Apple Silicon Guide

A guide covering Apple Silicon including the applications, libraries and tools that will make you better and more efficient with your Apple Silicon powered device.

Note: You can easily convert this markdown file to a PDF in VSCode using this handy extension Markdown PDF.

Apple M2 Architecture.

Apple M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max/M1 Ultra Architectures.

Getting Started with Apple Silicon

Does it ARM? Apps that are reported to support Apple Silicon
List of apps with native Apple silicon support
M1 compatible Games Master List | AppleGamingWiki
M1 Parallels Windows compatible games list | AppleGamingWiki
Apple Silicon Games
Porting Kit | Install Windows apps in Mac
Games and Apps on Apple Silicon (Compatibility Sheet) by Thomas Schranz(@__tosh on Twitter)
Mac Development Ansible Playbook by Jeff Geerling
Running macOS in a Virtual Machine on Apple Silicon Macs
Running Intel Binaries in Linux VMs with Rosetta
Virtualize macOS on a Mac
Virtualize Linux on a Mac
Stable Diffusion with Core ML on Apple Silicon
CrossOver® Mac
DevToysMac is the mac app version of DevToys for Windows.
asitop is a Performance monitoring CLI tool for Apple Silicon.
macOS Security and Privacy Guide is a collection of techniques for improving the security and privacy of a modern MacBook running a recent version of macOS.
macOS Security Compliance Project is an open source effort to provide a programmatic approach to generating security guidance. The configuration settings in this document were derived from National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-53, Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations, Revision 5.

Apple Hypervisor is a framework that builds virtualization solutions on top of a lightweight hypervisor, without third-party kernel extensions. Hypervisor provides C APIs so you can interact with virtualization technologies in user space, without writing kernel extensions (KEXTs). As a result, the apps you create using this framework are suitable for distribution on the Mac App Store.

Apple A-series is Apple's 64-bit ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) used in their iPhones and iPads. Though, at WWDC 2020 it was announced that Apple Silicon would transition into Mac laptops.

A16 Bionic

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A16 Bionic Chip is Apple's first 4nm SoC for iPhone 14 Pro & Max with a 6-core CPU has two performance cores and 4 high-efficiency cores. Along with a 5-core GPU and 16-core neural engine.

A16 Bionic Chip Architecture

H2

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H2 Chip is Apple's SoC for the AiPods Pro that facilitates stronger(2x more) active noise cancellation, personalized spatial audio, and better performance during phone calls.

H2 chip powering the AirPods Pro. Credit: Apple

U1

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U1 Ultra Wideband (UWB) chip is an Apple-designed silicon chip that has Ultra Wideband technology for spatial awareness. The U1 chip enables directional AirDrop functionality.

UWB (Ultra-wideband) is a short-range radio technology that precisely pinpoints and measures distance between other UWB equipped devices.

Apple devices with the U1 chip

Apple AirTags
iPhone 11
iPhone 11 Pro
iPhone 11 Pro Max
iPhone 12mini
iPhone 12
iPhone 12 Pro
iPhone 12 Pro Max
iPhone 13 mini
iPhone 13
iPhone 13 Pro
iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPhone 14
iPhone 14 Plus
iPhone 14 Pro
iPhone 14 Pro Max
Apple Watch Series 6
Apple Watch Series 7
Apple Watch Series 8
Apple Watch SE (2nd Gen)
Apple Watch Ultra
Apple HomePod mini

U1 Chip Die

M1

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Apple M1 Chip is Apple's first SoC chip designed specifically for their ARM Mac products, it delivers incredible performance(8-core CPU and 8-core GPU), custom technologies, and great power efficiency. The M1 Chip is now availble for Macbook Pro 13 with M1, Macbook Air 13 with M1, Mac Mini with M1, iPad Pro, and iPad Air.

M1 Chip. Source: Apple

M1 Pro

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Apple M1 Pro Chip is a 8 or 10-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture designed for pro systems in the MacBook Pro 14”. The chip features fast unified memory, industry-leading performance per watt, and incredible power efficiency, along with increased memory bandwidth and capacity. The M1 Pro offers up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth with support for up to 32GB of unified memory and a GPU (14-core or 16-core option).

M1 Pro Chip. Source: Apple

M1 Max

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Apple M1 Max Chip is a 10-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture designed for pro systems in the MacBook Pro 16”. The chip features fast unified memory, industry-leading performance per watt, and incredible power efficiency, along with increased memory bandwidth and capacity. The M1 Pro offers up to 400GB/s of memory bandwidth with support for up to 64GB of unified memory and a GPU (16-core or 32-core option).

M1 Max Chip. Source: Apple

M1/ M1 Pro/ M1 Max CPU Performance. Source: Apple

M1/ M1 Pro/ M1 Max GPU Performance. Source: Apple

M1 Ultra

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Apple M1 Ultra Chip is a Apple's most powerful sillicon chip in their M1-series lineup. The M1 Ultra is composed of two M1 Max chips that are connected together using Apple's UltraFusion Architecture packaging. This means the M1 Ultra can be configured with up to 128GB of high-bandwidth, low-latency unified memory that can be accessed by the 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU (800GB/s memory bandwidth), and 32-core Neural Engine. The M1 Ultra is currently available in Apple's Mac Studio.

M1 Ultra Chip. Source: Apple

M1 Ultra CPU Performance. Source: Apple

M1 Ultra GPU Performance. Source: Apple

M2

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Apple M2 Chip is a Apple's most powerful sillicon chip in their M2-series for right now. The M2 has a 18% faster CPU, *35% faster GPU, and 40% faster Neural Engine than the base M1 chip. It can be configured with up to 24GB of high-bandwidth, low-latency unified memory that can be accessed by the 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU (100GB/s memory bandwidth), and 16-core Neural Engine. The M2 will be available in Apple's new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13" with old design, and iPad Pro with M2 .

M2. Source: Apple

M2 CPU Performance. Source: Apple

M2 GPU Performance. Source: Apple

M1 vs M2. Source: Apple

M2 Gaming Performance. Source: Apple

M2 Image Processing Performance. Source: Apple

M2 Video editing Performance. Source: Apple

M2 Image filters & Effects Performance. Source: Apple

M2 Pro

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TSMC’s 3nm technology (N3) will be another full node upgrade from their 5nm technology (N5), and offer the most advanced foundry technology in both PPA(power, performance and area scaling) and transistor technology when it's introduced in Apple's M2 Pro and Max chips in 2023. The N3 technology will offer up to 70% logic density gain, up to 15% speed improvement at the same power and up to 30% power reduction at the same speed as compared with N5 technology.
TSMC FINFLEX™ is a process that extends the product performance, power efficiency and density envelope of the 3nm family of semiconductor technologies by allowing chip designers to choose the best option for each of the key functional blocks on the same die using the same design toolset. These options include a 3-2 FIN, 2-2 FIN and 2-1 FIN configuration with the following characteristics:
- 3-2 FIN – Fastest clock frequencies and highest performance for the most demanding compute needs.
- 2-2 FIN – Efficient Performance, a good balance between performance, power efficiency and density.
- 2-1 FIN – Ultra Power Efficiency, lowest power consumption, lowest leakage and highest density.

Image Credit: TSMC

M2 Max

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TSMC’s 3nm technology (N3) will be another full node upgrade from their 5nm technology (N5), and offer the most advanced foundry technology in both PPA(power, performance and area scaling) and transistor technology when it's introduced in Apple's M2 Pro and Max chips in 2023. The N3 technology will offer up to 70% logic density gain, up to 15% speed improvement at the same power and up to 30% power reduction at the same speed as compared with N5 technology.
TSMC FINFLEX™ is a process that extends the product performance, power efficiency and density envelope of the 3nm family of semiconductor technologies by allowing chip designers to choose the best option for each of the key functional blocks on the same die using the same design toolset. These options include a 3-2 FIN, 2-2 FIN and 2-1 FIN configuration with the following characteristics:
- 3-2 FIN – Fastest clock frequencies and highest performance for the most demanding compute needs.
- 2-2 FIN – Efficient Performance, a good balance between performance, power efficiency and density.
- 2-1 FIN – Ultra Power Efficiency, lowest power consumption, lowest leakage and highest density.

Image Credit: TSMC

Migrating to Apple Silicon

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Xcode 13 is built as an Universal app that runs 100% natively on Intel-based CPUs and Apple Silicon. It includes a unified macOS SDK that features all the frameworks, compilers, debuggers, and other tools you need to build apps that run natively on Apple Silicon.

Tensorflow_macOS is a Mac-optimized version of TensorFlow and TensorFlow Addons for macOS 11.0+ accelerated using Apple's ML Compute framework.

Universal App Quick Start Program

Writing ARM64 Code for Apple Platforms

Porting Your macOS Apps to Apple Silicon

Building a Universal macOS Binary

Addressing Architectural Differences in Your macOS Code

Porting Just-In-Time(JIT) Compilers to Apple Silicon

Porting Your Audio Code to Apple Silicon

Porting Your Metal Code to Apple Silicon

Tuning Your Code’s Performance for Apple Silicon

Learn how Rosetta translates executables and what Rosetta can’t translate

Running Your iOS Apps on macOS

Adapting iOS Code to Run in the macOS Environment

Implementing Drivers, System Extensions, and Kexts

Installing a Custom Kernel Extension

Debugging a Custom Kernel Extension

Devices powered by Apple Silicon

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Devices powered by Apple Silicon.

macOS

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macOS is an advanced desktop operating system (OS) for Apple's series of desktops and laptops.

macOS Ventura. Source: Apple

iOS

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iOS is an advanced mobile operating system (OS) for Apple's series of iPhone products.

iOS 16. Source: Apple

iPadOS

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iPadOS is an advanced mobile operating system (OS) for Apple's series of iPad products.

iPadOS 16. Source: Apple

watchOS

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watchOS is an advanced mobile operating system (OS) for Apple's series of Watch products.

watchOS 9. Source: Apple

Getting Software

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Apple App Store

Developing for the App Store

Homebrew is the missing Package Manager for your macOS, Linux, and Windows 10 (with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)) system. Homebrew is an essential tool for any developer/engineer.

Cakebrew is the most convenient way to use Homebrew for your daily tasks! It does for Homebrew what Synaptics does to Linux package managers. With the Cakebrew UI, you can:

Search for formulae
Install, uninstall and upgrade formula
Tap and untap repos
Update Homebrew
Run the brew cleanup tool

MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on macOS.

Productivity & Workflow Apps

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Signal is a state-of-the-art end-to-end encryption (powered by the open source Signal Protocol) messaging app that keeps your conversations secure.

Signal

NordVPN is a VPN service and the flagship product of the cybersecurity company Nord Security. It's available for wireless routers, NAS devices, and other platforms.

NordVPN

WireGuard is a fast, open-source, and secure VPN tunnel. WireGuard allows users to manage and use WireGuard tunnels. The app can import new tunnels from archives and files, from QR codes, or you can create one from scratch.

WireGuard

Tailscale is a open-source mesh VPN alternative built on WireGuard® that makes it easy to connect your devices. It includes features like automatic key rotation, NAT traversal, and single sign-on with two-factor authentication.

Tailscale

BitWarden is a free and open-source password management service that stores sensitive information such as website credentials(logins and passwords) in an encrypted vault while conveniently keeping them synced between all of your devices.

BitWarden

1Blocker is a fast, secure, and robust tool for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that empowers users to put a stop to invasive online content.

1Blocker

Matrix is a client tool that gives you simple HTTP APIs and SDKs (iOS, Android, Web) to create chatrooms, direct chats and chat bots, complete with end-to-end encryption, file transfer, synchronized conversation history, formatted messages, read receipts and more.

Matrix

Element is a Matrix web client built using the Matrix React SDK. It is a robust and reliable hosting service for fast, secure real time communication.

Element

Nextcloud is a suite of client-server software for creating and using file hosting services. It offers an on-premise Universal File Access and sync platform with powerful collaboration capabilities and desktop, mobile and web interfaces.

Nextcloud

Synology is a tool that allows you to easily access and manage files in your Synology Drive on the go. Apart from common file types, such as documents, images, videos and music, you can also open Synology Office document, spreadsheets and slides in the user-friendly viewer provided by Drive.

Synology

Adobe Lightroom Photo Editor is a free, powerful photo & video editor and camera app that empowers you to capture and edit stunning images. It offers photo & video editing tools like sliders to retouch your images, apply photo filters, fine-tune backgrounds, and use transformative presets to quickly add unique adjustments.

Adobe Lightroom Photo Editor

Things is an app that helps you plan your day, manage your projects, and make real progress toward your goals.

Things

Airbuddy 2 is a utility that let's you simply open your AirPods case next to your Mac and see the current status right away, just like how it works on your iPhone. A single click gets you connected, a swipe down lets you connect and change listenings modes at the same time. It has a fully customizable battery alerts help you keep track of your device's batteries.

Airbuddy 2

Fantastical 3 is a calendar app that works seamlessly across your Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch.

Fantastical 3

Bartender is an app for macOS that superpowers your menu bar, giving you total control over your menu bar items, what's displayed, and when, with menu bar items only showing when you need them. It improves your workflow with quick reveal, search, custom hotkeys and triggers, and lots more.

Bartender menu bar tray

Bartender Settings

Magnet is an app that keeps your workspace organized. magnet is activated by dragging, customizable keyboard shortcuts or via menu bar, it declutters your screen by snapping windows into organized tiles.

Magnet

AltTab is an app that brings the power of Windows’s “alt-tab” window switcher to macOS.

AltTab

MonitorControl is an app that controls your external display brightness and volume and shows native OSD. Use menulet sliders or the keyboard, including native Apple keys.

MonitorControl

WebCatalog is an app that turns any Website into Real Desktop Apps.

WebCatalog

Maccy is a lightweight clipboard manager for macOS. It keeps the history of what you copy and lets you quickly navigate, search, and use previous clipboard contents.

Maccy clipboard manager

Daisydisk is a utility that provides a visual breakdown of your disk space in form of an interactive map, reveal the biggest space wasters, and remove them with a simple drag and drop. It supports all kinds of local drives, as well as the most popular cloud disks.

Daisydisk

Page screenshot for Safari is an awesome extension, just a click away, ready to use every time you need to capture a webpage screenshot, either the full page or just part of it. Along with your pictures will also automatically open in Preview for easy editing (annotations, blurring sensitive info, printing, drawing, sharing).

Page screenshot for Safari

Paste is a Clipboard manager for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Paste

PasteBot is an indispensible tool to improve your productivity. It quickly recalls clippings that you have copied before and apply powerful text filters to format before pasting. Queue up multiple clippings to paste in sequence.

PasteBot

Speedcut is a tool that lets your remove backgrounds from photos straight from your Mac's menu bar.

Speedcut

Cleaner One Pro is an all-in-one Mac Master Cleaner App. It can optimize your disk usage, free up space on your Mac, keep the hard drive clean, remove duplicate photos and other files, manage your apps, and much more.

Cleaner One Pro

Yabai is a window management utility that is designed to work as an extension to the built-in window manager of macOS.

Bear is a Private Markdown Editor for iPhone, iPad and Mac. It uses todos to stay on task across every device. Organize easily Link notes to each other to build a body of work. Add hashtags to organize the way you think. Use Face/Touch ID to protect sensitive notes.

Bear

Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files. It comes with 25 core plugins, 638 community plugins, and 130 themes, plus custom styling, you can tweak Obsidian to work and look exactly how you want it.

Obsidian

MarkText is a simple and elegant open-source markdown editor that focused on speed and usability.

