What are the pros and cons of the T2 chip? from what I see it makes it hard to use an external Windows drive is that right?
And the stuff this guy is talking about Audio etc.
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T2 Chip Pros and cons
- Thread starter Roxy.music
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The main T2 issues for music production were with legacy USB A devices, but that’s been corrected ages ago. Possibly last year IIRC.
Louis Rossmann is a bloated hack whose appetite for hating Apple is only matched by his actual appetite for food. For some reason he’s got a real chip on his shoulder when it comes to Apple. Like, worryingly so. He’s obsessed.
...so try to take what he says with a pinch of salt.
Louis Rossmann is a bloated hack whose appetite for hating Apple is only matched by his actual appetite for food. For some reason he’s got a real chip on his shoulder when it comes to Apple. Like, worryingly so. He’s obsessed.
...so try to take what he says with a pinch of salt.
No need to ridicule his physical attributes. While I'll not disagree that he hates apple and has made a cottage industry bashing apple, he's largely been correct and on point calling apple out on these deficiencies. That is you may hate the man, but his message is largely accurate.
Largely accurate? Like all his citations in the video being from 2018 or Feb 2019? This is on the video he posted yesterday?
Then he follows that up with a massive 20 minute rant about how much of an issue this is if you’re a producer, blah blah, the usual crap you get on his channel.
So yeah, he’s disingenuous. If I’m making any incorrect points about the T2 chip currently working with external audio hardware, I’m happy to discuss those.
I like the guy myself, people take stuff that has been checked by the so-called *Genius staff*and said that it would cost an arm and leg to repair it.The main T2 issues for music production were with legacy USB A devices, but that’s been corrected ages ago. Possibly last year IIRC.
Louis Rossmann is a bloated hack whose appetite for hating Apple is only matched by his actual appetite for food. For some reason he’s got a real chip on his shoulder when it comes to Apple. Like, worryingly so. He’s obsessed.
...so try to take what he says with a pinch of salt.
He repairs stuff that they said was virtually unrepairable, that he fixed in five minutes.
I like the guy myself, people take stuff that has been checked by the so-called *Genius staff*and said that it would cost an arm and leg to repair it.I am lucky enough I have a good repairer WeHireMac
Yep I get you. In answer to your original query: I’m not aware of any ongoing issues with the T2 chip and external USB A audio devices. I may be wrong but AFAIK these were patched some time ago.
No, we shouldn't, he can,t help the way he looks no one is perfect, but he seems to me to be a decent person, who does not like people being ripped off by Apple. From videos, I agree with you maflynn, this is the one i wanted to show you a simple fix
There are still some unresolved issues with the T2 chip with USB A devices, especially with some legacy DACs and some mixers as of today even Apple is unable to address even on Catalina yet. Albeit, if you use the popular modern ones like Focusrite, M-Audio, Roland, some Behringers then the Apple fixes had eliminated the issues Louise talked about on his show, but there some legacy USB A devices that seemed to have some odd digital crosstalk issues, about -12db or so, that creeps in from time to time. I know of some musicians who had to return their T2 equipped machines because this distortion was unacceptable, or didn't exist in their non-T2 chip. The workaround is to place a hub in between the devices, but Louise's point was why their older Macbooks worked fine and the newer ones don't work as well.
I work in a computer thrift store that specializes in Macs, Windows and Linux machines and I talk to these musicians on an almost daily basis and most musicians are not making millions of dollars. Many of them work as buskers on subway stations, train stations and they are no Michael Jackson. And yet Apple expects them to be making a living like Michael Jackson. That's the personal consensus I got from those people I talked to as they kept complaining about the Apple Tax on newer products and how they are forced to buy new equipment to work with newer machines! Some of these people stilll use a PowerMac G4 and G5 as their main studio and some are using Core 2 Duo Macbooks.
I think people need to step down and realize the real world is that, no every musician is making 6 figures, let alone a nice 5 figure salary and the rant Louise Rossman did for 20 min, while sometimes over the top, were correctly reflective of the true nature of the state of most musicians you see out there.
By the way, I use my Mini 2011 and my Tascam equipment to make music and I love the reliability of the machine.
