Improve your Drag-and-Drop Workflow
This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico is rewatching Breaking Bad having recently finished Better Call Saul, and I share what the Metal 3 frameworks could mean for Mac gaming having tested Resident Evil Village, the first Metal 3 game released on the Mac App Store.
Federico’s Pick:
John’s Pick:
Apple spent a considerable amount of time during June’s WWDC talking about Metal 3, the latest iteration of the company’s graphics frameworks for videogames. The suite of technologies offers numerous technologies and tools for developers, including hardware-accelerated graphics, MetalFX Upscaling, which render scenes faster by taking advantage of upscaling and anti-aliasing, fast resource loading that uses asynchronous I/O techniques to speed up the delivery of data to Metal textures, and more. With the release of macOS Ventura, Metal 3 gaming is now available to all Mac users.
At WWDC, Apple announced three games that would be coming to the Mac later in the year that will take advantage of Metal 3:
The first of the games to be released publicly is Resident Evil Village, which is available in the Mac App Store now. I’ve had a chance to test the game in advance of its release for a few days, and from what I’ve seen in my limited time with the game, what Metal 3 enables is impressive.
For those unfamiliar, Resident Evil Village from Capcom was first released in mid-2021 and is available on every major platform. The eighth game in the Resident Evil horror series, Village follows the story of Ethan, whose wife has been assassinated and child abducted. Ethan is abducted, too, but escapes from his captors after their vehicle crashes. In short order, Ethan finds himself in a European village terrorized by zombie-like creatures.
I don’t have a lot to say about the game itself because I’ve only been playing it for a few days and horror games generally aren’t one of my favorite genres. Instead, I spent my time testing the game at various settings to get a sense of what Metal 3 can do, repeating the same section of the game multiple times at different resolutions and with other settings enabled.
I started the game on my M1 Max Mac Studio and Studio Display at 2560 x 1440 with the game’s Prioritize Graphics preset enabled. At those settings, Village generally maintained 60-70 fps with a rare dip into the 50s during one particularly intense scene. Next, I enabled MetalFX Upscaling, which helped hold the frames above 60 and allowed me to increase other settings, like mesh quality, while maintaining 60fps.
At higher resolutions, the frame rates took a hit. For example, 2880 x 1620 dropped the frame rate to around 50 fps. However, once I enabled MetalFX Upscaling, I was right back up to 60 fps. I was even able to maintain a steady 60 fps when I bumped the resolution to 3840 x 2160 and switched the MetalFX Upscaling from the Quality to Performance setting. Bumping up other settings like the shadow and mesh quality didn’t significantly degrade performance either.
I also ran some tests with the game running on my M1 MacBook Air, where I was able to use the same sort of settings tweaks to maintain around 30 fps. The experience wasn’t bad, but Village definitely looked nicer, running on more powerful hardware paired with a Studio Display.
Overall, my first impressions of Metal 3’s enhancements to gaming on the Mac are positive. The results aren’t in the same league as a gaming PC with a dedicated graphics card. For example, I’ve seen benchmarks for Resident Evil Village running with an NVIDIA 3080 card that can run the game at over 120 fps. That’s double what I saw with my Mac Studio, but it’s still better than I’ve experienced in the past with games as recent as Village.
Metal 3 is promising. With just one big-name game taking advantage of it at the moment, it’s too early to judge its impact on Mac gaming, but it’s a step in the right direction. Hopefully, more game publishers will adopt the technology and bring their games to the Mac soon.
Resident Evil Village is available on the Mac App Store for $39.99.
Today, Apple announced its fourth quarter 2022 earnings, exceeding Wall Street expectations and setting a record for Q4 results. During the quarter, Apple recorded $90.1 billion in revenue, an 8% year-over-year increase. Annual earnings per diluted share were $6.11, which is an increase of 9% year over year. In after-hours trading, Apple’s stock was trading down.
According to Apple’s CFO Luca Maestri:
Our record September quarter results continue to demonstrate our ability to execute effectively in spite of a challenging and volatile macroeconomic backdrop. We continued to invest in our long-term growth plans, generated over $24 billion in operating cash flow, and returned over $29 billion to our shareholders during the quarter. The strength of our ecosystem, unmatched customer loyalty, and record sales spurred our active installed base of devices to a new all-time high. This quarter capped another record-breaking year for Apple, with revenue growing over $28 billion and operating cash flow up $18 billion versus last year.
Looking at the results, Services revenue declined slightly, and iPhone sales were less than analysts expected, both of which contributed to the decline in Apple’s stock price after hours. iPad sales were down too. Although Apple just recently refreshed the iPad lineup, none of those sales were part of today’s results.