MarkText

1Focus is an App and Website Blocker to keep youy focused on your work. Block specific apps such as email, games or unsupported web browsers. Also, block internet access by blocking the installed web browsers and the App Store.

1Focus

Harvest is an easy Time Tracking Software With Invoicing. It creates a project Create entries for your projects and tasks, or import them via one of our integrations.

Harvest

MindNode is a map and brainstorming tool that lets you capture, organize, style and share your thoughts. Capture your thoughts Organize your ideas Style your mind map Discreetly Powerful All the features you need.

MindNode

Unclutter is a 3-in-1 productivity app to power up your efficiency and comfort on Mac during the day. It's a smart and super handy place on your desktop for storing notes, files and pasteboard clips.

Unclutter

Warp teminal is a blazingly fast, rust-based terminal reimagined from the ground up to work like a modern app.

Warp

Jettison is a tool that automatically ejects external disks from your Mac before your computer goes to sleep. Simply close the lid of your macbook and Jettison will automatically eject your backup drive, iPod, or whatever is connected so you can safely unplug it.

Jettison

Numi is a calculator that magically combines calculations with text, and allows you to freely share your computations. Numi combines text editor and calculator Support plain English.

NuMi

Dropzone is a productivity app for the Mac that makes it faster and easier to move and copy files, launch applications, upload to many different services, and more.

Dropzone

System Color Picker is the macOS color picker as an app with lots of extra features.

System Color Picker

Raycast is a blazingly fast, totally extendable launcher. It lets you complete tasks, calculate, share common links, and much more.

Tinkertool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into MacOS. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system.

Tinkertool

App Cleaner is an application that uninstall/remove applications from Mac entirely with all their preferences, caches and other bits and pieces.

App Cleaner

Infuse is a Video Player for iOS, Apple TV, and Mac. It plays every video file ever created to avoid wasting hours converting and transcoding files.

Infuse Video Player

Secure & Privacy Focused Web Browsers

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Note: While Safari is a great browser that comes included on all Apple devices. It may not have all the extensions you need for your workflow so I reccommend checking out the several great options below.

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation.

Firefox

Brave is a fast, private and secure web browser for PC, Mac and mobile. It comes with Brave Search, which is a private search engine that puts you first, not big tech for those that don't want to use Google Search.

Brave

Ungoogled-Chromium is a lightweight approach to removing Google web service dependency.

Ungoogled-Chromium

Vivaldi is a fast, private and secure web browser for PC, Mac and mobile. It comes with built-in features like Notes, Screen Capture, Image Properties and (a lot) more.

Vivaldi

Ghostery Dawn is a fast, private and secure web browser for PC, Mac and mobile. It comes with the complete Ghostery Privacy Suite including Ghostery Glow a private search engine that does not log your search history, which means you get served objective results, not results that are filtered by the likelihood you’ll click on them.

Ghostery Dawn

DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser is a fast, private and secure web browser for MacOS and mobile(iOS and Android).

DuckDuckGo

Privacy & Security Focused Browser extensions

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UBlock Origin is a free and open-source, cross-platform browser extension for content filtering primarily aimed at neutralizing privacy invasion in an efficient, user-friendly method.

Privacy Badger is a browser extension that automatically learns to block invisible trackers.

DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials is an extension that seamlessly helps prevent your personal information from being exposed during everyday online activity.

Ghostery is a comprehensive privacy protection Ad Blocker browser extension.

HTTPS Everywhere is an extension created by EFF and the Tor Project which automatically switches thousands of sites from insecure "http" to secure "https".

CleanURLs is an extension will automatically remove tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy when browsing through the Internet.

PixelBlock is an Gmail extension that blocks email tracking attempts used to detect when you open and read emails.

Chrome extension

Sitejabber is an extension for consumers to find trustworthy online businesses and avoid scams.

Firefox extension

Chrome extension

1Password is a password manager that provides a place for users to store various passwords, software licenses, and other sensitive information in a virtual vault that is locked with a PBKDF2-guarded master password.

Bitwarden is a free and open-source password management service that stores sensitive information such as website credentials in an encrypted vault.

Guardio is a lightweight extension designed to help you browse quickly and securely. It will clean your browser, speed it up, and protect your private information.

Chrome extension

OneTab is an extension that converts your tabs to a list and speeds up your browser.

Privacy-focused Search Engines

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Brave Search

Ghostery Glow

DuckDuckGo

Startpage

Qwant

Ecosia

Swisscows

searX

Mojeek

Microsoft Office Alternatives

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OnlyOffice is a secure offline/online office suite highly compatible with MS Office formats for Windows, Mac and Linux.

OnlyOffice

FreeOffice is a secure office suite highly compatible with MS Office formats for Windows, Mac and Linux.

FreeOffice

LibreOffice is a free and open-source office productivity software suite similar to Microsoft Office.

LibreOffice

Universal Control

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Universal Control is a software feature for Apple devices such as Macbooks and iPads that makes it possible to use a single keyboard, mouse, and trackpad with your Mac and iPad as long as they're side-by-side. Much like SideCar, there are limited settings for Universal Control. Without a second device connected, you can go to System Preferences -> Displays and click Advanced to pull up Universal Control settings. If a device is already connected, you'll have to go to Displays -> Display Settings -> Advanced.

Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Handoff must be enabled on each device, and they must be within 30 feet. If you prefer to use Universal Control wired, the devices can be connected via USB and you must trust your Mac on your iPad. At the moment, Apple does not mention support for Ethernet but we will test this ourselves during the beta period.

You must also have supported devices. Apple says supported devices include:

MacBook Pro (2016 and later)
MacBook (2016 and later)
MacBook Air (2018 and later)
iMac (2017 and later)
iMac (5K Retina 27-inch, Late 2015)
iMac Pro, Mac mini (2018 and later)
Mac Pro (2019)
Any iPad Pro
iPad Air (3rd generation and later)
iPad (6th generation and later)
iPad mini (5th generation and later)

Stage Manager

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Stage Manager is an iPadOS feature that provides better support for external displays. Stage Manager allows the iPad Air(M1 chip) and iPad Pro(M1 chip):

Fast access to windows and apps: The windows of the apps you’re working in are displayed prominently in the center, and other apps are arranged on the left side in order of recent use.
Resizable windows: Resize your windows to make them the perfect size for your task.
Center app: Focus on the app you’re working with without going full screen.
Overlapping windows: Create overlapping windows of different sizes in a single view, giving you the control to arrange your ideal workspace.
Group apps together: Drag and drop windows from the side or open apps from the Dock to create app sets that you can always get back to.

Adding External Storage

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Sabrent XTRM Q is a perfect SSD for all your creative pursuits: high-res photos, videos, sound files, etc. It's perfect for saving, creating and editing available in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB drives.

Shell Thunder is a high-performance Intel-Certified Thunderbolt 3 SSD Enclosure engineered for active cooling with smart fan technology. Shell Thunder is designed for 2280 and 2260 m.2 NVME SSDs for macOS and Windows.

Orico USB4.0 NVMe SSD Enclosure is a high-performance SSD Enclosure engineered with up to a 40Gbps transmission rate and 2 TB capacity. It supports Windows, macOS, and Linux devices.

USB-C to Lightning Cable (2 m) is cable to connect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod with Lightning connector to your USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) enabled Mac for syncing and charging, or to your USB-C enabled iPad for charging.

SSD Drive Health/Data Recovery

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How to create a bootable installer for macOS

Restore from Time Machine: Restore your files from a Time Machine backup.
Reinstall macOS: Download and reinstall MacOS.
Safari (or Get Help Online): Use Safari to browse the web and find help for your Mac. Links to Apple's support website are included. Browser plug-ins and extensions are disabled.
Disk Utility: Use Disk Utility to repair your disk or erase your disk or other storage device.
Additional utilities are available from the Utilities menu in the menu bar, including Startup Security Utility (or Firmware Password Utility), and Terminal.

MacOS Recovery Options

Disk Drill is a free tool that can scan and recover data from virtually any storage device — including internal Macintosh hard drives, external hard drives, cameras, iPhones, iPads, iPods, Android devices, USB flash drives, Kindles, and memory cards. It can read your device even if it is failing, unreadable, or has lost a partition. Combining several powerful scanning algorithms, Disk Drill provides a complete Mac data recovery solution.

DriveDx is an advanced drive-health diagnostic and monitoring utility. It not only monitors the drive’s built-in S.M.A.R.T. status, but also analyzes the changes of all drive health indicators that are closely related to SSD or HDD failures (like SSD wear out / endurance, reallocated bad sectors, offline bad sectors, pending sectors, I/O errors, and more) and alerts the user immediately if anything goes wrong.

Checking Battery Health

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coconutBattery is a tool that keeps you aware of your current battery health. It shows you live information about the battery quality in your Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Checking Battery on your Mac device.

Checking Battery on your iOS device.

MacOS/iOS Security Hardening

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Resources

Signed system volume security in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS
Protecting against malware in macOS
CIS(Center for Internet Security) Apple iOS Benchmarks
CIS(Center for Internet Security) Apple macOS Benchmarks
NIST Security Technical Implementation for macOS
Setting a custom umask in macOS
Personal Security Checklist is a curated checklist of 300+ tips for protecting digital security and privacy in 2022.

Enable full disk encryption

Full disk encryption is pretty much self-explanatory. You want to encrypt your disk, so you prevent unauthorized access to your data.

To turn on full disk encription on macOS:

Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault
Click on the lock on the bottom left side of the screen to authenticate (you need to authenticate to make changes, in this case, to turn on full disk encryption)
Click Turn On FileVault... and follow the procedure step by step

File Vault

Hardened Runtime is a tool that along with System Integrity Protection (SIP), protects the runtime integrity of your software by preventing certain classes of exploits, like code injection, dynamically linked library (DLL) hijacking, and process memory space tampering.

System Integrity Protection (SIP) is a security technology in OS X El Capitan and later that's designed to help prevent potentially malicious software from modifying protected files and folders on your Mac.

Effaceable Storage is a dedicated area of NAND storage, used to store cryptographic keys, that can be addressed directly and wiped securely.

SepOS is the Secure Enclave firmware, based on an Apple-customized version of the L4 microkernel.

Lynis is a security auditing tool for systems based on UNIX like Linux, macOS, BSD, and others. It performs an in-depth security scan and runs on the system itself. The primary goal is to test security defenses and provide tips for further system hardening. It will also scan for general system information, vulnerable software packages, and possible configuration issues.

Pareto Security is a MenuBar app to automatically audit your Mac for basic security hygiene.

GRR Rapid Response is an incident response framework focused on remote live forensics.

mac_apt is a DFIR (Digital Forensics and Incident Response) tool for macOS/iOS to process Mac computer full disk images (or live machines) and extract data/metadata useful for forensic investigation. It is a python based framework, which has plugins to process individual artifacts (such as Safari internet history, Network interfaces, Recently accessed files & volumes, etc..)

AdGuard DNS is a tool that let's you control all web traffic on your devices, block ads, trackers, and malicious domains.

Quad9 is a free service that replaces your default ISP or enterprise Domain Name Server (DNS) configuration. When your computer performs any Internet transaction that uses the DNS (and most transactions do), Quad9 blocks lookups of malicious host names from an up-to-the-minute list of threats. This blocking action protects your computer, mobile device, or IoT systems against a wide range of threats such as malware, phishing, spyware, and botnets, and it can improve performance in addition to guaranteeing privacy.

Wafer Level Multi-Chip Packaging Technology

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InFO (Integrated Fan-Out) Wafer Level Packaging

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InFO is an innovative wafer level system integration technology platform, featuring high density RDL (Re-Distribution Layer) and TIV (Through InFO Via) for high-density interconnect and performance for various applications, such as mobile, and high performance computing. The InFO platform offers various package schemes in 2D and 3D that are optimized for specific applications.

InFO_PoP is the industry's 1st 3D wafer level fan-out package, features high density RDL and TIV to integrate mobile AP w/ DRAM package stacking for mobile application. Comparing to FC_PoP, InFO_PoP has a thinner profile and better electrical and thermal performances because of no organic substrate and C4 bump.

InFO_PoP

InFO_oS is a packaging process that leverages InFO technology and features higher density 2/2µm RDL line width/space to integrate multiple advanced logic chiplets for 5G networking application. It enables hybrid pad pitches on SoC with minimum 40µm I/O pitch, minimum 130µm C4 Cu bump pitch and > 2X reticle size InFO on >65 x 65mm substrates.

InFO_oS

Chip on Wafer on Substrate (CoWoS)

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CoWoS® is a platform that provides best-in-breed performance and highest integration density for high performance computing applications. This wafer level system integration platform offers wide range of interposer sizes, number of HBM cubes, and package sizes. It can enable larger than 2X-reticle size (or ~1,700mm2) interposer integrating leading SoC chips with more than four HBM2/HBM2E cubes.

TSMC CoWoS®-S Architecture

CoWoS-R is a member of CoWoS advanced packaging family leveraging InFO technology to utilize RDL interposer and to serve the interconnect between chiplets, especially in HBM(high bandwidth memory) and SoC heterogeneous integration. RDL interposer is comprised of polymer and copper traces, and it is relatively mechanically flexible. Such flexibility enhances the C4 joint integrity, and allows the new package can scale up its size to meet more complex functional demands.

TSMC CoWoS®-R Architecture

CoWoS®-L is one of the last for chip packages in the CoWoS® platform, combining the merits of CoWoS®-S and InFO technologies to provide the most flexible integration using interposer with LSI (Local Silicon Interconnect) chip for die-to-die interconnect and RDL layers for power and signal delivery. The offering starts from 1.5X-reticle interposer size with 1x SoC + 4x HBM cubes and will move forward to expand the envelope to larger sizes for integrating more chips.

The key features of CoWoS®-L service include:

LSI chips for high routing density die-to-die interconnect through multiple layers of sub-micron Cu lines. The LSI chips can feature variety of connection architectures (SoC to SoC, SoC to chiplet, SoC to HBM… etc) within each product, and can also be used repeatedly for multiple products. The corresponding metal types, layer counts, and pitches align with the offering from CoWoS®-S.
Molding-based interposer with wide pitch of RDL layers on both front-side and back-side and TIV (Through Interposer Via) for signal and power delivery provides low loss of high frequency signal in high-speed transmission.
Capability of integrating additional elements, stand-alone IPD (Integrated Passive Device), right underneath the SoC die to support its signal communication with better PI/SI.

TSMC CoWoS®-L Architecture

Xcode Development

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Getting Started with Xcode

Apple Developer Documentation for Xcode

Xcode includes everything developers need to create great applications for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. Xcode provides developers a unified workflow for user interface design, coding, testing, and debugging. Xcode 14 is built as an Universal app that runs 100% natively on Intel-based CPUs and Apple Silicon. It includes a unified macOS SDK that features all the frameworks, compilers, debuggers, and other tools you need to build apps that run natively on Apple Silicon and the Intel x86_64 CPU.

Developing with SwiftUI in Xcode 14

Xcode Cloud is a continuous integration and delivery service built into Xcode and designed expressly for Apple developers. It accelerates the development and delivery of high-quality apps by bringing together cloud-based tools that help you build apps, run automated tests in parallel, deliver apps to testers, and view and manage user feedback.

Xcode Cloud. Source: Apple

SwiftUI is a user interface toolkit that provides views, controls, and layout structures for declaring your app's user interface. The SwiftUI framework provides event handlers for delivering taps, gestures, and other types of input to your application.

UIKit is a framework provides the required infrastructure for your iOS or tvOS apps. It provides the window and view architecture for implementing your interface, the event handling infrastructure for delivering Multi-Touch and other types of input to your app, and the main run loop needed to manage interactions among the user, the system, and your app.

