AMD Releases New Radeon PRO W6000X GPUs for Mac Pro

On Tuesday, AMD announced its line of Radeon PRO W6000X GPU series for the Mac Pro.

Built on groundbreaking AMD RDNA 2 architecture, AMD Infinity Cache and other advanced technologies, the new workstation graphics line-up includes the AMD Radeon™ PRO W6900X and AMD Radeon™ PRO W6800X GPUs. Mac Pro users also have the option of choosing the AMD Radeon PRO W6800X Duo graphics card, a dual-GPU configuration that leverages high-speed AMD Infinity Fabric interconnect technology to deliver outstanding levels of compute performance.

'Monodraw' is a Multi-Purpose Mac ASCII Editor

Monodraw is an editor for Mac that lets you design ASCII art and create diagrams, mind maps, banners, and more. From the website: “Monodraw allows you to easily create text-based art (like diagrams, layouts, flow charts) and visually represent algorithms, data structures, binary formats and more. Because it’s all just text, it can be easily embedded almost anywhere. Of course, exporting as images is also supported (PNG and SVG).” You can download a free trial or buy a license for US$$9.99.

Google Unifies Two Desktop Apps Into a Single ‘Drive’ App

Google is merging its Google Drive sync clients on the desktop: Backup and Sync with Drive File Stream. The new app will be Drive for Desktop on macOS and Windows. The company shares a timeline with other details in its blog post.

Drive for desktop is a unified sync client that provides a consistent experience for anyone who uses Drive, whether for business, education or personal purposes. It enables you to quickly sync and access content directly from Mac or PC, which can save you time by helping you access files and folders in a familiar location.

Apple Offers Free Downloads of OS X Lion, OS X Mountain Lion

Until now Apple charged US$19.99 to download codes for OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion. But now they’re free from Apple’s website.

Lion runs on Macs that came prior to the launch of Mountain Lion in 2012. Mountain Lion runs on the Macs below, but you may not be able to downgrade to it unless you completely reformat the drive. You can’t install an old OS on top of a newer one. Also, the oldest OS an M1 Mac can run is Big Sur.

‘Best days’ For Both Mac and iPad Still to Come, says Analyst

The “best days” for both the Mac and iPad may still be ahead. That’s according to a new analysis from Loup Ventures, seen by AppleInsider.

Loup Ventures cofounder and analyst Gene Munster recently analyzed Mac and iPad lead times, or the expected shipment date after an order is placed. Spot checks of estimated order delivery suggest that Apple was correct in its guidance that demand would be supply gated, and not demand-gated. Although the extended lead times are attributable to ongoing chip supply constraints, Munster sees them as a positive indicator of iPad and Mac demand. The analyst believes that both lineups are continuing to see tailwinds from a work-from-home and remote education environment, despite the lifting of stay-at-home orders and other restrictions in many regions.

Opossums on Parade: Linux 5.13 Adds Support for Apple M1 Silicon

The Linux 5.13 kernel is shipping under the code name “Opossums on Parade” and it adds preliminary support for Apple M1 Silicon.

Linux 5.13 brings initial but still early support for the Apple M1 with basic support but not yet accelerated graphics and a lot more to iron out moving ahead. There are also new Linux 5.13 security features like the Landlock LSM, Clang CFI support, and optionally randomizing the kernel stack offset at each system call.

22 New Actions Coming to Shortcuts in iOS 15

Matthew Cassinelli shared a post on his website sharing 22 new actions coming to shortcuts for iOS | iPadOS 15, and 21 Mac-only actions. The full post requires a subscription but he shared an image with details.

With the release of iOS 15 and the associated betas across Apple’s platforms, the Shortcuts app has received 2 automation types and 22 new actions that work across iPhone, iPad, and macOS as well as 21 Mac-only actions.

I think I’m most looking forward to Get Folder Contents, Rename File, Overlay Text, Extract Text From Image, and probably Get File From Folder.