Tech
PSA: Universal Control and Sidecar Can Be Used At the Same Time in macOS 12.3 – MacRumors
Before macOS 12.3 and iPadOS 15.4 were released to the public, many beta testers who tried Universal Control were unable to get it working if they were already using an iPad in Sidecar mode, but it turns out that in the final release you can actually enable both Universal Control and Sidecar simultaneously on different devices, provided your setup allows for this.
In the final version of macOS 12.3, the “Add Display” options in the Displays preference pane distinguishes between devices available to connect via Universal Control and devices available to be used as extended displays, including iPads via Sidecar.
This means that you can now, for example, connect your Mac to one iPad via Sidecar for some extra macOS screen space, and on the other side of your Mac you could control a second iPad or Mac using your main Mac’s keyboard and trackpad.
Differences Between Universal Control and Sidecar
For those unfamiliar with the two modes and the differences between them, here’s a quick recap. With Universal Control, if you have a Mac and an iPad next to each other, or even multiple Macs and iPads, you can use the keyboard and cursor on one device across all of them. So, for example, if you have a MacBook Pro and an iPad on your desk, the MacBook Pro’s trackpad can be used over on the iPad just by swiping across, and the Mac’s keyboard will become the iPad’s input device. The same is also true of the iPad if you have a keyboard attached to it.
Sidecar works differently. Announced in 2019 as part of macOS Catalina, Sidecar is designed to let you use an iPad as a secondary display for your Mac. Up to one iPad can be used to either mirror the content on your Mac’s display or turn it into a secondary display for extra screen real estate in macOS.
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To be clear, Universal Control lets you use your Mac’s keyboard and trackpad to navigate your iPad, but it functions over two different operating systems – macOS and iPadOS. Unlike Sidecar, it does not extend your Mac’s display to the iPad, it simply allows the keyboard and mouse/trackpad of one device to be used to control one or more other devices. If you want your Mac’s content displayed on a nearby iPad, you’ll need to use Sidecar, but you cannot control the same device with Universal Control.
With all that said, however, provided you have enough iPads and Macs, it turns out that you can in fact use Sidecar and Universal Control at the same time and enjoy the best of both worlds. Note that Universal Control is still technically in beta, so some setups may throw up lingering bugs.
For more information on how to set up an iPad in Sidecar while also controlling additional Macs and/or iPads using Universal Control, be sure to check out our dedicated how-to article.
Tech
PlayStation 5 Pro rumored to beef up GPU and ray tracing, bring AI acceleration
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The PlayStation 5 launched in late 2020, though it feels like it arrived later due to supply issues. A Pro model will reportedly arrive four years later with a much improved GPU, AI acceleration and other enhancements.
The GPU will be the biggest upgrade on the PS5 Pro. Rumors claim up to 45% higher rasterization performance and 33.5 TFLOPs of compute power. Future SDK versions will support resolutions up to 8K and higher frame rates with 4K @ 120fps and 8K @ 60fps being possible.
Ray tracing performance is set to include 2-3 times, even 4 times on some occasions. This is thanks to a massive increase from 18 BVH4 work groups to 30 BVH8. The so-called “Bounding Volume Hierarchies” help speed up ray intersection calculations (i.e. does this ray of light hit this object or not?). We will skip the technical details, but the digit after BVH means that each individual work group will be able to do more work.
The Pro will also feature the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution upscaling and antialiasing technology (PSSR for short). This will be especially helpful for ray tracing, which sees computation demands explode as resolution goes up.
The PlayStation 5 Pro will also bring a custom machine learning architecture. An AI Accelerator will offer up to 300 TOPS of 8-bit and 67 TFLOPS of 16-bit floating point computation. This might be the most interesting part as modern generative models can create realistic textures and speech, write out text based on a prompt and so on – what can developers do with this?