AppKit is a graphical user interface toolkit that contains all the objects you need to implement the user interface for a macOS app such as windows, panels, buttons, menus, scrollers, and text fields, and it handles all the details for you as it efficiently draws on the screen, communicates with hardware devices and screen buffers, clears areas of the screen before drawing, and clips views.

ARKit is a set set of software development tools to enable developers to build augmented-reality apps for iOS developed by Apple. The latest version ARKit 3.5 takes advantage of the new LiDAR Scanner and depth sensing system on iPad Pro(2020) to support a new generation of AR apps that use Scene Geometry for enhanced scene understanding and object occlusion.

RealityKit is a framework to implement high-performance 3D simulation and rendering with information provided by the ARKit framework to seamlessly integrate virtual objects into the real world.

SceneKit is a high-level 3D graphics framework that helps you create 3D animated scenes and effects in your iOS apps.

Mac Catalyst is a set of Apple APIs that developers can use to rapidly port their iOS apps to Apple Silicon M1 Chip and take full advantage of the new capabilities on the new Apple hardware.

Instruments is a powerful and flexible performance-analysis and testing tool that’s part of the Xcode tool set. It’s designed to help you profile your iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and macOS apps, processes, and devices in order to better understand and optimize their behavior and performance.

TestFlight is a tool that makes it easy to invite users to test your apps and App Clips and collect valuable feedback before releasing your apps on the App Store. It allows you to invite up to 10,000 testers using just their email address or by sharing a public link.

Core ML Development

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Core ML Learning Resources

Core ML is an Apple framework for integrating machine learning models into apps running on Apple devices (including iOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS). Core ML introduces a public file format (.mlmodel) for a broad set of ML methods including deep neural networks (both convolutional and recurrent), tree ensembles with boosting, and generalized linear models. Models in this format can be directly integrated into apps through Xcode.

Introduction to Core ML

Integrating a Core ML Model into your App

Core ML Models

Core ML API Reference

Core ML Specification

Apple Developer Forums for Core ML

Top Core ML Courses Online | Udemy

Top Core ML Courses Online | Coursera

IBM Watson Services for Core ML | IBM

Stable Diffusion with Core ML on Apple Silicon

Generate Core ML assets using IBM Maximo Visual Inspection | IBM

Core ML Tools, Libraries, and Frameworks

Core ML Tools is a tool to convert machine learning models from third-party libraries to the Core ML format. This Python package contains the supporting tools for converting models from training libraries such as the following:

TensorFlow
TensorFlow 2](https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs)
PyTorch

Non-neural network frameworks:

Create ML is a tool that provides new ways of training machine learning models on your Mac. It takes the complexity out of model training while producing powerful Core ML models.

Tensorflow_macOS is a Mac-optimized version of TensorFlow and TensorFlow Addons for macOS 11.0+ accelerated using Apple's ML Compute framework.

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. It has a comprehensive, flexible ecosystem of tools, libraries and community resources that lets researchers push the state-of-the-art in ML and developers easily build and deploy ML powered applications.

Keras is a high-level neural networks API, written in Python and capable of running on top of TensorFlow, CNTK, or Theano.It was developed with a focus on enabling fast experimentation. It is capable of running on top of TensorFlow, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, R, Theano, or PlaidML.

PyTorch is a library for deep learning on irregular input data such as graphs, point clouds, and manifolds. Primarily developed by Facebook's AI Research lab.

XGBoost is an optimized distributed gradient boosting library designed to be highly efficient, flexible and portable. It implements machine learning algorithms under the Gradient Boosting framework. XGBoost provides a parallel tree boosting (also known as GBDT, GBM) that solve many data science problems in a fast and accurate way. It supports distributed training on multiple machines, including AWS, GCE, Azure, and Yarn clusters. Also, it can be integrated with Flink, Spark and other cloud dataflow systems.

LIBSVM is an integrated software for support vector classification, (C-SVC, nu-SVC), regression (epsilon-SVR, nu-SVR) and distribution estimation (one-class SVM). It supports multi-class classification.

Scikit-Learn is a simple and efficient tool for data mining and data analysis. It is built on NumPy,SciPy, and mathplotlib.

Apple Vision is a framework that performs face and face landmark detection, text detection, barcode recognition, image registration, and general feature tracking. Vision also allows the use of custom Core ML models for tasks like classification or object detection.

Xcode includes everything developers need to create great applications for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. Xcode provides developers a unified workflow for user interface design, coding, testing, and debugging. Xcode 12 is built as an Universal app that runs 100% natively on Intel-based CPUs and Apple Silicon. It includes a unified macOS SDK that features all the frameworks, compilers, debuggers, and other tools you need to build apps that run natively on Apple Silicon and the Intel x86_64 CPU.

RealityKit is a framework to implement high-performance 3D simulation and rendering with information provided by the ARKit framework to seamlessly integrate virtual objects into the real world.

SceneKit is a high-level 3D graphics framework that helps you create 3D animated scenes and effects in your iOS apps.

Cocoapods is a dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C used in Xcode projects by specifying the dependencies for your project in a simple text file. CocoaPods then recursively resolves dependencies between libraries, fetches source code for all dependencies, and creates and maintains an Xcode workspace to build your project.

AppCode is constantly monitoring the quality of your code. It warns you of errors and smells and suggests quick-fixes to resolve them automatically. AppCode provides lots of code inspections for Objective-C, Swift, C/C++, and a number of code inspections for other supported languages.

Metal Development

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Metal Learning Resources

Metal is a low-level API that provides a platform-optimized, low-overhead API for developing the latest 3D pro applications and amazing games using a rich shading language with tighter integration between graphics and compute programs. To help you do more while managing ever more complex shader code, Metal adds an unparalleled suite of advanced GPU debugging tools to help you realize the full potential of your graphics code.

Metal 3 is Apple's newest graphics API that introdcues advanced features and compiler tools to load resources faster, compile shader binaries at build time, process complex geometry with mesh shaders, render high-resolution graphics in less time, train machine learning networks faster, and more.

Apple Developer Documentation

MetalKit

Metal Shading Language Specification

Using Metal Feature Set Tables

Metal Performance Shaders

Optimizing Performance with the GPU Counters Instrument

Enabling Frame Capture

Reducing the Memory Footprint of Metal Apps

Metal Developer Tools for Windows

Metal Sample code

Metal plugin for TensorFlow

Metal Developer discussions

Metal Tools, Libraries, and Frameworks

MTLDevice is the Metal interface to a GPU that you use to draw graphics or do parallel computation.

Metal-cpp is a low-overhead C++ interface for Metal that helps you add Metal functionality to graphics apps, games, and game engines that are written in C++. Sample Code

Metal plugin for TensorFlow is a TensorFlow-Metal PluggableDevice that adds improvements to machine learning training with new operations accelerated on GPU, custom operations, and distributed training support.

MetalFX is a new API that provides platform optimized graphics effects for Metal applications. With MetalFX Upscaling, your application can now render frames at a lower resolution, reducing rendering time, without compromising rendering quality. We'll also show you how and when to use its two effects: spatial upscaling, which delivers substantial performance gains, and temporal AA and upscaling, which delivers the highest quality rendering.

MetalFX Rendering. Credit: Apple

MetalPetal is a GPU accelerated image and video processing framework based on Metal designed to provide real-time processing for still image and video with easy to use programming interfaces.

Apple Foundation Framework is a framework provides a base layer of functionality for apps and frameworks, including data storage and persistence, text processing, date and time calculations, sorting and filtering, and networking. The classes, protocols, and data types defined by Foundation are used throughout the macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS SDKs.

Apple Core Animation Framework is a graphics rendering and animation infrastructure that provides high frame rates and smooth animations without burdening the CPU and slowing down your app.

Apple Core Graphics Frameworkis a framework based on the Quartz advanced drawing engine. It provides low-level, lightweight 2D rendering with unmatched output fidelity.

Paravirtualized Graphics Framework is a framework that implements hardware-accelerated graphics for macOS running in a virtual machine, hereafter known as the guest. The macOS operating system provides a graphics driver that runs inside the guest, communicating with the framework in the host operating system to take advantage of Metal-accelerated graphics.

Xcode includes everything developers need to create great applications for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. Xcode provides developers a unified workflow for user interface design, coding, testing, and debugging. Xcode 12 is built as an Universal app that runs 100% natively on Intel-based CPUs and Apple Silicon. It includes a unified macOS SDK that features all the frameworks, compilers, debuggers, and other tools you need to build apps that run natively on Apple Silicon and the Intel x86_64 CPU.

RealityKit is a framework to implement high-performance 3D simulation and rendering with information provided by the ARKit framework to seamlessly integrate virtual objects into the real world.

SceneKit is a high-level 3D graphics framework that helps you create 3D animated scenes and effects in your iOS apps.

MoltenVK is an implementation of Vulkan running on iOS and macOS using Apple's Metal graphics framework.

Virtualization

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Developer Quick Links

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) M1 Mac instances for macOS
Running macOS in a Virtual Machine on Apple Silicon Macs - Install and run macOS in a virtual machine using the Virtualization framework.
Running Intel Binaries in Linux VMs with Rosetta - Running x86_64 Linux binaries under ARM Linux on Apple silicon.
Virtualize macOS on a Mac - Configure and run macOS guests on Apple silicon Mac computers.
Virtualize Linux on a Mac - Configure and run Linux guests on Apple silicon and Intel-based Mac computers.

Virtualization Tools and Frameworks

Apple Virtualization Framework is a framework that provides high-level APIs for creating and managing virtual machines on Apple silicon and Intel-based Mac computers. This framework is used to boot and run a Linux-based operating system in a custom environment that you define. It also supports the Virtio specification, which defines standard interfaces for many device types, including network, socket, serial port, storage, entropy, and memory-balloon devices.

Apple Paravirtualized Graphics Framework is a framework that implements hardware-accelerated graphics for macOS running in a virtual machine, hereafter known as the guest. The operating system provides a graphics driver that runs inside the guest, communicating with the framework in the host operating system to take advantage of Metal-accelerated graphics.

Parallels Desktop is a Desktop Hypervisor that delivers the fastest, easiest and most powerful application for running Windows/Linux on Mac (including the new Apple M1 chip) and ChromeOS.

Parallels Desktop for Mac

UTM is a full featured system emulator and virtual machine host for iOS and macOS. It is based off of QEMU that allows you to run Windows, Linux, and more on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Ubuntu on UTM

VMware Fusion 22H2 is a software hypervisor developed by VMware for Mac computers.It creates a virtual machine and install an operating system (such as Windows or Linux) inside that virtual machine.

Windows 11 on Intel and Apple Silicon, with 2D graphics and networking support.
VMTools installation support for Windows 11 guest operating system on M1-based Macs.
Virtual TPM device with fast encryption support.
Improved Linux support on M1.
3D Graphics HW Acceleration and OpenGL 4.3(Requires Linux 5.19+ & Mesa 22.1.3+) in Linux virtual machines.
Universal Binary for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

Windows 11 on VMware Fusion

Tart is a virtualization toolset to build, run and manage virtual machines on Apple Silicon.

Tart uses Apple's own Virtualization.Framework for near-native performance.
Push/Pull virtual machines from any OCI-compatible container registry.
Use Tart Packer Plugin to automate VM creation.
Built-in CI integration.

Tart

Multipass is a tool to generate cloud-style Ubuntu VMs quickly on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It uses KVM on Linux, Hyper-V on Windows, and HyperKit on macOS.

VMware Horizon is a digital workspace with the efficient delivery of virtual desktops and applications that equips workers anywhere, anytime, and on any device.

VMware Carbon Black is a cloud–native endpoint protection platform combines the intelligent system hardening and behavioral prevention needed to keep emerging threats at bay.

Proxmox Virtual Environment(VE) is a complete open-source platform for enterprise virtualization. It inlcudes a built-in web interface that you can easily manage VMs and containers, software-defined storage and networking, high-availability clustering, and multiple out-of-the-box tools on a single solution.

VirtManager is a graphical tool for managing virtual machines via libvirt. Most usage is with QEMU/KVM virtual machines, but Xen and libvirt LXC containers are well supported. Common operations for any libvirt driver should work.

oVirt is an open-source distributed virtualization solution, designed to manage your entire enterprise infrastructure. oVirt uses the trusted KVM hypervisor and is built upon several other community projects, including libvirt, Gluster, PatternFly, and Ansible.Founded by Red Hat as a community project on which Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is based allowing for centralized management of virtual machines, compute, storage and networking resources, from an easy-to-use web-based front-end with platform independent access.

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module.

QEMU is a fast processor emulator using a portable dynamic translator. QEMU emulates a full system, including a processor and various peripherals. It can be used to launch a different Operating System without rebooting the PC or to debug system code.

macOS-Simple-KVM is a set of tools to easily set up a quick macOS VM in QEMU, accelerated by KVM.

Quickemu is a program that quickly create and run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux desktop virtual machines.

AWS ECS is a highly scalable, high-performance container orchestration service that supports Docker containers and allows you to easily run and scale containerized applications on AWS. Amazon ECS eliminates the need for you to install and operate your own container orchestration software, manage and scale a cluster of virtual machines, or schedule containers on those virtual machines.

Cloud Hypervisor is an open source Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) that runs on top of KVM. The project focuses on exclusively running modern, cloud workloads, on top of a limited set of hardware architectures and platforms. Cloud workloads refers to those that are usually run by customers inside a cloud provider. Cloud Hypervisor is implemented in Rust and is based on the rust-vmm crates.

Xen is focused on advancing virtualization in a number of different commercial and open source applications, including server virtualization, Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS), desktop virtualization, security applications, embedded and hardware appliances, and automotive/aviation.

Packer is an open source tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. Packer is lightweight, runs on every major operating system, and is highly performant, creating machine images for multiple platforms in parallel. Packer does not replace configuration management like Chef or Puppet. In fact, when building images, Packer is able to use tools like Chef or Puppet to install software onto the image.

Vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases production parity, and makes the "works on my machine" excuse a relic of the past. It provides easy to configure, reproducible, and portable work environments built on top of industry-standard technology and controlled by a single consistent workflow to help maximize the productivity and flexibility of you and your team.

Virtualization Concepts & Terminologies

HVM (Hardware Virtual Machine) is a virtualization type that provides the ability to run an operating system directly on top of a virtual machine without any modification, as if it were run on the bare-metal hardware.

PV(ParaVirtualization) is an efficient and lightweight virtualization technique introduced by the Xen Project team, later adopted by other virtualization solutions. PV does not require virtualization extensions from the host CPU and thus enables virtualization on hardware architectures that do not support Hardware-assisted virtualization.

Network functions virtualization (NFV) is the replacement of network appliance hardware with virtual machines. The virtual machines use a hypervisor to run networking software and processes such as routing and load balancing. NFV allows for the separation of communication services from dedicated hardware, such as routers and firewalls. This separation means network operations can provide new services dynamically and without installing new hardware. Deploying network components with network functions virtualization only takes hours compared to months like with traditional networking solutions.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an approach to networking that uses software-based controllers or application programming interfaces (APIs) to communicate with underlying hardware infrastructure and direct traffic on a network. This model differs from that of traditional networks, which use dedicated hardware devices (routers and switches) to control network traffic.

Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM) is a service delivery and reduce costs with high performance lifecycle management Manage the full lifecycle of the software and hardware comprising your NFV infrastructure (NFVI), and maintaining a live inventory and allocation plan of both physical and virtual resources.

