Sweet16 2.2 for Mac OS X has been released; this is the latest version of Eric Shepherd and F.E. Systems’ Apple IIgs emulator for Mac OS X.
One of the key changes is that by default, Sweet16 now limits the emulated IIgs speed to 40 MHz. Previously, the default was to go as fast as possible. This resulted in using 100% of at least one CPU core, which would cause battery drain and temperature issues, especially on laptops. Although users always had the option to turn on speed control and throttle the speed, this wasn’t obvious, so to help out new users, the default was changed.
If you’re already using Sweet16, your current setting won’t change when you update to version 2.2. If you’re a current user and are having this problem, you can enable speed control by opening the preferences, going to the CPU tab, and turning on the “Speed control” option. Then select a speed to throttle your emulated IIgs to.
Since modern Macs can typically blaze along at over 100 MHz emulated IIgs speed if unthrottled, even setting it to 40 MHz should improve the situation dramatically.
The full change list:
1. Sweet16 now defaults to having speed control enabled, with the GS set to a 40 MHz emulated speed. This prevents laptops from getting hot while running Sweet16. You can easily turn off speed control to let your GS fly, using the preferences’ CPU options panel.
2. You can now mount ProDOS-order (.po) disk images that are not floppy disk sizes.
3. When paused, Sweet16 no longer continues to use lots of your Mac’s processor capacity.
4. Creating 1.4 MB disks using the Create Disk Image feature now creates disk images that are actually 1.4 MB, rather than 1.6 MB.