I work in a computer thrift store that specializes in Macs, Windows and Linux machines and I talk to these musicians on an almost daily basis and most musicians are not making millions of dollars. Many of them work as buskers on subway stations, train stations and they are no Michael Jackson. And yet Apple expects them to be making a living like Michael Jackson. That's the personal consensus I got from those people I talked to as they kept complaining about the Apple Tax on newer products and how they are forced to buy new equipment to work with newer machines! Some of these people stilll use a PowerMac G4 and G5 as their main studio and some are using Core 2 Duo Macbooks.
I think people need to step down and realize the real world is that, no every musician is making 6 figures, let alone a nice 5 figure salary and the rant Louise Rossman did for 20 min, while sometimes over the top, were correctly reflective of the true nature of the state of most musicians you see out there.
By the way, I use my Mini 2011 and my Tascam equipment to make music and I love the reliability of the machine.
Given the veracity of your hatred of him, I don't think we could have a discussion.
I am of the opinion that he's been spot on with his criticisms of Apple, I fully admit he uses sensationalism and clickbait, yet the issues he raises are accurate. I'll not beat a dead horse with you as we both are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to him. Given how you made fun of his appearance speaks volumes of how we'll not be able to have a productive dialog on this topic.
My only advice is to relax, its only a computer and he's only a youtuber, no need to take this stuff too seriously.
Pros - few to none.
Cons - many.
Very first thing I did when I got my 2018 Mini set up was to DISABLE the t2 (in Startup Security) as much as it could be "disabled"...
Cons - many.
Very first thing I did when I got my 2018 Mini set up was to DISABLE the t2 (in Startup Security) as much as it could be "disabled"...
Hmm....seems like discussing the pros and cons of catalytic converters or airbags in cars.
While you can get Macs without T2 now, I think we should expect that to end soon. It could be possible they will reverse course, but that seems unlikely. More likely they will fine-tune/perfect and move forward.
Apple has a long track record (good or bad) of moving forward, at the expense of legacy support. Nothing new or unexpected.
The discussion about certain old USB A gear not functioning well with T2 is not much different from the lamenting of the adoption of USB A to the detriment of all legacy ports on the first iMac. Oh, the horror! ...That was about 21 years ago.
Also see:
As for Louis, while he has made reasonable points in the past, his rants and one-sided bias nullify most of the possible good he could do. His exaggeration really hurts his credibility. I watch him on occasion for a good laugh. Less so for useful or complete and compelling information.
While you can get Macs without T2 now, I think we should expect that to end soon. It could be possible they will reverse course, but that seems unlikely. More likely they will fine-tune/perfect and move forward.
Apple has a long track record (good or bad) of moving forward, at the expense of legacy support. Nothing new or unexpected.
The discussion about certain old USB A gear not functioning well with T2 is not much different from the lamenting of the adoption of USB A to the detriment of all legacy ports on the first iMac. Oh, the horror! ...That was about 21 years ago.
Also see:
- audio ports on phones
- MagSafe
- Firewire
- Ethernet
- SD slots
- User-replaceable batteries
- Upgradeable RAM
- Upgradeable Storage
As for Louis, while he has made reasonable points in the past, his rants and one-sided bias nullify most of the possible good he could do. His exaggeration really hurts his credibility. I watch him on occasion for a good laugh. Less so for useful or complete and compelling information.
Not for nothing, but current Intel CPU chips have HEVC encoding built in, so the performance delta may not be that large.
That's a good reason not to get one with that chip. I am thinking of getting an iMac 27 inch 2013. I would not buy a new one, I could not afford one anyway. There must be places where they could repair them. I am sure that Louis could repair the T2 machine, he seems very competent to me.
Like someone has said earlier, the T2 chip combined even with a Quad Core Coffee Lake Core i3 CPU is a fast and amazing HEVC and H.264 encoder engine that can help speed up any movie encoding project. Like an Afterburner card in the Mac Pro 7,1. Currently, I'm using a Mac Pro 8 core to edit my 4K timeline movies on Davinci Resolve and while it works great for that, it encodes the final movie at a snail pace at around 6fps, but when I farmed it out to my Macbook Air without T2 but with Quicksync, it went up to like 20fps. With the latest Mac Mini Core i3, I'm sure it can go up to 100 fps or so with Quicksync + T2 chip. It makes rendering my 2hr travel adventure movie in a matter of minutes than hours on my Mac Pro. That's why I'm scoping at the Mini Core i3 2018 which would one day take over the rendering job of my Macbook Air. The T2 chip has its advantages and as long as someone understands this advantage, you can leverage it. To me, this is considered a big PRO having a T2 chip despite some of the negatives being exposed thus far. It's like buying an external afterburner card but has support for the latest OS until a few years later.