Management and Orchestration(MANO) is an ETSI-hosted initiative to develop an Open Source NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO) software stack aligned with ETSI NFV. Two of the key components of the ETSI NFV architectural framework are the NFV Orchestrator and VNF Manager, known as NFV MANO.

Magma is an open source software platform that gives network operators an open, flexible and extendable mobile core network solution. Their mission is to connect the world to a faster network by enabling service providers to build cost-effective and extensible carrier-grade networks. Magma is 3GPP generation (2G, 3G, 4G or upcoming 5G networks) and access network agnostic (cellular or WiFi). It can flexibly support a radio access network with minimal development and deployment effort.

OpenRAN is an intelligent Radio Access Network(RAN) integrated on general purpose platforms with open interface between software defined functions. Open RANecosystem enables enormous flexibility and interoperability with a complete openess to multi-vendor deployments.

Open vSwitch(OVS)is an open source production quality, multilayer virtual switch licensed under the open source Apache 2.0 license. It is designed to enable massive network automation through programmatic extension, while still supporting standard management interfaces and protocols (NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX, RSPAN, CLI, LACP, 802.1ag).

Edge is a distributed computing framework that brings enterprise applications closer to data sources such as IoT devices or local edge servers. This proximity to data at its source can deliver strong business benefits, including faster insights, improved response times and better bandwidth availability.

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is an Industry Specification Group (ISG) within ETSI to create a standardized, open environment which will allow the efficient and seamless integration of applications from vendors, service providers, and third-parties across multi-vendor Multi-access Edge Computing platforms.

Virtualized network functions(VNFs) is a software application used in a Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) implementation that has well defined interfaces, and provides one or more component networking functions in a defined way. For example, a security VNF provides Network Address Translation (NAT) and firewall component functions.

Cloud-Native Network Functions(CNF) is a network function designed and implemented to run inside containers. CNFs inherit all the cloud native architectural and operational principles including Kubernetes(K8s) lifecycle management, agility, resilience, and observability.

Physical Network Function(PNF) is a physical network node which has not undergone virtualization. Both PNFs and VNFs (Virtualized Network Functions) can be used to form an overall Network Service.

Network functions virtualization infrastructure(NFVI) is the foundation of the overall NFV architecture. It provides the physical compute, storage, and networking hardware that hosts the VNFs. Each NFVI block can be thought of as an NFVI node and many nodes can be deployed and controlled geographically.

Virtualization-based Security (VBS) is a hardware virtualization feature to create and isolate a secure region of memory from the normal operating system.

Hypervisor-Enforced Code Integrity (HVCI) is a mechanism whereby a hypervisor, such as Hyper-V, uses hardware virtualization to protect kernel-mode processes against the injection and execution of malicious or unverified code. Code integrity validation is performed in a secure environment that is resistant to attack from malicious software, and page permissions for kernel mode are set and maintained by the hypervisor.

NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) is a software enables powerful GPU performance for workloads ranging from graphics-rich virtual workstations to data science and AI, enabling IT to leverage the management and security benefits of virtualization as well as the performance of NVIDIA GPUs required for modern workloads.

AMD MxGPU is a hardware-based virtualized GPU solution, is built on industry standard SR-IOV (Single-Root I/O Virtualization) technology and allows multiple virtualized users per physical GPU to work remotely.

Docker

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Running Docker on Apple Silicon (M1/M2)

Docker Desktop for Apple silicon

Lima is a tool that launches Linux virtual machines with automatic file sharing and port forwarding (similar to WSL2), and containerd. It's a great free and open-source alternative for Docker Desktop.

Install Lima using Homebrew

brew install lima docker docker-credential-helper

Colima is a container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup.

Included Featues:

M1/M2 Macs and Intel support
Docker and Containerd support
Kubernetes
Port Forwarding
Volume mounts

Installing Colima

Homebrew

brew install colima

MacPorts

sudo port install colima

Nix

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.colima

Container Architecture. Source: Containerd.io

Docker Learning Resources

Docker Training Program

Docker Certified Associate (DCA) certification

Docker Documentation | Docker Documentation

The Docker Workshop

Docker Courses on Udemy

Docker Courses on Coursera

Docker Courses on edX

Docker Courses on Linkedin Learning

Docker Tools

Lima is a tool that launches Linux virtual machines with automatic file sharing and port forwarding (similar to WSL2), and containerd. It's a great free and open-source alternative for Docker Desktop.

Colima is a container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup.

Docker is an open platform for developing, shipping, and running applications. Docker enables you to separate your applications from your infrastructure so you can deliver software quickly working in collaboration with cloud, Linux, and Windows vendors, including Microsoft.

Docker Enterprise is a subscription including software, supported and certified container platform for CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Ubuntu, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), Oracle Linux, and Windows Server 2016, as well as for cloud providers AWS and Azure. In November 2019 Docker's Enterprise Platform business was acquired by Mirantis.

Docker Desktop is an application for MacOS and Windows machines for the building and sharing of containerized applications and microservices. Docker Desktop delivers the speed, choice and security you need for designing and delivering containerized applications on your desktop. Docker Desktop includes Docker App, developer tools, Kubernetes and version synchronization to production Docker Engines.

Docker Hub is the world's largest library and community for container images. Browse over 100,000 container images from software vendors, open-source projects, and the community.

Docker Compose is a tool that was developed to help define and share multi-container applications. With Docker Compose, you can create a YAML file to define the services and with a single command, can spin everything up or tear it all down.

Docker Swarm is a Docker-native clustering system swarm is a simple tool which controls a cluster of Docker hosts and exposes it as a single "virtual" host.

Dockerfile is a text document that contains all the commands a user could call on the command line to assemble an image. Using docker build users can create an automated build that executes several command-line instructions in succession.

Docker Containers is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another.

Docker Engine is a container runtime that runs on various Linux (CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Oracle Linux, RHEL, SUSE, and Ubuntu) and Windows Server operating systems. Docker creates simple tooling and a universal packaging approach that bundles up all application dependencies inside a container which is then run on Docker Engine.

Docker Images is a lightweight, standalone, executable package of software that includes everything needed to run an application: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries and settings. Images have intermediate layers that increase reusability, decrease disk usage, and speed up docker build by allowing each step to be cached. These intermediate layers are not shown by default. The SIZE is the cumulative space taken up by the image and all its parent images.

Docker Network is a that displays detailed information on one or more networks.

Docker Daemon is a service started by a system utility, not manually by a user. This makes it easier to automatically start Docker when the machine reboots. The command to start Docker depends on your operating system. Currently, it only runs on Linux because it depends on a number of Linux kernel features, but there are a few ways to run Docker on MacOS and Windows as well by configuring the operating system utilities.

Docker Storage is a driver controls how images and containers are stored and managed on your Docker host.

Kitematic is a simple application for managing Docker containers on Mac, Linux and Windows letting you control your app containers from a graphical user interface (GUI).

Open Container Initiative is an open governance structure for the express purpose of creating open industry standards around container formats and runtimes.

Buildah is a command line tool to build Open Container Initiative (OCI) images. It can be used with Docker, Podman, Kubernetes.

Podman is a daemonless, open source, Linux native tool designed to make it easy to find, run, build, share and deploy applications using Open Containers Initiative (OCI) Containers and Container Images. Podman provides a command line interface (CLI) familiar to anyone who has used the Docker Container Engine.

Containerd is a daemon that manages the complete container lifecycle of its host system, from image transfer and storage to container execution and supervision to low-level storage to network attachments and beyond. It is available for Linux and Windows.

Kubernetes

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Running Kubernetes Locally on Apple Silicon (M1/M2)

kind is a tool for running local Kubernetes clusters using Docker container “nodes”. It was primarily designed for testing Kubernetes itself, but may be used for local development or CI.

macOS home-brew command

brew install kind

Okra (Orchestration with Kubernetes on Apple) is a virtualization layer created for Mac build infrastructure, Orka allows you to orchestrate macOS in a cloud environment using Kubernetes on genuine Apple hardware.

OKRA CLI

Colima is a container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup.

Included Featues:

M1/M2 Macs and Intel support
Docker and Containerd support
Kubernetes
Port Forwarding
Volume mounts

Installing Colima

Homebrew

brew install colima

MacPorts

sudo port install colima

Nix

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.colima

Kubernetes Learning Resources

Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Getting Kubernetes Certifications

Getting started with Kubernetes on AWS

Kubernetes on Microsoft Azure

Intro to Azure Kubernetes Service

Azure Red Hat OpenShift

Getting started with Google Cloud

Getting started with Kubernetes on Red Hat

Getting started with Kubernetes on IBM

Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud

Enable OpenShift Virtualization on Red Hat OpenShift

YAML basics in Kubernetes

Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes

Docker and Kubernetes

Running Apache Spark on Kubernetes

Kubernetes Across VMware vRealize Automation

VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

All the Ways VMware Tanzu Works with AWS

VMware Tanzu Education

Using Ansible in a Cloud-Native Kubernetes Environment

Managing Kubernetes (K8s) objects with Ansible

Setting up a Kubernetes cluster using Vagrant and Ansible

Running MongoDB with Kubernetes

Kubernetes Fluentd

Understanding the new GitLab Kubernetes Agent

Intro Local Process with Kubernetes for Visual Studio 2019

Kubernetes Contributors

KubeAcademy from VMware

Kubernetes Tutorials from Pulumi

Kubernetes Playground by Katacoda

Scalable Microservices with Kubernetes course from Udacity

Kubernetes Tools, Frameworks, and Projects

Open Container Initiative is an open governance structure for the express purpose of creating open industry standards around container formats and runtimes.

Buildah is a command line tool to build Open Container Initiative (OCI) images. It can be used with Docker, Podman, Kubernetes.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is a managed, production-ready environment for running containerized applications.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is serverless Kubernetes, with a integrated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) experience, and enterprise-grade security and governance. Unite your development and operations teams on a single platform to rapidly build, deliver, and scale applications with confidence.

Amazon EKS is a tool that runs Kubernetes control plane instances across multiple Availability Zones to ensure high availability.

AWS Controllers for Kubernetes (ACK) is a new tool that lets you directly manage AWS services from Kubernetes. ACK makes it simple to build scalable and highly-available Kubernetes applications that utilize AWS services.

Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) is an Oracle-managed container orchestration service that can reduce the time and cost to build modern cloud native applications. Unlike most other vendors, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure provides Container Engine for Kubernetes as a free service that runs on higher-performance, lower-cost compute.

Anthos is a modern application management platform that provides a consistent development and operations experience for cloud and on-premises environments.

Red Hat Openshift is a fully managed Kubernetes platform that provides a foundation for on-premises, hybrid, and multicloud deployments.

OKD is a community distribution of Kubernetes optimized for continuous application development and multi-tenant deployment. OKD adds developer and operations-centric tools on top of Kubernetes to enable rapid application development, easy deployment and scaling, and long-term lifecycle maintenance for small and large teams.

Odo is a fast, iterative, and straightforward CLI tool for developers who write, build, and deploy applications on Kubernetes and OpenShift.

Kata Operator is an operator to perform lifecycle management (install/upgrade/uninstall) of Kata Runtime on Openshift as well as Kubernetes cluster.

Thanos is a set of components that can be composed into a highly available metric system with unlimited storage capacity, which can be added seamlessly on top of existing Prometheus deployments.

OpenShift Hive is an operator which runs as a service on top of Kubernetes/OpenShift. The Hive service can be used to provision and perform initial configuration of OpenShift 4 clusters.

Rook is a tool that turns distributed storage systems into self-managing, self-scaling, self-healing storage services. It automates the tasks of a storage administrator: deployment, bootstrapping, configuration, provisioning, scaling, upgrading, migration, disaster recovery, monitoring, and resource management.

VMware Tanzu is a centralized management platform for consistently operating and securing your Kubernetes infrastructure and modern applications across multiple teams and private/public clouds.

Kubespray is a tool that combines Kubernetes and Ansible to easily install Kubernetes clusters that can be deployed on AWS, GCE, Azure, OpenStack, vSphere, Packet (bare metal), Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (Experimental), or Baremetal.

KubeInit provides Ansible playbooks and roles for the deployment and configuration of multiple Kubernetes distributions.

Rancher is a complete software stack for teams adopting containers. It addresses the operational and security challenges of managing multiple Kubernetes clusters, while providing DevOps teams with integrated tools for running containerized workloads.

K3s is a highly available, certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances.

Helm is a Kubernetes Package Manager tool that makes it easier to install and manage Kubernetes applications.

Knative is a Kubernetes-based platform to build, deploy, and manage modern serverless workloads. Knative takes care of the operational overhead details of networking, autoscaling (even to zero), and revision tracking.

KubeFlow is a tool dedicated to making deployments of machine learning (ML) workflows on Kubernetes simple, portable and scalable.

Etcd is a distributed key-value store that provides a reliable way to store data that needs to be accessed by a distributed system or cluster of machines. Etcd is used as the backend for service discovery and stores cluster state and configuration for Kubernetes.

OpenEBS is a Kubernetes-based tool to create stateful applications using Container Attached Storage.

Container Storage Interface (CSI) is an API that lets container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes seamlessly communicate with stored data via a plug-in.

MicroK8s is a tool that delivers the full Kubernetes experience. In a Fully containerized deployment with compressed over-the-air updates for ultra-reliable operations. It is supported on Linux, Windows, and MacOS.

Charmed Kubernetes is a well integrated, turn-key, conformant Kubernetes platform, optimized for your multi-cloud environments developed by Canonical.

Grafana Kubernetes App is a toll that allows you to monitor your Kubernetes cluster's performance. It includes 4 dashboards, Cluster, Node, Pod/Container and Deployment. It allows for the automatic deployment of the required Prometheus exporters and a default scrape config to use with your in cluster Prometheus deployment.

KubeEdge is an open source system for extending native containerized application orchestration capabilities to hosts at Edge.It is built upon kubernetes and provides fundamental infrastructure support for network, app. deployment and metadata synchronization between cloud and edge.

Lens is the most powerful IDE for people who need to deal with Kubernetes clusters on a daily basis. It has support for MacOS, Windows and Linux operating systems.

Flux CD is a tool that automatically ensures that the state of your Kubernetes cluster matches the configuration you've supplied in Git. It uses an operator in the cluster to trigger deployments inside Kubernetes, which means that you don't need a separate continuous delivery tool.

Platform9 Managed Kubernetes (PMK) is a Kubernetes as a service that ensures fully automated Day-2 operations with 99.9% SLA on any environment, whether in data-centers, public clouds, or at the edge.

Ansible

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Mac Development Ansible Playbook by Jeff Geerling

Ansible Learning Resources

Ansible is a simple IT automation engine that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, and many other IT needs. It uses a very simple language (YAML, in the form of Ansible Playbooks) that allows you to describe your automation jobs in a way that approaches plain English. Anisble works on Linux (Red Hat EnterPrise Linux(RHEL) and Ubuntu) and Microsoft Windows.

Red Hat Training for Ansible

Top Ansible Courses Online from Udemy

Introduction to Ansible: The Fundamentals on Coursera

Learning Ansible Fundamentals on Pluralsight

Introducing Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.1

Ansible Documentation

Ansible Galaxy User Guide

Ansible Use Cases

Ansible Integrations

Ansible Collections Overview

Working with playbooks

Ansible for DevOps Examples by Jeff Geerling

Getting Started: Writing Your First Playbook - Ansible

Working With Modules in Ansible

Ansible Best Practices: Roles & Modules

Working with command line tools for Ansible

Encrypting content with Ansible Vault

Using vault in playbooks with Ansible

Using Ansible With Azure

Configuring Ansible on an Azure VM

How to Use Ansible: An Ansible Cheat Sheet Guide from DigitalOcean

Intro to Ansible on Linode | Spatial Labs

Ansible DevOps Tools Integration

Ansible Automation Hub is the official location to discover and download supported collections, included as part of an Ansible Automation Platform subscription. These content collections contain modules, plugins, roles, and playbooks in a downloadable package.

