will be staying on High Sierra.

That said, why do I need Mojave? Well I pretty much don’t, as I can’t find anything compelling enough to make me want to upgrade my MacBook, or indeed, my desktop machine. The dynamic desktop feature is kinda cool, but I don’t need it as I usually use a grey non-distracting desktop. I don’t need to alter the system to Dark Mode, and Stacks on the desktop isn’t anything I can’t do with a modicum of document housekeeping (well, maybe that would be ok), and 32 people in a FaceTime call? I doubt I know enough people who could be bothered. At the end of the day, for an audio-centric system I can’t see the point. My audio machine will sit happily on Sierra for some time, and my lappy works just fine on High Sierra.

BREAKING REPAIR RELATIONSHIPS

In other news, there’s talk of Apple shutting third-party repairers out of the picture for Mac models sporting the T2 chip. With the 2018 MacBook Pro, any repairs done to the LCD, logic-board, Touch ID, upper case sections such as the keyboard, trackpad, speakers, even the battery, will result in an inoperative machine unless Apple Diagnostics software is run – only available to Authorised Apple repairers and Apple stores. No fair, I’m calling! I can’t replace a battery in a 2018 MacBook Pro? However, it appears Apple’s trickery hasn’t been instigated as yet. The iFixit crew have replaced a display on a 2018 MacBook Pro, and swapped out a logic-board with no detrimental results — even with the devices running Mojave.

At the moment the repair community isn’t overly upset, as there are millions of older machines to repair in the meantime. But in the long run the writing is clearly on the wall. Apple has set a course for a world where nobody can perform the simplest repair, such as a battery replacement, without the customer heading to an Apple store and copping an exorbitant bill.

With this in mind, how the hell do you repair permissions when good old Disk Utility doesn’t? I’ve come across many variations of this workaorund since OS X 10.11, but the simplest way is to use a command line in Terminal, an application you’ll find in the Utilities folder. The commands aren’t too unwieldy, and they’re short and simple enough to keep in a text document somewhere, but there are different commands for different versions of OS X and macOS. For those running OS X 10.11.x (El Capitan) use this: ‘sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages –repair –standard-pkgs –volume /’. Use only what’s between the quote marks, and pay careful attention to the spacing. Paste that info into Terminal, hit return, then put your account password in and wait. Terminal will report when the verification and repair process is finished.

For 10.12 (Sierra) and 10.13 (High Sierra) the procedure is quite different, as the repair permissions command is completely removed within Sierra and High Sierra. To get some way towards correct permissions for your user account, first go to your user account directory; the one with the house icon. Hold down command-I, or use the control click to open a contextual menu and choose ‘Get Info’. This will open the usual info window, where at the bottom you’ll see the ‘Sharing & Permissions’ section. Click on the padlock icon and authenticate with your account password, then click on the cog icon right at the bottom and choose ‘Apply to enclosed items’. You’ll be told you can’t undo this change, but go ahead. Do it. Once that process is finished, head to the Terminal app in Utilities and use the following command line. ‘diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`’ Again, use only what’s between the quotation marks, and pay attention to the spaces. (The accent-looking character, or grave, is the key to the left of the numeral 1 key and above the Tab key.) Re-lock the padlock icon and you’re good to go.

That’s as good as it gets for 10.12 and 10.13 permissions maintenance, but it will reset your user account directories. If you want something to repair permissions on system files, use an app called Kext Wizard. Google it and you’ll find it on Softpedia. This will repair permissions in your System/Library/Extensions directory, which is where all the kexts are kept. Kext Wizard is primarily for adding kexts to a Hackintosh System folder, so the repair permissions tool is there to make certain those additional kexts are set correctly following installation.