I first became aware of The Last of Us series of games because I saw Jacksepticeye play through the Last of Us II on YouTube when it was first released. I was blown away by the story and visuals in this game at the time, so decided to seek out the first in the series and play it myself. I did this at the beginning of the pandemic and I wrote a post about that at the time.

This came back into my consciousness due to the excellent TV show adaptation of the first game, which was a scene-for-scene replica. It was immaculately made and captured all the brilliance of the game’s story. A brilliant story of love in a world of pain.

It’s got me excited about the franchise again and I felt reinvigorated to try playing through the sequel. I saw TLOU II as an offer for only £8 on the PlayStation store so purchased, downloaded, and started to play this game that I always wanted to get around to...

It’s been a few years since I last did one of these. 2020 was my last entry after the first 10 months of the Covid pandemic.

Since then I’ve largely followed the same formula of contuning to build strength in favor of time spent on cardio, utilising Fitbod to drive a lot of those workouts.

I also have stopped tracking using my own spreadsheets and graphs - that process was quite laborious and the main reason I’d not completed another blog post on fitness since. The app I was using (HealthFit) to sync Apple Fitness data to Google Sheets only allows one-by-one entry selection for a sync, or everything at once. I have over 5000 entries now which times out the sync for all, and I’ve left it too long to go back and select several thousand entries to sync manually - so that’s never happening again.

Thankfully, Fitbod continually gets better, and this year (I noticed) they improved their...

UPDATE
I have a new video comparing Minecraft 1.21.5 on M4, M2 and M1 Macs. Check it out: https://youtu.be/ctE8DSa7O24

I love to play Minecraft on a Mac. Yes, I’m one of those people and I’ve tested Minecraft and the way it behaves on Macs quite a lot over the years and that’s what I’m going to do today with a combination of the M1s and the M2s to see how they perform and how things have changed since the 1.19 update now that we have native ARM support for Apple silicon in Minecraft.

I’ve done a lot of testing over the years that has helped me learn that Minecraft is mostly a CPU-bound game, but depending on the graphic settings you decide to apply the GPU comes into effect a fair amount. Comparing an M1 to an M2 mac on paper - the GPU is what’s changed the most. I have three Macs to test with today; I have an M1 MacBook Pro (a standard M1, no Pro/Max), I have an M1 Max maxed out...

UPDATE
I have a new video comparing Minecraft 1.21.5 on M4, M2 and M1 Macs. Check it out: https://youtu.be/ctE8DSa7O24

I love to play Minecraft on Macs. I previously posted videos on the performance of Minecraft on the M1 chips for both vanilla and Optifine.

Now I’ve done similar performance tests for the M1 Max.

The M1 Max is available in a number of configurations. The one I have to test is a maxed-out Max. It has the 10 Core CPU, 64gb of unified memory, but most importantly for these tests it has the 32 core GPU. I also still have the M1 (nothing) which I also retested under the same conditions for comparison.

These chips are in a variety of machines, but whether you’re running it on a Macbook Pro or a Mac studio, the results should be identical. What affects your performance the most in Minecraft is the resolution you play at, and the graphics settings you choose in game.

UPDATE
I have a new video comparing Minecraft 1.21.5 on M4, M2 and M1 Macs. Check it out: https://youtu.be/ctE8DSa7O24

I had a good reaction to my post testing vanilla Minecraft on the M1 Mac at various resolutions, and people have been asking in the comments about the performance when using Optifine.

Optifine is a mod that is designed to make Minecraft run better, and also provides a bunch of additional graphics related settings, giving you more control over your Minecraft experience. I always use it when playing as I find the experience to be better. But just how much better does it perform on the M1 Macs?

I ran the same series of tests, but the same caveats apply here about Minecraft still running in Rosetta, and everything else I mentioned in my last video along with details about my setup and how I ran these test. Go read that post for more details.

I had almost all...

UPDATE
I have a new video comparing Minecraft 1.21.5 on M4, M2 and M1 Macs. Check it out: https://youtu.be/ctE8DSa7O24

I’ve been playing Minecraft on my M1 Mac mini now for a few months, and the good news is it works great.

Many people have been asking me in the comments on my Let’s Play YouTube series - how does Minecraft perform on M1 Macs? Specifically, people are interested in the FPS I’m able to get.

That’s not a simple question to answer as it depends on your setup. So I’ll do my best to test the most common scenarios people will have and give you an idea of the kind of numbers you should expect to see.

The simple answer is: it plenty good enough to play vanilla Minecraft at high enough FPS, and for the most part, you shouldn’t notice any lack of smoothness in your gameplay.

First, a little about my setup that I used to perform these tests.
I have the M1 Mac mini with...

I once again set myself a target to improve my state of fitness in 2020, and I feel I did achieve that, but not in the way I intended at the beginning of the year. My workouts previously have been calorie focused, mostly driven by running and cycling. As such the number of runs and distance traveled were my primary metrics. I’ve always done some weights and strength training in the gym, but this has always been secondary.

This changed at the beginning of the year when I decided to shift my focus in order to increase my strength in 2020, which I kickstarted by subscribing to an app called Fitbod. This app has been instrumental in helping me achieve my goals this year and changing to a strength training focussed year of workouts.

My back and neck have suffered more than they have in several years, mostly due (I believe) to the reduction in mobility from isolating at home. I’ve tried to...

Until 2020 I’d not had much of a need for a home Mac. I’ve always had one, but the majority of my home computing needs are met by my iPad and iPhone. But I’ve always had a computer for those few things only a Mac can do, or to work from home in a pinch.

When I was a self-employed contractor (2006-09) my work Mac was also my personal Mac, and in constant use as the abilities of that Mac were intricately linked to my income. I’d been through a lot of Macs over the years, upgrading regularly as the technology improved and my needs evolved. I had desktops first, then moved to Laptops when they went Intel. Once I started my own agency, those needs changed to being desk-bound, laptops only served a purpose for meetings. This was the dawn of the iMac being a competent all-in-one option and so as my business grew we invested mostly in iMacs. From about 2009 onwards I almost exclusively used...

A personal experience of mine this year.

During lockdown my wife and I have been playing more games together, and I bought Mario Party to see if we’d enjoy paying this on the Switch.

My wife is Black, and immediately on getting into the game we were hit with a problem of representation - no character choice represents who she is in a way she can relate to. The disappointment in her voice was palpable.

Nintendo characters in these games have a set of ‘human’ avatars, every single one of which is white. The rest are animals or fantasy creatures, which, fair enough, are neither.

The point is I can select a white character I feel I have some association with, and my wife felt her only real choice in this game, which she was not happy with, was a mole.

This is a problem at the system level too, when selecting a profile character. Even with games like Smash which has an enormous...