Collections are a distribution format for Ansible content that can include playbooks, roles, modules, and plugins. As modules move from the core Ansible repository into collections, the module documentation will move to the collections pages.

Ansible Lint is a command-line tool for linting playbooks, roles and collections aimed towards any Ansible users. Its main goal is to promote proven practices, patterns and behaviors while avoiding common pitfalls that can easily lead to bugs or make code harder to maintain.

Ansible cmdb is a tool that takes the output of Ansible’s fact gathering and converts it into a static HTML overview page containing system configuration information.

Ansible Inventory Grapher visually displays inventory inheritance hierarchies and at what level a variable is defined in inventory.

Ansible Playbook Grapher is a command line tool to create a graph representing your Ansible playbook tasks and roles.

Ansible Shell is an interactive shell for Ansible with built-in tab completion for all the modules.

Ansible Silo is a self-contained Ansible environment by Docker.

Ansigenome is a command line tool designed to help you manage your Ansible roles.

ARA is a records Ansible playbook runs and makes the recorded data available and intuitive for users and systems by integrating with Ansible as a callback plugin.

Capistrano is a remote server automation tool. It supports the scripting and execution of arbitrary tasks, and includes a set of sane-default deployment workflows.

Fabric is a high level Python (2.7, 3.4+) library designed to execute shell commands remotely over SSH, yielding useful Python objects in return. It builds on top of Invoke (subprocess command execution and command-line features) and Paramiko (SSH protocol implementation), extending their APIs to complement one another and provide additional functionality.

ansible-role-wireguard is an Ansible role for installing WireGuard VPN. Supports Ubuntu, Debian, Archlinx, Fedora and CentOS Stream.

wireguard_cloud_gateway is an Ansible role for setting up Wireguard as a gateway VPN server for cloud networks.

Red Hat OpenShift is focused on security at every level of the container stack and throughout the application lifecycle. It includes long-term, enterprise support from one of the leading Kubernetes contributors and open source software companies.

OpenShift Hive is an operator which runs as a service on top of Kubernetes/OpenShift. The Hive service can be used to provision and perform initial configuration of OpenShift 4 clusters.

Running Linux on the Apple Silicon

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Developer Quick Links

Running Intel Binaries in Linux VMs with Rosetta - Running x86_64 Linux binaries under ARM Linux on Apple silicon.
Virtualize Linux on a Mac - Configure and run Linux guests on Apple silicon and Intel-based Mac computers.

Parallels Desktop for Mac is a program that let's you runs Windows side-by-side with macOS (no restarting required) on your MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, Mac mini or Mac Pro. Share files and folders, copy and paste images and text & drag and drop files between Mac and Windows applications.

Parallels Desktop for Mac

UTM is a full featured system emulator and virtual machine host for iOS and macOS. It is based off of QEMU that allows you to run Windows, Linux, and more on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Ubuntu on UTM

Multipass is a tool to generate cloud-style Ubuntu VMs quickly on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It uses KVM on Linux, Hyper-V on Windows, and HyperKit on macOS.

Asahi Linux Development

Hector Martin has merged the initial support for Apple M1 hardware into the Linux SOC (System On a Chip) tree for Linux Kernel 5.13. Also credit to developers Sven Peter and Alyssa Rosenzweig.

Asahi Linux is a project and community with the goal of porting Linux to Apple Silicon Macs, starting with the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro. Their goal is not just to make Linux run on these machines but to polish it to the point where it can be used as a daily OS.

M1N1 is a bootloader and experimentation playground for Apple Silicon.

Apple Silicon to Apple Silicon VDM utility is a tool that lets you get a serial console on an Apple Silicon device and reboot it remotely, using only another Apple Silicon device running macOS and a standard Type C cable.

Asahi GPU is a repo that provides research for an open source graphics stack (3D acceleration) for Apple M1 chips.

The AsahiLinux Apple GPU drivers features are a work-in-progress OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 support for all current Apple M-series systems. That’s enough for hardware acceleration with desktop environments, like GNOME and KDE. It’s also enough for older 3D games, like Quake3 and Neverball.

Asahi Linux Graphics Team:

* [Alyssa Rosenzweig](https://social.treehouse.systems/@alyssa) is writing the OpenGL driver and compiler.
* [Asahi Lina](https://vt.social/@lina) is writing the kernel driver and helping with OpenGL.
* [Dougall Johnson](https://mastodon.social/@dougall) is reverse-engineering the instruction set with Alyssa.
* [Ella Stanforth](https://tech.lgbt/@ella) is working on a Vulkan driver, reusing the kernel driver, the compiler, and some code shared with the OpenGL driver.

Installing the Apple GPU Drivers:

To get the new drivers, you need to run the linux-asahi-edge kernel and also install the mesa-asahi-edge Mesa package.

$ sudo pacman -Syu
$ sudo pacman -S linux-asahi-edge mesa-asahi-edge
$ sudo update-grub

Since only one version of Mesa can be installed at a time, pacman will prompt you to replace mesa with mesa-asahi-edge. This is normal!

Recommendation: Run Wayland instead of Xorg at this point, so if you’re using the KDE Plasma environment, make sure to install the Wayland session:

$ sudo pacman -S plasma-wayland-session

Then reboot, pick the Wayland session at the top of the login screen (SDDM), and enjoy! You might want to adjust the screen scale factor in System Settings → Display and Monitor (Plasma Wayland defaults to 100% or 200%, while 150% is often nicer). If you have “Force font DPI” enabled under Appearance → Fonts, you should disable that (it is saved separately for Wayland and Xorg, and shouldn’t be necessary on Wayland sessions). Log out and back in for these changes to fully apply.

NixOS Development on M1

NixOS on M1 Macs

NixOS is a Linux distribution built on top of the Nix package manager. It has tools dedicated to DevOps and deployment tasks.

Nix Tour is an interactive tour that uses the actual package manager to learn you the language by example, in the browser

Nix is a package manager and build system that parses reproducible build instructions specified in the Nix Expression Language, is a pure functional language with lazy evaluation. Nix expressions are pure functions taking dependencies as arguments and producing derivation specifying a reproducible build environment for the package. Nix stores the results of the build in unique addresses specified by a hash of the complete dependency tree, creating an immutable package store that allows for atomic upgrades, rollbacks and concurrent installation of different versions of a package, essentially eliminating dependency hell.

Nix Expression Language is a pure, lazy, functional language. Purity means that operations in the language don't have side-effects (for instance, there is no variable assignment). The language is not a full-featured, general purpose language. Its main job is to describe packages, compositions of packages, and the variability within packages.

Nixpkgs is the largest repository of Nix packages(over 60,000 packages) and NixOS modules. The repository is hosted on GitHub and maintained by the community, with official backing from the NixOS Foundation. Additionally, checkout Language-specific package helpers and Alternative Package Sets.

NixOS Packages Search is a tool for searching through NixOS packages.

NixOS with the Plasma Desktop

Running Windows 10/11 on the Apple Silicon

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Parallels Desktop for Mac

UTM is a full featured system emulator and virtual machine host for iOS and macOS. It is based off of QEMU that allows you to run Windows, Linux, and more on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Windows 11 on UTM

VMware Fusion 22H2 is a software hypervisor developed by VMware for Mac computers.It creates a virtual machine and install an operating system (such as Windows or Linux) inside that virtual machine.

Windows 11 on Intel and Apple Silicon, with 2D graphics and networking support.
VMTools installation support for Windows 11 guest operating system on M1-based Macs.
Virtual TPM device with fast encryption support.
Improved Linux support on M1.
3D Graphics HW Acceleration and OpenGL 4.3(Requires Linux 5.19+ & Mesa 22.1.3+) in Linux virtual machines.
Universal Binary for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

Windows 11 on VMware Fusion

ARM64EC (“Emulation Compatible”) is a new application binary interface (ABI) for Windows 11 on ARM that runs with native speed and is interoperable with x64 architecture. An app, process, or even a module can freely mix and match with ARM64EC and x64 as needed. The ARM64EC code in the app will run natively while any x64 code will run using Windows 11 on ARM’s built-in emulation. The ARM64EC ABI differs slightly from the current ARM64 ABI in ways that make it binary compatible with x64 code. Specifically, the ARM64EC ABI follows x64 software conventions including calling convention, stack usage, and data alignment, making ARM64EC and x64 interoperable. Apps built as ARM64EC may contain x64 code but do not have to, since ARM64EC is its own complete, first-class ABI for Windows.

Windows 11 Desktop

Windows 10 Desktop

Gaming

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Gaming on Apple Silicon resources

Manage Temps/Control Fans (CPU and GPU)

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MacsFanControl is a to control fans on Apple computers.

Features:

Real-time monitoring of fan speeds and temperatures
Solve overheating problems like those found on a MacBook Pro
Works on all Macs, both Intel & Apple Silicon

iStat Menus is highly configurable tool, with full support for macOS light and dark menubar modes. It covers a huge range of stats, including a CPU monitor, GPU, memory, network usage, disk usage, disk activity, date & time, battery and more.

smcFanControl is a tool that lets the user set a minimum speed for built-in fans. It allows you to increase your minimum fan speed to make your Intel or Apple Silicon Mac run cooler.

Gaming Peripherals

RGB Devices

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Logitech G Hub is software tool that lets you customize Logitech G gaming mice, keyboards, headsets, speakers, and other devices.

Corsair iCUE is a tool that enables gaming peripherals and personal computer components including computer case fans, RGB lighting, gaming headsets, gaming keyboards, gaming mouse, remap buttons and switches, RAM DIMMS and AIO CPU cooler together.

Game Controllers

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MacOS Ventura Settings for Game Controllers

Xbox Wireless Controller + USB-C® Cable

Xbox Controller

PlayStation 5 DualSense™ Wireless Controller

PS 5 DualSense™ Controller

Nintendo Switch Pro Controller

Setting up OBS Studio

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OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding. Starting with OBS Studio version 28 it will feature 10-bit and HDR video encode support for AV1 and HEVC, and native Apple Silicon support on macOS.

OBS Studio

Useful OBS Studio 3rd party plugins and themes.

OBS Studio Themes
touch portal icon packs
Streamlink is a CLI utility which pipes video streams from various services into a video player, such as VLC.
Advanced Scene Switcher plugin; an automated scene switcher.
Audio Pan plugin; control stereo pan of audio source.
Browser plugin; CEF-based OBS Studio browser plugin.
Directory Watch Media plugin; filter you can add to media source to load the oldest or newest file in a directory.
Downstream Keyer plugin; add a Downstream Keyer dock.
Dynamic Delay plugin; filter for dynamic delaying a video source.
Freeze Filter plugin; freeze a source using a filter.
Gradient Source plugin; adding gradients as a Soource.
GStreamer plugins; feed GStreamer launch pipelines into OBS Studio and use GStreamer encoder elements.
Move Transition plugin; move source to a new position during scene transition.
Multi Source Effect plugin; provides a custom effect to render multiple sources.
NDI plugin; Network A/V via NewTek's NDI.
NvFBC plugin; screen capture via NVIDIA FBC API. Requires NvFBC patches for Nvidia drivers for consumer grade GPUs.
Soundboard plugin; adds a soundboard dock.
Source Copy plugin; adds copy and paste options to the tools menu.
Source Dock plugin; create a Dock for a source, which lets you see audio levels, change volume and control media.
Recursion Effect plugin; recursion effect filter.
Replay Source plugin; slow motion replay async sources from memory.
RGB Levels plugin; simple filter to adjust RGB levels.
RTSPServer plugin; encode and publish to a RTSP stream.
Scale to Sound plugin; adds a filter which makes a source scale based on the audio levels of any audio source you choose
Scene Collection Manager plugin; filter, backup and restore Scene Collections.
Scene Notes Dock plugin; create a Dock for showing and editing notes for the current active scene.
Source Record plugin; make sources available to record via a filter.
Source Switcher plugin; to switch between a list of sources.
Spectralizer plugin; audio visualization using fftw.
StreamFX plugin; collection modern effects filters and transitions.
Teleport plugin; open NDI-like replacement.
Text Pango plugin; Provides a text source rendered using Pango with multi-language support, emoji support, vertical rendering and RTL support.
Text PThread plugin; Rich text source plugin with many advanced features.
Time Warp Scan plugin; a time warp scan filter.
Transition Table plugin; customize scene transitions.
Virtual Cam Filter plugin; make sources available to the virtual camera via a filter
VNC Source plugin; VNC viewer that works as a source.
Websockets plugin; remote-control OBS Studio through WebSockets, compatible with StreamControl.

Discord

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Discord is an application with modern voice & text chat app. It provides clear voice, multiple server and channel support, mobile apps, and more. It's available on Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and your web browser.

Twitch

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Twitch for MacOS/iOSis an application where thousands of communities come together for our favorite streamers join millions enjoying live games, music, sports, esports, podcasts, cooking shows, IRL streams, etc..

Running your iOS apps/games in macOS

Game Stores & Launchers

Apple Arcade

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Apple Arcade is a game subscription service that gives up to six family members unlimited access to 100+ incredibly fun games, all with no ads and no in-app purchases.

CrossOver for MacOS

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CrossOver for MacOS is a tool that let's you run many popular Windows games on your MacOS system. It comes with an easy to use, single click interface, which makes installing your games simple and fast. CrossOver is built on the latest versions of Wine, based on contributions from both CodeWeavers and the open-source Wine community.

CrossOver Apps Compatibility Database
Recommended: Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable ARM64 Version

Steam

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Installing Steam through CrossOver

Steam Link app is available free of charge, streaming your Steam PC games to phones, tablets, and TV.

Epic Games Store

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Heroic Game Launcher is an Open Source Game Launcher for Linux, Windows and MacOS (for both Native and Windows Games using Crossover). It supports launching games from the Epic Games Store using Legendary, a CLI alternative to the Epic Games Launcher.

Epic Games Store is a digital video game storefront for Microsoft Windows and macOS, operated by Epic Games.

Blizzard Battle.net

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Blizzard Battle.net is an internet-based online gaming, digital distribution, and digital rights management platform developed by Activision and Blizzard Entertainment. Battle.net is the launcher for World of Warcraft, Diablo III, StarCraft II, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch and Call of Duty.

Origin

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Origin for MacOS is an online gaming, digital distribution and digital rights management (DRM) platform developed by Electronic Arts that allows users to purchase games on the internet for PC and mobile platforms, and download them with the Origin client (formerly EA Download Manager, EA Downloader and EA Link).

Origin installer through CrossOver

EA Play

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EA Play is a subscription-based video game service from Electronic Arts for the Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Windows platforms, offering access to selected games published by Electronic Arts along with additional incentives.

Note: you will need to install Origin to access all EA game titles for EA Play even if you use EA Play on Steam.

Ways to Play EA Play on macOS Apple Silicon:

Ubisoft Connect

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Ubisoft Connect is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications service created by Ubisoft to provide an experience similar to the achievements/trophies offered by various other game companies.

Ways to Play Ubisift Connect on macOS Apple Silicon:

GOG Galaxy

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GOG Galaxy is an application that lets you combine multiple game libraries into one place and connect with your friends across all gaming platforms, consoles included.

GOG Galazy installer through CrossOver

Itch.io Store

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Itch.io Store is an app that lets you effortlessly download and run games and software from itch.io. All of your downloads are kept in a single place and are automatically updated.