Louis Rossmann's whole shtick is to complain about Apple. I don't dislike the guy but he takes it far enough to be considered unreasonable a lot of the time. It's obvious he sets out to find the things that he can put in large text in his thumbnails to make the "I hate Apple" crowd click.
Er it is. Without the video toolbox enabled (T2) I was getting 18 FPS.
I did a Google search for "Why I hate the T2 Chip", feeling particularly unwilling to do much with one out of the context of a personally owned MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019). That led me to this old thread.
So, in year 2022, here's what I particularly hate about the T2 chip:
For one, I work in IT. Currently, in the context of the most recent three releases of macOS (Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura), there are three different types of Mac hardware that I'll encounter:
- Intel Mac without the T2 Security Chip
- Intel Mac with the T2 Security Chip
- Apple Silicon Mac
Each of these three almost need to be treated differently in terms of deployment. Working in IT, we're not always the most prompt to deploy Apple's latest and greatest. In fact, it will probably be 2023 before we deploy macOS Ventura. For deploying Monterey on Apple Silicon Macs, I can use a bootable USB drive (or the magic of Apple Configurator 2 based DFU restores). For deploying Monterey onto an Intel Mac without the T2 Security Chip, I can use a bootable USB drive! These are fairly painless there.
However, on an Intel Mac with the T2 Security chip, I need to change my Startup Security Utility settings. No big deal, right? I just boot to any recovery environment, flip the setting to allow bootable media, boot from the drive and then optionally change it back once I have the preferred OS installed, right? Wrong! It requires an admin account to be present and it will often not like the admin account of the OS already in place (it's particularly weird about MDM-created Managed Administrator accounts [a definite minus for the T2 in any proper IT setting]). If you wipe the internal drive, it will not be intelligent enough to realize that there's no OS, and therefore, no admin account.
So, to wipe a T2 Mac returning to you, the IT admin, with macOS Big Sur so you can get ready to deploy it with macOS Monterey, you either (a) have to cleverly concoct a workflow leveraging the macOS Monterey installer's startosinstall command, or (b) install whatever OS Internet Recovery is giving you (Ventura), boot to recovery mode, make the change to allow external bootable media, then wipe and install Monterey and then optionally re-enable the "disallow External Boot Media" setting (which, if you care about security, you probably will want to do). And mind you, depending on how your MDM provider and Apple Business Manager instance are set up, you will likely want to do some time-saving fancy footwork there too. Gross.
I get the reasoning. An x86 or x86-64 computer is host to a TON of OSes out there and, on top of the T2 being so custom so as to only work with OSes wherein Apple has produced a storage driver for (i.e. Windows and macOS), you don't necessarily want a user (or attacker) to be able to start the machine off of simply ANY x86 bootable OS on an attached USB drive. So, an Intel Mac without the T2 obviously predates most of these protective measures while an Apple Silicon Mac is so utterly esoteric and proprietary in its boot functions that the only third party OS outside of Apple able to boot it is a Linux distro created by a rag-tag group of folks with the sole purpose of creating a Linux distro that can be booted on such a Mac. Prohibiting an Apple Silicon Mac to boot from a USB drive accomplishes nothing for security. Nevertheless, the fact that my workload to install an OS that is neither the latest nor the earliest supported by a given T2 Mac - as is often necessitated by the business I work for - is so damn long and annoying compared to the other two types of Mac is...well...enough to make me want to set fire to every T2 chip-based Mac I encounter at work.
Reason number two as to why I hate the T2 chip:
Activation Lock. It's a wonderful anti-theft feature on iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. It works similarly well and is similarly consistent on Apple Silicon Macs. It's cludgy as hell on Intel Macs with the T2 chip.
