macOS Catalina, currently available to developers and public beta testers in a beta capacity, revives the defunct Expansion Slot Utility app ahead of the launch of the Mac Pro.
The Expansion Slot Utility app is designed for managing and configuring PCI cards, and its return is clearly meant for the Mac Pro, which has a total of eight PCIe expansion slots that Mac users can work with.
The Expansion Slot Utility app was discontinued years ago following the launch of the 2008 Mac Pro but the new 2.0 version is back for the modular Mac Pro.
New Mac Pro Details from Catalina Beta 2
- Mac7,1 is codenamed J160
- Expansion Slot Utility app lives again
- Possible config names
- Apple Pro Display XDR Artwork
Also ICYMI: AMD GPUs /cc @siracusa @_inside @stroughtonsmith https://t.co/fyPbeTbBe9 https://t.co/Sot6kHDtnF pic.twitter.com/WfWu0eoYfN — Steve Moser (@SteveMoser) July 1, 2019
Expansion Slot Utility in macOS Catalina, for the new Mac Pro pic.twitter.com/SL0YHS50id — Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) July 1, 2019
Signs of the Expansion Slot Utility app are hidden in the second macOS Catalina beta, and when the Mac Pro becomes available at some point this fall, Mac Pro users will be able to take advantage of the utility.
Top Rated Comments
I love you Apple for building this thing and I want it bad.
Such is the war inside my head. The conflict. I am a Sith Lord after all. :p
It's very cool it can even be adjusted like this.
People not buying a Mac, but instead building a PC and then installing macOS on it means that a potential sale of an Apple computer is lost.
Apple does not sell a license for its operating system for use on a PC the way that Microsoft does with Windows, that's the difference.
[doublepost=1562017421][/doublepost] Nope, of course that won't stop someone from trying to run some old 32-bit app that has never been updated, been abandoned or a newer version exists (with associated upgrade cost or subscription fee).
EDIT: And then getting on this site to bitch about it as if it is Apple personally screwing them over, but I digress.
This tool is just about bandwidth distribution. Making sure the cards you do plug in have the bandwidth to run at their best speeds.
But frankly I don't see this helping Hackintoshes at all. This is a tool that communicates with hardware, specifically the motherboard and its PCIe lane distribution chips. I find it hard to believe it'd work with any motherboard out there. Most motherboards don't even support distributing PCIe bandwidth like this, and have the lanes fixed to certain slots.