Prism

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Prism Launcher for Minecraft is an Open Source Minecraft launcher with the ability to manage multiple instances, accounts and mods.

XIV on Mac

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XIVONMAC is a modern, open-source Final Fantasy XIV client for macOS.

Game Streaming

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Cloud Game Streaming

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Xbox Cloud Gaming is Microsoft's cloud-based Xbox game-streaming technology (currently in Beta). Play games like Forza Horizon 4, Halo 5: Guardians, Gears of War 4, Sea of Thieves, Cuphead, Red Dead Redemption 2, and 100+ other games on your mobile device or Chrome web browser. Xbox Cloud Gaming does require an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.

Geforce NOW is NVIDIA's Cloud Gaming Service.

Amazon Luna is Amazon's Cloud Gaming Service. Amazon Luna is Compatible/Supported on a vartiey of Devices and Browsers.

Shadow is a fully-featured, cloud-based, high-end computer. It is the only remote service that offers performance capable of competing with a local PC. Available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android/AndroidTV, and iOS/tvOS.

Local Game Streaming

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Steam Remote Play Together is a steam service that let's you share your Steam local multi-player games with friends over the internet, for free. Using Remote Play Together, one player owns and runs the game, then up to four players can join.

Steam Link app is available free of charge, streaming your Steam PC games to phones, tablets, and TV.

PlayStation Remote Play is a feature available on all PS4 and PS5 consoles that let's you control your PlayStation® console remotely wherever you have a high-speed internet connection.

Chiaki is a Free and Open Source Software Client for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 Remote Play for Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Android, macOS, Windows, Nintendo Switch and potentially even more platforms.

Parsec is a video game streaming platform, which offers a wide variety of games and genres to choose from and provides a high-quality and smooth gameplay. SParsec is developed in order to provide a high-quality smooth gameplay, same time to be free of all ads and in-game purchases.

Moonlight Game Streaming is a program that let you stream from your PC games over the Internet with no configuration required. Stream from almost any device, whether you're in another room or miles away from your gaming rig. Sunshine is a Game stream host for Moonlight that is a self-hosted, low latency, cloud gaming solution with support for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs.

Game Emulators

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Also checkout these subreddits for more great Game Emulators recommendations

Frontends

EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE) is a frontend application for browsing and launching games from your multi-platform game collection. It's available for Unix/Linux, macOS(M1 & Intel) and Windows.

RetroArch is a frontend for emulators, game engines and media players. It enables you to run classic games on a wide range of computers and consoles through its slick graphical interface. Settings are also unified so configuration is done once and for all.

OpenEmu is an open-source project whose purpose is to bring macOS game emulation into the realm of first-class citizenship. The project leverages modern macOS technologies, such as Cocoa, Core Animation, and other third-party libraries.

Currently, OpenEmu can load the following game engines as plugins:

Atari 2600 (Stella)
Atari 5200 (Atari800)
Atari 7800 (ProSystem)
Atari Lynx (Mednafen)
ColecoVision (CrabEmu)
Famicom Disk System (Nestopia)
Game Boy / Game Boy Color (Gambatte)
Game Boy Advance (mGBA)
Game Gear (Genesis Plus)
Intellivision (Bliss)
NeoGeo Pocket (Mednafen)
Nintendo (NES) / Famicom (FCEUX, Nestopia)
Nintendo 64 (Mupen64Plus)
Nintendo DS (DeSmuME)
Nintendo GameCube (Dolphin)
Odyssey² / Videopac+ (O2EM)
PC-FX (Mednafen)
SG-1000 (Genesis Plus)
Sega 32X (picodrive)
Sega CD / Mega CD (Genesis Plus)
Sega Genesis / Mega Drive (Genesis Plus)
Sega Master System (Genesis Plus)
Sega Saturn (Mednafen)
Sony PSP (PPSSPP)
Sony PlayStation (Mednafen)
Super Nintendo (SNES) (BSNES, Snes9x)
TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine (Mednafen)
TurboGrafx-CD / PCE-CD (Mednafen)
Vectrex (VecXGL)
Virtual Boy (Mednafen)
WonderSwan (Mednafen)

Pegasus is a cross platform, customizable graphical frontend for launching emulators and managing your game library (especially retro games) and launching them from one place. It's focused on customizability, cross platform support (including embedded devices) and high performance.

Cartridge is a self-hosted game library made with Laravel + Vue.js.

Cartridge Features

Scan for ROM files and match with IGDB game information
Serve ROM download links alongside game details
Manage access to library with user creation and permissions (WIP)
Allow users to request games (Planned)
Play select ROMs in-browser using JS emulators (Planned)
Track played and favorite games (even ones that aren't available for download) (Planned)

Cartridge UI

Nintendo GameCube & Wii

Dolphin is an emulator for two recent Nintendo video game consoles: the GameCube and the Wii. It allows PC gamers to enjoy games for these two consoles in full HD (1080p) with several enhancements: compatibility with all PC controllers, turbo speed, networked multiplayer, and even more.

Nintendo Switch

Ryujinx is an open-source Nintendo Switch emulator created by gdkchan and written in C#. This emulator aims at providing excellent accuracy and performance, a user-friendly interface, and consistent builds.

yuzu is an experimental open-source emulator for the Nintendo Switch from the creators of Citra.

Nintendo 64

m64p is a Nintendo 64 Emulator. It uses mupen64plus-gui, a brand new mupen64plus frontend written in Qt5. It supports all of the things you’d expect from a frontend (savestate management, pausing, screenshots).

Nintendo 3DS

Citra is an open-source emulator for the Nintendo 3DS capable of playing many of your favorite games.

Nintendo DS

DeSmuME is a Nintendo DS emulator.

melonDS is a tool that aims at providing fast and accurate Nintendo DS emulation. While it is still a work in progress, it has a pretty solid set of features.

Features:

* Nearly complete core (CPU, video, audio, etc...)
* OpenGL renderer, 3D upscaling
* RTC, microphone, lid close/open
* Joystick support
* Savestates
* Various display position/sizing/rotations modes
* Work-in-progress Wi-Fi emulation for online connectivity and local multiplayer
* Experimental emulation of the Nintendo DSi

Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)

Snes9x is a portable, freeware Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator.

bsnes is a Super Nintendo (SNES) emulator focused on performance, features, and ease of use.

Game Boy Advance

mGBA is a new emulator for running Game Boy Advance games. It aims to be faster and more accurate than many existing Game Boy Advance emulators, as well as adding features that other emulators lack.

DOS

DOSBox is an open-source DOS emulator which primarily focuses on running DOS Games.

DOSBox Staging is a full x86 CPU emulator (independent of host architecture), capable of running DOS programs that require real or protected mode.

Atari

Stella is a multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Stella is available on Windows MacOS, Linux, and FreeBSD.

Hatari is an Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon emulator for Linux, BSD, MacOS, Windows and other systems which are supported by the SDL library. The Atari ST was a 16/32 bit computer system which was first released by Atari in 1985.

Sega Dreamcast

Flycast is a multi-platform Sega Dreamcast, Naomi and Atomiswave emulator derived from reicast.

PlayStation Portable

PPSSPP is a PSP emulator that can run games in full HD resolution. It can even upscale textures that would otherwise be too blurry as they were made for the small screen of the original PSP.

PlayStation 1

DuckStation is an simulator/emulator of the Sony PlayStation 1 console, focusing on playability, speed, and long-term maintainability.

Avocado is a Modern PlayStation 1 emulator.

PlayStation 2

AetherSX2 is a free (no ads) emulator of the PlayStation 2 (PS2) console for ARM-based devices. This enables you to play games which you have dumped from disc on your smartphone.

PCSX2 is a Playstation 2 'emulator', a free program that tries to replicate the Playstation 2 console to enable you to play PS2 games on your PC.

Play! is a PlayStation2 emulator for Windows, macOS, UNIX, Android, iOS and web browser platforms.

PlayStation 3

RPCS3 is an experimental open-source Sony PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger written in C++ for Windows and Linux. RPCS3 started development in May of 2011 by its founders DH and Hykem. The emulator is currently capable of running over 1800 commercial titles powered by Vulkan and OpenGL.

Xbox

xemu is an original Xbox emulator.

Xenia is an Xbox 360 Emulator.

MAME

MAME is a Arcade Machine Emulator.

Performance Benchmarks

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Geekbench 5 is a cross-platform benchmark that measures your system's performance with the press of a button.

GFXBench 5.0 is a high-end graphics benchmark that measures mobile and desktop performance with next-gen graphics features across all platforms. As a true cross-API benchmark, GFXBench supports all the industry-standard and vendor-specific APIs including OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan, Metal, DirectX/Direct3D and DX12.

PugetBench Benchmarks is an application that has a number of benchmarks that are designed to test many popular professional applications using real-world projects and workflows.

Phoronix Test Suite

UNIGINE Superposition is an extreme performance and stability test for PC hardware: video card, power supply, cooling system.

asitop is a Performance monitoring CLI tool for Apple Silicon.

Game Development

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Game Engines

Checkout the Unity Engine

Checkout the Unreal Engine

Checkout the Godot Engine

If you would like to Donate to the Godot Project

Checkout Blender

If you would like to Donate to the Blender Project

Checkout Game Maker Studio 2

Game Development Learning Resources

Unreal Online Learning is a free learning platform that offers hands-on video courses and guided learning paths.

Unreal Engine Authorized Training Program

Unreal Engine for education

Unreal Engine Training & Simulation

Unity Certifications

Autodesk for Games

Getting Started with DirectX 12 Ultimate

Getting Started with Vulkan

Getting Started with Apple Metal

Game Design Online Courses from Udemy

Game Design Online Courses from Skillshare

Learn Game Design with Online Courses and Classes from edX

Game Design Courses from Coursera

Game Design and Development Specialization Course from Coursera

Game Development Tools

Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games with the world's most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool. Continuously evolving to serve not only its original purpose as a state-of-the-art game engine, today it gives creators across industries the freedom and control to deliver cutting-edge content, interactive experiences, and immersive virtual worlds.

Unity is a cross-platform game development platform. Use Unity to build high-quality 3D and 2D games, deploy them across mobile, desktop, VR/AR, consoles or the Web, and connect with loyal and enthusiastic players and customers.

Unigine is a cross-platform game engine designed for development teams (C++/C# programmers, 3D artists) working on interactive 3D apps.

Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs, developed by Disney and CMU. Panda3D is open-source and free for any purpose, including commercial ventures.

Havok is a middleware software suite that provides a realistic physics engine component and related functions to video games. It is supported and optimized across all major platforms, including Nintendo Switch, PlayStation®, Stadia, and Xbox. Along with integrations for Unity and Unreal Engine and are used in countless proprietary game engines.

AutoDesk 3ds Max is a professional software program for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, and visualization. 3ds Max allows you to create stunning game environments, design visualizations, and virtual reality experiences.

Houdini is a 3D procedural software for modeling, rigging, animation, VFX, look development, lighting and rendering in film, TV, advertising and video game pipelines.

A-Frame is a web framework for building virtual reality experiences in WebVR with HTML and Entity-Component. A-Frame works on Vive, Rift, desktop, mobile platforms.

AppGameKit is a powerful game development engine, ideal for Hobbyist and Indie developers. Where you can start coding in the easy to learn AppGameKit BASIC or use the libraries in C++ & XCode.

Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline.

GameMaker Studio 2 is the latest and greatest incarnation of GameMaker. It has everything you need to take your idea from concept to finished game. With no barriers to entry and powerful functionality, GameMaker Studio 2 is the ultimate 2D development environment.

Godot is a feature-packed, cross-platform game engine to create 2D and 3D games from a unified interface. It provides a comprehensive set of common tools, so that users can focus on making games without having to reinvent the wheel. Games can be exported in one click to a number of platforms, including the major desktop platforms (Linux, Mac OSX, Windows) as well as mobile (Android, iOS) and web-based (HTML5) platforms.

Open Computing Language (OpenCL) is an open standard for parallel programming of heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other hardware accelerators found in supercomputers, cloud servers, personal computers, mobile devices and embedded platforms.

OpenGL Shading Language(GLSL) is a High Level Shading Language based on the C-style language, so it covers most of the features a user would expect with such a language. Such as control structures (for-loops, if-else statements, etc) exist in GLSL, including the switch statement.

High Level Shading Language(HLSL) is the High Level Shading Language for DirectX. Using HLSL, the user can create C-like programmable shaders for the Direct3D pipeline. HLSL was first created with DirectX 9 to set up the programmable 3D pipeline.

Vulkan is a modern cross-platform graphics and compute API that provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms. Vulkan is currently in development by the Khronos consortium.

Metal is a low-level GPU programming framework used for rendering 2D and 3D graphics on Apple platforms such as iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.

MoltenVK is an implementation of Vulkan running on iOS and macOS using Apple's Metal graphics framework.

MoltenGL is an implementation of the OpenGL ES 2.0 API that runs on Apple's Metal graphics framework.

Mesa 3D Graphics Library is a project began as an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification. A system for rendering interactive 3D graphics. Mesa ties into several other open-source projects: the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, X.org, and Wayland to provide OpenGL support on Linux, FreeBSD, and other operating systems.

OpenCL is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, FPGAs and other processors or hardware accelerators.

VDPAU is the Video Decode and Presentation API for UNIX. It provides an interface to video decode acceleration and presentation hardware present in modern GPUs.

VA API is an open-source library and API specification, which provides access to graphics hardware acceleration capabilities for video processing.

XvMC is an extension of the X video extension (Xv) for the X Window System. The XvMC API allows video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process to the GPU hardware.

AMD Radeon ProRender is a powerful physically-based rendering engine that enables creative professionals to produce stunningly photorealistic images on virtually any GPU, any CPU, and any OS in over a dozen leading digital content creation and CAD applications.

NVIDIA Omniverse is a powerful, multi-GPU, real-time simulation and collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines based on Pixar's Universal Scene Description and NVIDIA RTX.

LibGDX is a cross-platform Java game development framework based on OpenGL (ES) that works on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android, your WebGL enabled browser and iOS.

cocos2d-x is a multi-platform framework for building 2d games, interactive books, demos and other graphical applications. It is based on cocos2d-iphone, but instead of using Objective-C, it uses C++. It works on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux.

MonoGame is a framework for creating powerful cross-platform games. The spiritual successor to XNA with thousands of titles shipped across desktop, mobile, and console platforms. MonoGame is a fully managed .NET open source game framework without any black boxes.

Three.js is a cross-browser JavaScript library and application programming interface used to create and display animated 3D computer graphics in a web browser using WebGL.

Superpowers is a downloadable HTML5 app for real-time collaborative projects . You can use it solo like a regular offline game maker, or setup a password and let friends join in on your project through their Web browser.

URHO3D is a free lightweight, cross-platform 2D and 3D game engine implemented in C++ and released under the MIT license. Greatly inspired by OGRE and Horde3D.

Vivox is a voice & text chat platform that's trusted by the world's biggest gaming brands and titles such as Fortnite, PUBG, League of Legends, and Rainbow Six Siege.

HGIG is a volunteer group of companies from the game and TV display industries that meet to specify and make available for the public guidelines to improve consumer gaming experiences in HDR.

GameBlocks is a Server Side Anti-Cheat & Middleware software.

Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR)

RealityKit is a framework to implement high-performance 3D simulation and rendering with information provided by the ARKit framework to seamlessly integrate virtual objects into the real world.

SceneKit is a high-level 3D graphics framework that helps you create 3D animated scenes and effects in your iOS apps.