In fact, I could buy a Mac Pro or Mac mini [or refurbished "MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)" for that matter], go through the setup assistant, add my iCloud account to it, turn on Find My Mac, use it for a week, then wipe it, and the next person would be none the wiser that Activation Lock/Find My was ever enabled on it (unless they know to look in System Information). The fact that it's turned on would do nothing from stopping someone from using the computer or setting it up or wiping it. It WOULD stop someone from trying to check it into Apple or a third party AASP for a repair. But does it stop the machine from being used or set up the way it does on an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or Apple Silicon Mac? Not at all. The reasoning behind this makes sense. Activation Lock is a byproduct of the Apple Silicon of the device (i.e. A-series, M-series SoCs). And, in all fairness, Activation Lock DOES work on a T2 based Intel Mac. Just not for macOS. It DOES work with bridgeOS. And anytime you restore bridgeOS, your T2 based Intel Mac will prompt you for the Apple ID associated with Activation Lock for that Mac. But you're not wiping or reconfiguring bridgeOS on a T2 Mac anywhere near as often as you might wipe macOS on an Apple Silicon Mac. It's grossly half-baked.
Now, if I buy a T2 Mac and am its sole owner, there's no issue. Even on the worst day ever, this will not impact me. However, if I buy a T2 Mac and then sell it, I need to be that much more on top of making sure that I sign out of Find My Mac and that Activation Lock is turned off. If all goes well (and it often doesn't), I can verify that by wiping the Mac and seeing if Activation Lock is turned on in System Information. Otherwise, it becomes messy. If I buy a T2 Mac second hand, then I have to make extra certain that the previous owner turned off Activation Lock before handing over (again, not as automatic of a concern given that, with traditional wipes, Activation Lock being enabled at all isn't easily apparent). On an Apple Silicon Mac, it's obvious and makes sense the way it has for iOS and iPadOS for nearly a decade. On a T2 Intel Mac, it's cludgy as all hell, disjointed, and only really makes sense if you're an Apple hardware nerd (which, you shouldn't have to be as a Mac user to begin with).
Do I hate that the T2 prohibits flexibility with other OSes that the pre-T2 Intel Macs traditionally had? You betcha. Do I hate the lack of SSD data recovery options in the event of a main logic board failure? Totally. Do I hate that removable SSD modules on T2 Macs that have 'em such as the iMac Pro, the 2019 Mac Pro, or the higher-capacity 2020 27-inch iMacs can't be interchanged without a full DFU restore of bridgeOS? Of course. But I'm used to these things by now (and it's not like these are things that are any different in the Apple Silicon era of Mac computing).
But simple crap like loading the previous macOS release (because it's late November and the company you work for isn't ready for the one that just came out yet) and things like Activation Lock being ever-cludgy and half-baked? I'll enjoy my MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019), but hell if I want any other T2 Macs in my life with those annoyances.
So, in year 2022, here's what I particularly hate about the T2 chip:
For one, I work in IT. Currently, in the context of the most recent three releases of macOS (Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura), there are three different types of Mac hardware that I'll encounter:
- Intel Mac without the T2 Security Chip
- Intel Mac with the T2 Security Chip
- Apple Silicon Mac
Each of these three almost need to be treated differently in terms of deployment. Working in IT, we're not always the most prompt to deploy Apple's latest and greatest. In fact, it will probably be 2023 before we deploy macOS Ventura. For deploying Monterey on Apple Silicon Macs, I can use a bootable USB drive (or the magic of Apple Configurator 2 based DFU restores). For deploying Monterey onto an Intel Mac without the T2 Security Chip, I can use a bootable USB drive! These are fairly painless there.
However, on an Intel Mac with the T2 Security chip, I need to change my Startup Security Utility settings. No big deal, right? I just boot to any recovery environment, flip the setting to allow bootable media, boot from the drive and then optionally change it back once I have the preferred OS installed, right? Wrong! It requires an admin account to be present and it will often not like the admin account of the OS already in place (it's particularly weird about MDM-created Managed Administrator accounts [a definite minus for the T2 in any proper IT setting]). If you wipe the internal drive, it will not be intelligent enough to realize that there's no OS, and therefore, no admin account.
So, to wipe a T2 Mac returning to you, the IT admin, with macOS Big Sur so you can get ready to deploy it with macOS Monterey, you either (a) have to cleverly concoct a workflow leveraging the macOS Monterey installer's startosinstall command, or (b) install whatever OS Internet Recovery is giving you (Ventura), boot to recovery mode, make the change to allow external bootable media, then wipe and install Monterey and then optionally re-enable the "disallow External Boot Media" setting (which, if you care about security, you probably will want to do). And mind you, depending on how your MDM provider and Apple Business Manager instance are set up, you will likely want to do some time-saving fancy footwork there too. Gross.