Mac had a good quarter, while iPad sales were down a bit, changing the overall mix of the company’s revenue sources.
Foreign currency exchange rates had a significant impact on Apple’s latest results too. Tim Cook, who was interviewed by CNBC, told Steve Kovach:
The foreign exchange headwinds were over 600 basis points for the quarter. So it was significant. We would have grown in double digits without the foreign exchange headwinds.
To help control ongoing costs, Cook also revealed to CNBC that it has slowed hiring.
Despite some areas of softness, the results reported by Apple were positive overall, especially compared to other recent earnings misses in the tech world. Yesterday, Meta announced a significant earnings miss that led to a nearly 25% drop in its stock price today. Then today, Amazon came up short compared to Wall Street expectations leading to a 16% dip in its stock price.
Additional details regarding Apple’s fourth-quarter performance, including its consolidated financial statement are available on the company’s website. If you missed the earnings call, you can replay it on Apple’s Investors site or read the transcript prepared by Jason Snell at Six Colors, where you’ll also find additional charts.
Today, Apple launched a preview of changes coming to iCloud.com, the website that allows users to access their iCloud data and apps, including Mail messages, notes, photos, tasks, and more. The new card-like UI is available to anyone who wants to try it by visiting beta.icloud.com and logging in with your Apple ID.
The cards are laid out in a grid with a rectangular and square tile per row on larger screens and a single column of cards on narrow screens like the iPhone. When you first launch the preview page, you’ll see your Apple ID profile picture, email address, and type of iCloud account, plus several app tiles.
However, other than your profile tile, everything on the preview page is fully customizable. Currently, there are tiles available for Mail, Photos, Notes, Reminders, iCloud Drive, Calendar, Numbers, Pages, and Keynote. Contacts and Find My are also accessible from the preview page but don’t have their own tiles.
To customize the page, select the button in the top right corner that looks like a grid of icons, and the webpage’s UI will go into a jiggle mode similar to when you long-press on an iPhone or iPad’s Home Screen. From here, you can rearrange existing tiles, remove ones you don’t want, and add new tiles.
Each tile works a lot like a Home Screen widget, displaying recent data stored in that app. Click on the tile, and the full web app opens. Clicking on your profile tile offers details about your iCloud subscription and links to related actions. The same button you use to access the preview’s customization features also provides access to all of the iCloud web apps, iCloud+ features, like Hide My Email, and more. Finally, there’s also a dedicated ‘Plus’ button for creating new items or documents in many of the iCloud web apps without the need to launch the associated app first.
I like the preview’s design a lot. It beats the static grid of web app icons of the existing site, which is still available if you don’t use the preview, by providing an overview of recent data in each apps. I’m also a fan of the page’s customization tool, which makes it simple to organize the page with an emphasis on the apps you use most.
Based on my very limited testing, the preview page is quite stable too. I did run into an error accessing my iCloud Drive documents, but that’s been it so far. Once finalized, the new iCloud.com page is going to be a very nice upgrade for anyone who needs to access their account and data from a device that’s not their own, such as a work PC.
To give it a try yourself, go to iCloud.com, log in with your Apple ID, and use the link above your profile picture on the existing page design, or go straight to beta.icloud.com and log in there.
The headlining feature of iOS 16.1 is Live Activities, which allows apps to display status information in the Dynamic Island and on the Lock Screen after a user closes an app. I’ve looked at over 40 new and updated apps and instead of just listing them, I thought I’d share a collection of the most innovative and useful ones that I’ve tried so far. This is just part 1 of this story. I’ll be back soon with even more as I continue to test the apps I’ve discovered.
On Episode 302 of AppStories, we explored Federico’s story about Stage Manager in iPadOS 16, including its bugs, missing features, and design flaws.
Sponsored by:
On AppStories+, Federico provided a behind-the-scenes look at the difficulties of covering Stage Manager, a feature that, until recently, was barely unusable.
We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.
To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.
It seems that Apple slipped a little extra controller support into yesterday’s updates to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS: Nintendo Online classic controller support.
Nintendo sells wireless versions of its classic NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64 controllers, plus the Sega Genesis controller for use with its Nintendo Online Service for Switch. The controllers are a fun way to play the games from those old systems that are offered as part of Nintendo Online and its Expansion Pack add-on service. Yesterday, Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted that the classic SNES controller works with iOS and tvOS 16.1:
https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1584684763042189312
Sure enough, it does, along with iPadOS 16.1 and macOS Ventura. With each OS, the controller shows up as ‘SNES Controller’ in Bluetooth settings when in pairing mode. Federico has confirmed that the Nintendo 64 controller works, too, but neither of us has an NES or Sega Genesis controller to test.