ARCore is a software development kit developed by Google that allows for augmented reality applications in the real world. These tools include environmental understanding, which allows devices to detect horizontal and vertical surfaces and planes. It also includes motion tracking, which lets phones understand and track their positions relative to the world. Also ARCore’s Light Estimation API lets your digital objects appear realistically as if they’re actually part of the physical world.

OpenVR is an API and runtime that allows access to VR hardware(Steam Index, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift) from multiple vendors without requiring that applications have specific knowledge of the hardware they are targeting.

OpenVR Benchmark on Steam is the first benchmark tool for reproducibly testing your real VR performance, rendering inside of your VR headset.

OpenHMD is open source API and drivers that supports a wide range of HMD(head-mounted display) devices such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Sony PSVR, and others.

openXR is a free, open standard that provides high-performance access to Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) collectively known as XR—platforms and devices.

Monado is the first OpenXR™ runtime for GNU/Linux. Monado aims to jump-start development of an open source XR ecosystem and provide the fundamental building blocks for device vendors to target the GNU/Linux platform.

Libsurvive is a set of tools and libraries that enable 6 dof tracking on lighthouse and vive based systems that is completely open source and can run on any device. It currently supports both SteamVR 1.0 and SteamVR 2.0 generation of devices and should support any tracked object commercially available.

Simula is a VR window manager for Linux that runs on top of Godot. It takes less than 1 minute to install. Simula is officially compatible with SteamVR headsets equipped with Linux drivers (e.g. HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro, & Valve Index). We have also added experimental support to OpenXR headsets that have Monado drivers (e.g. North Star, OSVR HDK, and PSVR). Some people have gotten the Oculus Rift S to run Simula via OpenHMD (see here).

Professional Audio/Video Development

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Audio/Video Learning Resources

10 Video Production Tools That Make the Difference Between a Good Video and a Bad One by Dann Albright

Online Audio Editing Classes from Skillshare

Online Video Editing Classes Skillshare

Video Editing Courses from Udemy

Audio Editing Courses from udemy

Video Editing Courses from Coursera

The Basics of Audio Editing from Coursera

Audacity Podcast Production Course: Audio Editing for Podcasters

Video Editing Online Training Courses from LinkedIn Learning

Audio Editing Online Training Courses from LinkedIn Learning

Audio/Video Tools and Equipment

H.264(AVC) is a video compression standard based on block-oriented and motion-compensated integer-DCT coding that defines multiple profiles (tools) and levels (max bitrates and resolutions) with support up to 8K.

H.265(HEVC) is a video compression standard that is the successor to H.264(AVC). It offers a 25% to 50% better data compression at the same level of video quality, or improved video quality at the same bit-rate.

FFmpeg is a leading multimedia framework that can decode, encode, transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans and machines have created. It supports the most obscure ancient formats up to the cutting edge ones on multiple platforms such as Windows, macOS, and Linux.

HandBrake is a tool for transcoding video from almost any format with a selection of widely supported codecs. It is supported on Window, macOS, and Linux.

HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) is a communications protocol developed by Apple that sends live and on‐demand audio and video to iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and PC.

Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) is an adaptive streaming protocol that allows for a video stream to switch between bit rates on the basis of network performance, in order to keep a video playing.

OpenMAX™ is a cross-platform API that provides comprehensive streaming media codec and application portability by enabling accelerated multimedia components to be developed, integrated and programmed across multiple operating systems and silicon platforms.

GStreamer is a library for constructing graphs of media-handling components. The applications it supports range from simple Ogg/Vorbis playback, audio/video streaming to complex audio (mixing) and video (non-linear editing) processing. Applications can take advantage of advances in codec and filter technology transparently.

Media Source Extensions (MSE) is a W3C specification that allows JavaScript to send byte streams to media codecs within Web browsers that support HTML5 video and audio. Also, this allows the implementation of client-side prefetching and buffering code for streaming media entirely in JavaScript.

WebRTC is an open-source project that adds real-time communication capabilities to your application that works on top of an open standard. It supports video, voice, and generic data to be sent between peers, allowing developers to build powerful voice- and video-communication solutions.

Apple ProRes is a codec technology developed by Apple for high-quality & high-performance editing in Final Cut Pro that supports up to 8K.

Premiere Pro is the industry-leading video editing software for film, TV, and the web. Creative tools, integration with other apps and services, and the power of Adobe Sensei help you craft footage into polished films and videos. With Premiere Rush you can create and edit new projects from any device.

Final Cut Pro is Apple's professional grade video editing software.

Kdenlive is an open source video editing tool that supports unlimited multimedia files. It's based on the MLT Framework, KDE and Qt. People who are looking for a very versatile video editing tool that comes packed with features. The latest 20.08 release is out with nifty features like Interface Layouts, Multiple Audio Stream support, Cached data management and Zoombars in the Clip Monitor and Effects Panel but one may argue that the highlights of this release are stability and interface improvements.

OpenShot is an open-source video editing tool that's designed for users new in the editing environment. It has simple features such as a simple drag-and-drop function, it provides an easy-to-use and quick-to-learn user interface. The powerful video editor offers tons of efficient ways to cut and trim down your videos. You can freely utilize the unlimited tracks, video effects engine, title editor, 3D animations, slow motion, and time effects. It supports commonly used video codecs that are supported by FFmpeg like WebM (VP9), AVCHD (libx264), HEVC (libx265) and audio codecs like mp3 (libmp3lame) and aac (libfaac). The program can render MPEG4, ogv, Blu-ray and DVD video, and Full HD videos for uploading to the internet video websites like YouTube.

DaVinci Resolve is the world’s only solution that combines professional 8K editing, color correction, visual effects and audio post production all in one software tool! You can instantly move between editing, color, effects, and audio with a single click. DaVinci Resolve Studio is also the only solution designed for multi user collaboration so editors, assistants, colorists, VFX artists and sound designers can all work live on the same project at the same time.

Blender comes with a built-in video sequence editor allows you to perform basic actions like video cuts and splicing, as well as more complex tasks like video masking or color grading. The Video Editor includes: Live preview, luma waveform, chroma vectorscope and histogram displays. Audio mixing, syncing, scrubbing and waveform visualization.

Lightworks is a non-linear video editing appluication for editing and mastering digital video used by the film industry. Its professional edition has been used for box office hits, such as Shutter Island, Pulp Fiction, and Mission Impossible. Intimidating user interface. Like professional video editors, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Lightworks is rather complicated to use for new users.

Shotcut is an open source multi-platform video editor. You can perform various actions such as video editing (including 4K video quality), add effects, create new movies, import most image files formats, export to almost any file format and much more.

Olive is a free non-linear video editor aiming to provide a fully-featured alternative to high-end professional video editing software.

REAPER is a complete digital audio production application for computers, offering a full multitrack audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing and mastering toolset.REAPER supports a vast range of hardware, digital formats and plugins, and can be comprehensively extended, scripted and modified.

Logic Pro is a digital audio workstation (DAW) and MIDI sequencer software application for macOS.

Ableton Live is a digital audio workstation application. It's designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for composing, recording, arranging, mixing, and mastering.

Bitwig Studio is a digital audio workstation that has linear and non-linear workflows for sound design, recording, live performance, and more. Along with 90+ instruments, effects, and other creative tools. It is supported Windows, macOS, and Linux.

SonoBus is an easy to use application for streaming high-quality, low-latency peer-to-peer audio between devices over the internet or a local network.

Avid Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation for mixing Dolby Atmos or other 3D audio for film or TV, working in a large mixing stage or a small editing suite.

Adobe Audition is a digital audio workstation with tools for color, audio, and graphics, Premiere Pro works seamlessly with other apps and services, including After Effects, Adobe Audition, and Adobe Stock.

JACK Audio Connection Kit AKA JACK is a professional sound server daemon that provides real-time, low-latency connections for both audio and MIDI data between applications that implement its API. JACK can be configured to send audio data over a network to a main machine, which then outputs the audio to a physical device. This can be useful to mix audio from a number of linked computers without requiring additional cables or hardware mixers, and keeping the audio path digital for as long as possible.

JACK2 is a C++ version of the JACK low-latency audio server for multi-processor machines. It is a new implementation of the JACK server core features that aims at removing some limitations of the JACK1 design. The activation system has been changed for a data flow model and lock-free programming techniques for graph access have been used to have a more dynamic and robust system.

Image-Line FL Studio is a digital audio workstation for mixing audio and music sequencing developed by Image-Line.

Propellerhead Reason is a digital audio workstation with tools you need for creative music production, recording, sequencing and mixing.

Cockos Reaper is a full, flexible feature set digital audio workstation with tools used for commercial/home studios, broadcast, location recording, education, science/research, sound design, game development, and more.

PreSonus Studio One is a digital audio workstation application, used to create, record, mix and master music and other audio.

Steinberg Cubase is a digital audio workstation developed by Steinberg for music/MIDI recording and arranging/editing of audio.

Digital Performer is a digital audio workstation and music sequencer software package. It's can recording, editing, arranging, mixing, mastering, MIDI, and more. Digital Performer will take your music to its highest level, thanks to sophisticated features like Stretch Audio (powered by Zynaptiq’s ZTX PRO technology), live triggering and looping.

Sonic Visualiser is a free, open-source application for Windows, Linux, and Mac, designed to be the first program you reach for when want to study a music recording closely.

PipeWire is a server and user space API to deal with multimedia pipelines.It provides a low-latency, graph based processing engine on top of audio and video devices that can be used to support the use cases currently handled by both pulseaudio and JACK. PipeWire was designed with a powerful security model that makes interacting with audio and video devices from containerized applications easy. Nodes in the graph can be implemented as separate processes, communicating with sockets and exchanging multimedia content using fd passing.

LMMS is an open source digital audio workstation application program. When LMMS is pairedr with appropriate computer hardware, it allows music to be produced by arranging samples, synthesizing sounds, playing on a MIDI keyboard, and combining the features of trackers and sequencers. Developed by Paul Giblock and Tobias Junghans, this program stands for "Linux MultiMedia Studio" and supports handy plugins that enables it to work on different operating systems.

Ardour is an open source, collaborative effort of a worldwide team including musicians, programmers, and professional recording engineers. Development is transparent — anyone can watch our work as it happens. Like a good piece of vintage hardware, you can open the box and look inside.

Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. Developed by a group of volunteers as open source and offered free of charge. Amazing support community.

3D Graphics and Design

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Blender's Cycles Render Engine. Source: Blender

Blender VFX(Visual Effects). Source: Blender

Designing a simple UI/UX for an application in Adobe XD. Source: Adobe

3D Graphics and Design Learning Resources

Introduction to Pixar's Universal Scene Description (USD)

Intro to using Universal Scene Description with NVIDIA

First steps with Universal Scene Description in Blender

AMD Radeon ProRender Developer Suite

Blender Foundation

Blender Foundation Certification Training

Blender Cloud Courses

Blender Institute

Blender Education

Blender Network

Blender Courses from Udemy

AutoDesk Learning, Training & Certification

AutoDesk Design Academy

AutoDesk Courses and Specializations from Coursera

Cinema 4D Quick Tips

Getting Started with Cinema 4D

Graphic Design Masterclass(Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) from Udemy

Vectr: Beginner's Guide To Graphic Design from udemy

Canva MasterClass: Design For EveryDay Use from Udemy

3D Graphics and Design Tools

Adobe Creative Cloud is a collection of 20+ desktop and mobile apps(Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Rush, Etc.) and services for photography, design, video, web, UX, and more.

Autodesk® is a collection of professional software products and services used in 3D design, architecture, engineering, manufacturing, and high production entertainment companies.

Maya® is a 3D computer animation, modeling, simulation, and rendering software that can create realistic effects from explosions to cloth simulation.

Maya LT™ is a game design software for indie game makers that can create and animate realistic-looking characters, props, and environments using the sophisticated 3D modeling and animation tools.

Autodesk® Maya. Source:Autodesk

3DS Max® is a 3D modeling and rendering software for design visualization, games, and animation.

Autodesk® 3DS Max. Source:Autodesk

Arnold is an advanced Monte Carlo ray tracing(Global illumination) renderer that helps you work more efficiently.

ReCap™ is a Pro 3D scanning software to transform the physical world into a digital asset. With reality capture data you can better understand and verify existing and as-built conditions to gain insights and make better decisions.

Flame® is a 3D VFX and finishing software provides powerful tools for 3D compositing, visual effects, and editorial finishing. An integrated, creative environment means faster compositing, advanced graphics, color correction, and more.

Mudbox® is a 3D digital painting and sculpting software that let's you sculpt and paint highly detailed 3D geometry and textures.

Autodesk® Mudbox. Source:Autodesk

Blender is a professional, free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games.

Cinema 4D is a professional 3D and VFX software suite that is capable of doing procedural and polygonal modeling, animation, lighting, texturing, motion graphic and rendering.

Houdini is a 3D procedural software for modeling, rigging, animation, VFX, look development, lighting and rendering in film, TV, advertising and video game pipelines.

Open Graphics Library(OpenGL) is an API used acrossed mulitple programming languages and platforms for hardware-accelerated rendering of 2D/3D vector graphics currently developed by the Khronos Group.

Metal is a low-level GPU programming framework used for rendering 2D and 3D graphics on Apple platforms such as iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.

MoltenVK is an implementation of Vulkan running on iOS and macOS using Apple's Metal graphics framework.

MoltenGL is an implementation of the OpenGL ES 2.0 API that runs on Apple's Metal graphics framework.

OpenGL ES is the mobile subset of OpenGL. It's supported on all major mobile platforms, and is also the base for WebGL.

OpenCL is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, FPGAs and other processors or hardware accelerators.

Vuforia is a comprehensive, scalable enterprise AR platform. Our wide-ranging solution suite ensures that we can provide the right AR technology to every customer based on their business needs.

Vuforia Studio is a tool that allows anyone to create beautiful 3D augmented reality (AR) experiences in a matter of minutes with no coding required.

OpenVX™ is an open-source, royalty-free standard for cross platform acceleration of computer vision applications. OpenVX enables performance and power-optimized computer vision processing, especially important in embedded and real-time use cases such as face, body and gesture tracking, smart video surveillance, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), object and scene reconstruction, augmented reality, visual inspection, robotics and more.

openXR is a free, open standard that provides high-performance access to Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) collectively known as XR—platforms and devices.

GPUImage framework is a BSD-licensed iOS library that lets you apply GPU-accelerated filters and other effects to images, live camera video, and movies. In comparison to Core Image (part of iOS 5.0), GPUImage allows you to write your own custom filters, supports deployment to iOS 4.0, and has a simpler interface. However, it currently lacks some of the more advanced features of Core Image, such as facial detection.

GPUImage3 is the third generation of the GPUImage framework, an open source project for performing GPU-accelerated image and video processing on Mac and iOS. The original GPUImage framework was written in Objective-C and targeted Mac and iOS, the second iteration rewritten in Swift using OpenGL to target Mac, iOS, and Linux, and now this third generation is redesigned to use Metal in place of OpenGL.

EGL is an interface between Khronos rendering APIs such as OpenGL or OpenVG and the underlying native platform window system.

VDPAU is the Video Decode and Presentation API for UNIX. It provides an interface to video decode acceleration and presentation hardware present in modern GPUs.

VA API is an open-source library and API specification, which provides access to graphics hardware acceleration capabilities for video processing.

XvMC is an extension of the X video extension (Xv) for the X Window System. The XvMC API allows video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process to the GPU hardware.

NVIDIA Omniverse is a powerful, multi-GPU, real-time simulation and collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines based on Pixar's Universal Scene Description and NVIDIA RTX.

