Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Visual Look Up on Apple Silicon Macs: A Power and Energy Analysis

2025-09-06

This study analyzes the power and energy consumption of a single Visual Look Up (VLU) on Apple silicon Macs using Powermetrics and LogUI. Results show that the CPU performs the vast majority of the work (93%), with the GPU and Neural Engine (ANE) contributing only 4.6% and 2.2% respectively. While the ANE contributes to performance improvements during model execution, its overall energy consumption is low. The conclusion is that VLU, despite its impressive functionality, is not particularly demanding on the hardware.

(eclecticlight.co)

Hardware Visual Look Up Power Efficiency

Dissecting the Apple Silicon Mac Boot Process: From Boot ROM to Userspace

2025-09-03

This article delves into the boot process of an Apple Silicon Mac. Starting from the Boot ROM, it traces the sequence through the Low-Level Bootloader (LLB) and iBoot, kernel startup, system clock adjustments, and finally, the unlocking of the data volume to enter userspace. Using a Mac mini M4 Pro log as an example, the article details each phase, highlighting the lower log frequency and kernel-centric entries before data volume unlock, contrasting with the significantly higher frequency and reduced kernel contribution afterwards. This process reveals insights into Apple Silicon Mac's security mechanisms and boot efficiency.

(eclecticlight.co)

Hardware Mac boot process

AI is Killing the Web: A Human Author's Plea

2025-07-27

Two articles in *The Economist* highlight how AI-powered answer engines are destroying the web's business model. Search engines now provide AI-generated answers instead of linking to web pages, reducing the incentive for creating original content and leading to declining web quality. The author uses personal experiences to illustrate issues like AI plagiarism and inaccurate content, calling for a rejection of AI-generated content to preserve originality and authenticity on the web. The author concludes by using a unique owl emoji to mark their articles as purely human-created.

(eclecticlight.co)

Tech web content originality

Apple's Hardware History: From Capacitor Plague to Butterfly Keyboards

2025-06-24

This article recounts three major hardware failures in Apple's history: the 1999-2007 capacitor plague, caused by cheap, faulty capacitors leading to widespread motherboard and iMac failures; the 2006-2017 graphics card failures resulting from the EU ban on lead-containing solder, particularly affecting MacBook Pros; and the 2015-2019 failures of the butterfly keyboard design. Despite the significant costs associated with these issues, Apple ultimately resolved them through product improvements and repair programs, demonstrating its strong problem-solving capabilities.

(eclecticlight.co)

Hardware Apple hardware failure history repair programs

macOS Tahoe's ASIF Disk Images: A Performance Leap

2025-06-12

macOS Tahoe introduces ASIF, a new disk image format that dramatically improves virtual machine performance. ASIF images are independent of the host filesystem's capabilities, achieving near-native speeds; for example, on an M3 Pro MacBook Pro, unencrypted APFS volumes reached 5.8 GB/s read and 6.6 GB/s write. ASIF offers a massive speed advantage over previous UDSP images and saves disk space. Currently, ASIF images can only be created in Tahoe, but they work in Sequoia. Future virtualization software is expected to support ASIF, further enhancing VM performance.

(eclecticlight.co)

Development

macOS Sonoma's Mysterious Liquid Detection: Debunking the Myth

2025-03-23

This article investigates a new background process, `liquiddetectiond`, that appeared in macOS Sonoma 14.1. Initially, it was wrongly suspected as an Apple tool to collect user data for warranty denials. However, investigation reveals it actually detects liquids in USB-C ports to prevent corrosion and prolong device life, not for data collection or warranty avoidance. The functionality is only available on select new MacBook and MacBook Pro models, and logs show it operates locally without sending data to Apple.

(eclecticlight.co)

Tech liquid detection background process

Apple Silicon's Speculative Execution: Performance Boost and Security Risks

2025-02-28

Apple silicon chips employ out-of-order execution, Load Address Prediction (LAP), and Load Value Prediction (LVP) to boost performance. These techniques predict instruction execution order and memory access values for efficiency gains, but introduce security vulnerabilities like Spectre, SLAP, and FLOP. While exploiting these vulnerabilities is challenging and requires targeting specific CPU architectures, the risks may grow with future CPU advancements. Apple and other chipmakers need to proactively address these security challenges.

(eclecticlight.co)

Tech Speculative Execution

Thunderbolt 4/5 Docks: Impact on SSD Performance

2024-12-25

This article tests the performance impact of Thunderbolt 4 and Thunderbolt 5 docks on different SSDs (Thunderbolt 3 and USB4). Results show that using a TB5 dock with an Intel Mac nearly doubles the speed of a USB4 SSD, reaching 20Gb/s—unprecedented. However, TB3 SSD read speeds decreased with the TB5 dock. A TB4 hub limited USB4 SSD speeds and reduced TB3 SSD write speeds. The tests demonstrate unpredictable performance variations depending on the Mac, dock, and SSD combination, highlighting the need for careful testing.

(eclecticlight.co)

Hardware Performance Testing