I get the reasoning. An x86 or x86-64 computer is host to a TON of OSes out there and, on top of the T2 being so custom so as to only work with OSes wherein Apple has produced a storage driver for (i.e. Windows and macOS), you don't necessarily want a user (or attacker) to be able to start the machine off of simply ANY x86 bootable OS on an attached USB drive. So, an Intel Mac without the T2 obviously predates most of these protective measures while an Apple Silicon Mac is so utterly esoteric and proprietary in its boot functions that the only third party OS outside of Apple able to boot it is a Linux distro created by a rag-tag group of folks with the sole purpose of creating a Linux distro that can be booted on such a Mac. Prohibiting an Apple Silicon Mac to boot from a USB drive accomplishes nothing for security. Nevertheless, the fact that my workload to install an OS that is neither the latest nor the earliest supported by a given T2 Mac - as is often necessitated by the business I work for - is so damn long and annoying compared to the other two types of Mac is...well...enough to make me want to set fire to every T2 chip-based Mac I encounter at work.
Reason number two as to why I hate the T2 chip:
Activation Lock. It's a wonderful anti-theft feature on iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. It works similarly well and is similarly consistent on Apple Silicon Macs. It's cludgy as hell on Intel Macs with the T2 chip.
In fact, I could buy a Mac Pro or Mac mini [or refurbished "MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)" for that matter], go through the setup assistant, add my iCloud account to it, turn on Find My Mac, use it for a week, then wipe it, and the next person would be none the wiser that Activation Lock/Find My was ever enabled on it (unless they know to look in System Information). The fact that it's turned on would do nothing from stopping someone from using the computer or setting it up or wiping it. It WOULD stop someone from trying to check it into Apple or a third party AASP for a repair. But does it stop the machine from being used or set up the way it does on an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or Apple Silicon Mac? Not at all. The reasoning behind this makes sense. Activation Lock is a byproduct of the Apple Silicon of the device (i.e. A-series, M-series SoCs). And, in all fairness, Activation Lock DOES work on a T2 based Intel Mac. Just not for macOS. It DOES work with bridgeOS. And anytime you restore bridgeOS, your T2 based Intel Mac will prompt you for the Apple ID associated with Activation Lock for that Mac. But you're not wiping or reconfiguring bridgeOS on a T2 Mac anywhere near as often as you might wipe macOS on an Apple Silicon Mac. It's grossly half-baked.
Now, if I buy a T2 Mac and am its sole owner, there's no issue. Even on the worst day ever, this will not impact me. However, if I buy a T2 Mac and then sell it, I need to be that much more on top of making sure that I sign out of Find My Mac and that Activation Lock is turned off. If all goes well (and it often doesn't), I can verify that by wiping the Mac and seeing if Activation Lock is turned on in System Information. Otherwise, it becomes messy. If I buy a T2 Mac second hand, then I have to make extra certain that the previous owner turned off Activation Lock before handing over (again, not as automatic of a concern given that, with traditional wipes, Activation Lock being enabled at all isn't easily apparent). On an Apple Silicon Mac, it's obvious and makes sense the way it has for iOS and iPadOS for nearly a decade. On a T2 Intel Mac, it's cludgy as all hell, disjointed, and only really makes sense if you're an Apple hardware nerd (which, you shouldn't have to be as a Mac user to begin with).
Do I hate that the T2 prohibits flexibility with other OSes that the pre-T2 Intel Macs traditionally had? You betcha. Do I hate the lack of SSD data recovery options in the event of a main logic board failure? Totally. Do I hate that removable SSD modules on T2 Macs that have 'em such as the iMac Pro, the 2019 Mac Pro, or the higher-capacity 2020 27-inch iMacs can't be interchanged without a full DFU restore of bridgeOS? Of course. But I'm used to these things by now (and it's not like these are things that are any different in the Apple Silicon era of Mac computing).
But simple crap like loading the previous macOS release (because it's late November and the company you work for isn't ready for the one that just came out yet) and things like Activation Lock being ever-cludgy and half-baked? I'll enjoy my MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019), but hell if I want any other T2 Macs in my life with those annoyances.