The console will also come with a modest boost to the CPU, which will have a “High CPU Frequency Mode” that goes up to 3.85GHz (from 3.5GHz), a 10% increase. By the sound of it, the PS5 Pro is very close to thermal limits, so this mode will drop GPU frequency by 1.5% (resulting in 1% performance loss).
The Pro model will have faster RAM that does 18 gigatransfers per second, a 28% increase from 448GB/s to 576GB/s. This is needed to feed the beefier GPU.
The audio subsystem will also get a boost with 35% more performance that can be spent on higher quality sound effects.
The PlayStation 5 Pro is expected to have 1TB onboard storage and a detachable Blu-ray drive similar to the slim models. Sony might release the Pro model in Fall 2024, but there has been no official acknowledgment of the console.
Tech
Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is for lower-tier high-end phones – MobileSyrup
Qualcomm has a new Snapdragon 8-series chip aimed at devices that aren’t quite flagships but are not quite mid-range either.
The new chip offers manufacturers more options but also further contributes the Qualcomm’s increasingly weird and confusing product lineup. The new 8s Gen 3 is like the opposite of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ chips, which typically offer a little more than the company’s annual flagship product.
The 8s Gen 3 matches most of what Qualcomm’s current Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 flagship offers, but with just a little less. For example, the chips have a similar GPU, but the 8s Gen 3’s version has one less performance core and runs at a lower frequency. Additionally, the 8s Gen 3 uses the previous generation Snapdraogn X70 5G modem with Wi-Fi 7 support, compared to the X75 modem in the 8 Gen 3.
Since AI capabilities were one of the major highlights of the 8 Gen 3, the 8s Gen 3, unsurprisingly, also sports similar (but not quite as good) AI chops. The 8s Gen 3 can support generative AI on-device and is capable of running large language models (LLMs) of up to 10 billion parameters. That includes LLMs like Llama 2 and Gemini Nano.
While that’s all well and good, it’ll be interesting to see how manufacturers use the 8s Gen 3, and how consumers respond to the new chip. Flagships will likely keep going for the flagship Qualcomm chips, like the 8 Gen 3 or inevitable 8+ Gen 3, whenever it arrives. But Qualcomm also offers the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, just a hair below the new 8s Gen 3. Will the 8s Gen3 offer enough to make it a worthwhile choice over the 7 Gen 3? If you’re already looking at the 8s Gen 3, does it make sense to just go for the 8 Gen 3? Only time will tell.
Qualcomm expects the 8s Gen 3 to land in devices from Honor, iQOO, Realme, Redmi and Xiaomi in the coming months, though notably, none of those brands sell phones in Canada.
Header image credit: Qualcomm
Source: Qualcomm Via: The Verge
Tech
Google partnership 'missing piece' in Apple AI strategy – analysts – Proactive Investors USA
News of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL, ETR:APC) and Google’s discussions over the rollout of the latter’s Gemini AI chatbot on iPhones sent shares higher and prompted positive feedback from analysts on Monday.
Apple climbed 1.4% on the reports that it would license Gemini to power new features in its latest iPhone software, while Google owner Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) jumped 4.6%.
As per Wedbush, such an agreement is the “missing piece” in Apple’s artificial intelligence strategy, due to materialise with the release of IOS 18 software for its products this year.
Such plans could involve the introduction of an AI App Store, as per Wedbush, alongside the incorporation of new features into the iPhone 16, expected in September.
These may well be among features unveiled by Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, such as homegrown large language models.
“This is a major win for Google to get onto the Apple ecosystem and have access to the golden installed base of Cupertino,” analysts said in a note.
Indeed, some 2 billion-plus Apple devices are said to currently be in circulation globally, with Wedbush also highlighting a likely “major license fee” attached to the deal.
“For Apple, this will give them the foundation and technology blueprint to double down on AI features currently being developed,” the bank continued.
This should help “make sure that iPhone 16 will be a potential game changer iPhone release around AI functionality”.
Though details of the deal, reported by Bloomberg, are slim, Wedbush said more could be expected before June’s conference, while reiterating an ‘outperform’ rating for Apple.
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