Universal Scene Description is an efficient, scalable system for authoring, reading, and streaming time-sampled scene description for interchange between graphics applications.

OpenTimelineIO is an interchange format and API for editorial cut information. OTIO is not a container format for media, rather it contains information about the order and length of cuts and references to external media. OTIO includes both a file format and an API for manipulating that format. It also includes a plugin architecture for writing adapters to convert from/to existing editorial timeline formats. It also implements a dependency- less library for dealing strictly with time, opentime.

OpenSubdiv is a set of open source libraries that implement high performance subdivision surface (subdiv) evaluation on massively parallel CPU and GPU architectures. This codepath is optimized for drawing deforming subdivs with static topology at interactive framerates. The resulting limit surface matches Pixar's Renderman to numerical precision.

Affinity Designer is a professional vector graphics editor used by many industry leading illustrators, designers, and other creatives looking to create high-quality concept art.

Sketch is a professional vector graphics app with a beautiful UI and powerful toolset.

Krita is an open source professional painting program for digital painting and 2D animation.

Vectr is a free graphics software used to create vector graphics easily and intuitively.

Glimpse is a cross-platform raster graphics editor based on the GNU Image Manipulation Program available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. A great tool for making YouTube video thumbnails.

GNU Image Manipulation Program(GIMP) is a cross-platform raster graphics editor based on the GNU Image Manipulation Program(GIMP) available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. A great free alternative for Photoshop.

PhotoGIMP is a simple Patch for GIMP 2.10+ to help all Adobe Photoshop Users feel at home.

Photopea is an advanced online photo editor supporting Adobe Photoshop(PSD), GIMP(XCF), Sketch App(Sketch), Adobe XD(XD) and CorelDRAW(CDR) formats.

Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor; it can be used to create or edit vector graphics such as illustrations, diagrams, line arts, charts, logos and complex paintings.

Gthree is a GObject/Gtk+ port of three.js.

FreeCAD is a free and open-source general-purpose parametric 3D CAD modeler and a building information modeling software with finite-element-method support.

Ultimaker Cura is the world’s most popular 3D printing software. Prepare prints with a few clicks, integrate with CAD software for an easier workflow, or dive into custom settings for in-depth control.

Dust3D is a cross-platform open-source modeling software. It helps you create a 3D watertight model in seconds. Use it to speed up your character modeling in game making, 3D printing, and so on.

Goxel is a free and Open Source 3D Voxel Editor.

Sketchfab gives you open-source 3D models ready to view, buy, and download for free.

Swift Development

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Developing with SwiftUI in Xcode 12

Swift Learning Resources

Swift is Apple's main programming language for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS app development. Though, many parts of Swift will be familiar to developers from their experience of developing in C and Objective-C.

Swift Evolution maintains proposals for changes and user-visible enhancements to the Swift Programming Language.

Xcode + Swift makes developing applications for MacOS and iOS fast and fun.

Swift 5.3 Basics

Start Developing iOS Apps with Swift

Apple Developer Documentation

Apple Foundation Framework

Apple Core Animation Framework

Apple Core Graphics Framework

Virtualization Framework

Paravirtualized Graphics Framework

Getting Started with LLDB

Mac Catalyst - iOS - Human Interface Guidelines

Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

Swift GitHub

Apple Developer Forums

Swift Forums

Google's Swift Style Guide

Swift Courses Online from Coursera

Swift Courses Online from Udemy

Learning Swift course from Codecademy

Swift Tools, Libraries, and Frameworks

Xcode includes everything developers need to create great applications for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. Xcode provides developers a unified workflow for user interface design, coding, testing, and debugging. Xcode 12 is built as an Universal app that runs 100% natively on Intel-based CPUs and Apple Silicon. It includes a unified macOS SDK that features all the frameworks, compilers, debuggers, and other tools you need to build apps that run natively on Apple Silicon and the Intel x86_64 CPU.

RealityKit is a framework to implement high-performance 3D simulation and rendering with information provided by the ARKit framework to seamlessly integrate virtual objects into the real world.

SceneKit is a high-level 3D graphics framework that helps you create 3D animated scenes and effects in your iOS apps.

Mac Catalyst is a set of Apple APIs that developers can use to rapidly port their iOS apps to Apple Silicon M1 Chip and take full advantage of the new capabilities on the new Apple hardware.

Vapor is a web framework for Swift. It provides a beautifully expressive and easy to use foundation for your next website, API, or cloud project.

Hero is a library for building iOS view controller transitions. It provides a declarative layer on top of the UIKit's cumbersome transition APIs—making custom transitions an easy task for developers.

Kingfisher is a powerful, pure-Swift library for downloading and caching images from the web. It provides you a chance to use a pure-Swift way to work with remote images in your next app.

Realm is a mobile database that runs directly inside phones, tablets or wearables. This repository holds the source code for the iOS, macOS, tvOS & watchOS versions of Realm Swift & Realm Objective-C.

Perfect is a complete and powerful toolbox, framework, and application server for Linux, iOS, and macOS (OS X). It provides everything a Swift engineer needs for developing lightweight, maintainable, and scalable apps and other REST services entirely in the Swift programming language for both client-facing and server-side applications.

Alamofire is an HTTP networking library written in Swift.

Eureka is an elegant iOS form builder in Swift

Carthage is intended to be the simplest way to add frameworks to your Cocoa application. Carthage builds your dependencies and provides you with binary frameworks, but you retain full control over your project structure and setup. Carthage does not automatically modify your project files or your build settings.

ReactiveCocoa is reactive extensions to Cocoa frameworks, built on top of ReactiveSwift.

Objective-C Development

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Objective-C Learning Resources

Objective-C was the primary programming language used for writing software for macOS and iOS until Swift was introduced in 2014. It is a superset of the C programming language and provides object-oriented capabilities and a dynamic runtime.

Apple Developer Forums

Google's Objective-C Style Guide

Objective C Courses on Coursera

Objective-C online course on Udemy

Objective-C for Swift Developers course by David Nutter

Objective-C Essential Training on LinkedIn Learning

Objective-C for Swift Developers on Udacity

Objective-C Tools, Libraries, and Frameworks

Cocoapods is a dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C in your Xcode projects by specifying the dependencies for your project in a simple text file. CocoaPods then recursively resolves dependencies between libraries, fetches source code for all dependencies, and creates and maintains an Xcode workspace to build your project.

Realm is a mobile database(replaces Core Data & SQLite) that runs directly inside phones, tablets or wearables.

Infer is a static analysis tool for Java, C++, Objective-C, and C.

Mantle is a model framework that makes it easy to write a simple model layer for your Cocoa or Cocoa Touch application.

Quick is a behavior-driven development framework for Swift and Objective-C.

Aspects is a simple library for aspect oriented programming in Objective-C and Swift.

Hammerspoon is a tool for powerful automation for macOS that acts as a bridge between the operating system and a Lua scripting engine.

Nimbus is an iOS framework whose feature set grows only as fast as its documentation.

C/C++ Development

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C/C++ Learning Resources

C++ is a cross-platform language that can be used to build high-performance applications developed by Bjarne Stroustrup, as an extension to the C language.

C is a general-purpose, high-level language that was originally developed by Dennis M. Ritchie to develop the UNIX operating system at Bell Labs. It supports structured programming, lexical variable scope, and recursion, with a static type system. C also provides constructs that map efficiently to typical machine instructions, which makes it one was of the most widely used programming languages today.

Embedded C is a set of language extensions for the C programming language by the C Standards Committee to address issues that exist between C extensions for different embedded systems. The extensions hep enhance microprocessor features such as fixed-point arithmetic, multiple distinct memory banks, and basic I/O operations. This makes Embedded C the most popular embedded software language in the world.

C & C++ Developer Tools from JetBrains

Open source C++ libraries on cppreference.com

C++ Graphics libraries

C++ Libraries in MATLAB

C++ Tools and Libraries Articles

Google C++ Style Guide

Introduction C++ Education course on Google Developers

C++ style guide for Fuchsia

C and C++ Coding Style Guide by OpenTitan

Chromium C++ Style Guide

C++ Core Guidelines

C++ Style Guide for ROS

Learn C++

Learn C : An Interactive C Tutorial

C++ Institute

C++ Online Training Courses on LinkedIn Learning

C++ Tutorials on W3Schools

Learn C Programming Online Courses on edX

Learn C++ with Online Courses on edX

Learn C++ on Codecademy

Coding for Everyone: C and C++ course on Coursera

C++ For C Programmers on Coursera

Top C Courses on Coursera

C++ Online Courses on Udemy

Top C Courses on Udemy

Basics of Embedded C Programming for Beginners on Udemy

C++ For Programmers Course on Udacity

C++ Fundamentals Course on Pluralsight

Introduction to C++ on MIT Free Online Course Materials

Introduction to C++ for Programmers | Harvard

Online C Courses | Harvard University

C/C++ Tools and Frameworks

Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft; which is a feature-rich application that can be used for many aspects of software development. Visual Studio makes it easy to edit, debug, build, and publish your app. By using Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, and Windows Store.

Visual Studio Code is a code editor redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications.

Vcpkg is a C++ Library Manager for Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

ReSharper C++ is a Visual Studio Extension for C++ developers developed by JetBrains.

CLion is a cross-platform IDE for C and C++ developers developed by JetBrains.

Code::Blocks is a free C/C++ and Fortran IDE built to meet the most demanding needs of its users. It is designed to be very extensible and fully configurable. Built around a plugin framework, Code::Blocks can be extended with plugins.

CppSharp is a tool and set of libraries which facilitates the usage of native C/C++ code with the .NET ecosystem. It consumes C/C++ header and library files and generates the necessary glue code to surface the native API as a managed API. Such an API can be used to consume an existing native library in your managed code or add managed scripting support to a native codebase.

Conan is an Open Source Package Manager for C++ development and dependency management into the 21st century and on par with the other development ecosystems.

High Performance Computing (HPC) SDK is a comprehensive toolbox for GPU accelerating HPC modeling and simulation applications. It includes the C, C++, and Fortran compilers, libraries, and analysis tools necessary for developing HPC applications on the NVIDIA platform.

Thrust is a C++ parallel programming library which resembles the C++ Standard Library. Thrust's high-level interface greatly enhances programmer productivity while enabling performance portability between GPUs and multicore CPUs. Interoperability with established technologies such as CUDA, TBB, and OpenMP integrates with existing software.

Boost is an educational opportunity focused on cutting-edge C++. Boost has been a participant in the annual Google Summer of Code since 2007, in which students develop their skills by working on Boost Library development.

Automake is a tool for automatically generating Makefile.in files compliant with the GNU Coding Standards. Automake requires the use of GNU Autoconf.

Cmake is an open-source, cross-platform family of tools designed to build, test and package software. CMake is used to control the software compilation process using simple platform and compiler independent configuration files, and generate native makefiles and workspaces that can be used in the compiler environment of your choice.

GDB is a debugger, that allows you to see what is going on `inside' another program while it executes or what another program was doing at the moment it crashed.

GCC is a compiler Collection that includes front ends for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D, as well as libraries for these languages.

GSL is a numerical library for C and C++ programmers. It is free software under the GNU General Public License. The library provides a wide range of mathematical routines such as random number generators, special functions and least-squares fitting. There are over 1000 functions in total with an extensive test suite.

OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library (GLEW) is a cross-platform open-source C/C++ extension loading library. GLEW provides efficient run-time mechanisms for determining which OpenGL extensions are supported on the target platform.

Libtool is a generic library support script that hides the complexity of using shared libraries behind a consistent, portable interface. To use Libtool, add the new generic library building commands to your Makefile, Makefile.in, or Makefile.am.

Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. Based on the concept of a project object model (POM), Maven can manage a project's build, reporting and documentation from a central piece of information.

TAU (Tuning And Analysis Utilities) is capable of gathering performance information through instrumentation of functions, methods, basic blocks, and statements as well as event-based sampling. All C++ language features are supported including templates and namespaces.

Clang is a production quality C, Objective-C, C++ and Objective-C++ compiler when targeting X86-32, X86-64, and ARM (other targets may have caveats, but are usually easy to fix). Clang is used in production to build performance-critical software like Google Chrome or Firefox.

OpenCV is a highly optimized library with focus on real-time applications. Cross-Platform C++, Python and Java interfaces support Linux, MacOS, Windows, iOS, and Android.

Libcu++ is the NVIDIA C++ Standard Library for your entire system. It provides a heterogeneous implementation of the C++ Standard Library that can be used in and between CPU and GPU code.

ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) is a powerful parser generator for reading, processing, executing, or translating structured text or binary files. It's widely used to build languages, tools, and frameworks. From a grammar, ANTLR generates a parser that can build parse trees and also generates a listener interface that makes it easy to respond to the recognition of phrases of interest.

Oat++ is a light and powerful C++ web framework for highly scalable and resource-efficient web application. It's zero-dependency and easy-portable.

JavaCPP is a program that provides efficient access to native C++ inside Java, not unlike the way some C/C++ compilers interact with assembly language.

Cython is a language that makes writing C extensions for Python as easy as Python itself. Cython is based on Pyrex, but supports more cutting edge functionality and optimizations such as calling C functions and declaring C types on variables and class attributes.

Spdlog is a very fast, header-only/compiled, C++ logging library.

Infer is a static analysis tool for Java, C++, Objective-C, and C. Infer is written in OCaml.

Contribute

If would you like to contribute to this guide simply make a Pull Request.

License

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Distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Public License.

jordanekay/Apple-Silicon-Guide

Apple Silicon Guide

A guide covering Apple Silicon including the applications, libraries and tools that will make you better and more efficient with your Apple Silicon powered device.

Table of Contents

Getting Started with Apple Silicon

A16 Bionic

H2

U1

M1

M1 Pro

M1 Max

M1 Ultra

M2

M2 Pro

M2 Max

Migrating to Apple Silicon

Devices powered by Apple Silicon

macOS

iOS

iPadOS

watchOS

Getting Software

Productivity & Workflow Apps

Secure & Privacy Focused Web Browsers

Privacy & Security Focused Browser extensions

Privacy-focused Search Engines

Microsoft Office Alternatives

Universal Control

Stage Manager

Adding External Storage

SSD Drive Health/Data Recovery

Checking Battery Health

MacOS/iOS Security Hardening

Resources

Enable full disk encryption

Wafer Level Multi-Chip Packaging Technology

InFO (Integrated Fan-Out) Wafer Level Packaging

Chip on Wafer on Substrate (CoWoS)

Xcode Development

Getting Started with Xcode

Core ML Development

Core ML Learning Resources

Core ML Tools, Libraries, and Frameworks

Metal Development

Metal Learning Resources

Metal Tools, Libraries, and Frameworks

Virtualization

Developer Quick Links

Virtualization Tools and Frameworks

Virtualization Concepts & Terminologies

Docker

Running Docker on Apple Silicon (M1/M2)

Install Lima using Homebrew

Installing Colima

Docker Learning Resources

Docker Tools

Kubernetes

Installing Colima

Kubernetes Learning Resources

Kubernetes Tools, Frameworks, and Projects

Ansible

Ansible Learning Resources

Ansible DevOps Tools Integration

Running Linux on the Apple Silicon

Developer Quick Links

Asahi Linux Development

NixOS Development on M1

NixOS with the Plasma Desktop

Running Windows 10/11 on the Apple Silicon

Windows 11 Desktop

Windows 10 Desktop

Gaming

Gaming on Apple Silicon resources

Manage Temps/Control Fans (CPU and GPU)

Gaming Peripherals

RGB Devices

Game Controllers

Setting up OBS Studio

Useful OBS Studio 3rd party plugins and themes.

Discord