This isn’t the first time Nintendo’s wireless versions of classic controllers have been adapted for use beyond the Switch. Steam added support for the controllers in July.
Apple has gradually added deeper and deeper support for third-party controllers over the past few years. The latest official additions, which were first announced at WWDC, are the Nintendo Joy-Con and Pro Controller. Some third-party controllers like the 8BitDO SN30 Pro+ that emulates other controllers can be paired with Apple devices, too, but they show up as generic controllers.
I love many of the retro games available on Apple’s platforms that are inspired by Nintendo’s early systems. What’s great about the support for the wireless controllers is that now they can be played with the controllers of the systems that inspired them. The Nintendo 64 controller is perpetually out of stock, but if you’re interested in picking up any of the others, they are available on Nintendo’s online store.
Every year, our pal Stephen Hackett updates his macOS Screenshot Library with images from the latest macOS release. Today, on 512 Pixels, he released an extensive set of light and dark mode screenshots from macOS Ventura, which joins sets for each release extending all the way back to the Mac OS X Public Beta.
The collection is a terrific resource for anyone researching the evolution of Apple’s design language over the decades or if you just want to have your own Snow Leopard Moment.
On the whole, Ventura has been a pleasure to use all summer and into this fall. I installed the first developer beta in June, put my Mac Studio into Stage Manager mode and never looked back. As I’ve explained, Stage Manager’s stages need to be easier to create, but that doesn’t change how much I like flipping back and forth between a few sets of apps once they’re set up. I’m also a big fan of iCloud Shared Photo Libraries, the new smart features of Notes and Reminders, Mail’s new capabilities, and the new Tab Group features in Safari.
Still, something is amiss with Ventura. It’s not the sort of thing that is going to spoil your day-to-day use of the Mac. I’ve had no trouble with that sort of thing. Instead, it’s a feeling I never shook through eleven beta releases.
macOS has come a long way from 2018’s Mac Catalyst Sneak Peek. Some aspects of the strategy set in motion at that year’s WWDC have already been accomplished, and that’s where Ventura shines. It’s great to finally see Mac system apps updated across all Apple platforms at once, and the influx of excellent third-party apps we’ve seen in the past couple of years is wonderful.
However, what was set in motion in 2018 and even earlier in 2017 with Apple’s acquisition of Workflow hasn’t been finished. One of the remaining barriers between moving between the Mac and iPad is the difference in their interaction models. Stage Manager could be the bridge between the two OSes, but in its current state, I’m afraid most people will try Stage Manager once and then never again.
Then, there’s Shortcuts. It doesn’t feel great to be here criticizing Shortcuts two years running. I suppose I’m hard on Shortcuts because it’s so important to the work I do, but I also take at face value Apple’s claim that it’s the future of automation on the Mac. However, Shortcuts won’t be the future of automation unless it can get beyond the functionality of Automator. In one sense, it already has in that third-party developers have adopted Shortcuts more eagerly than they ever did with Automator, keeping Shortcuts and my optimism for the app afloat this past year. Still, deeper system-level action support that takes Shortcuts beyond its roots in past automation schemes is imperative to back up Apple’s bold claims.
Finally, System Settings as inconsequential as it is in some ways, is troubling not because it ruins the macOS experience, but because it’s a rare lapse in Apple’s usual thoughtful design. System Settings doesn’t improve on System Preferences. It’s just a poor substitute for something that was flawed itself. It’s a hard design problem to solve, but just a couple of years ago, Apple was rolling out new macOS and iPadOS designs that brought the two platforms much closer together without compromising the unique identities of either device. System Settings is the exact opposite, which is why it bothers me.
That’s why it feels like Ventura has put macOS’s future on hold. Is that an echo of the pandemic affecting this year’s release, Apple pulling up and relaxing before reaching the finish line, the result of reallocating engineering talent to other projects, or something else? I don’t know the reason. I just know that the focus that was so evident in Big Sur, Catalina, and Monterey isn’t there in Ventura. It’s not that those prior releases were perfect by any means, but they had a coherence and purpose that transcended their components, whereas Ventura gets a lot of the parts right but doesn’t project the same confident focus about macOS’s future as earlier releases.
That’s why Ventura is so hard to pin down. The day-to-day experience has been solid. After all, it’s built on the successes of those earlier releases. However, because Ventura’s misses are so fundamental to the direction of macOS, they’re something worth keeping an eye on. They may only be clouds on the horizon today, but they could just as easily become nasty storms next year unless Apple continues to build and improve on the foundation it started in 2018.
](https://cdn.macstories.net/banneras-1629219199428.png)
