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Has this been discussed yet: http://store.mcetech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=STORHDOPTIBAY I don't think I ever use DVDs anymore and its comes complete with a USB enclosure for $99. I already have a firewire DVD drive anyway, and having room for a second hard drive is tempting. I could do two 1TB drives or 1TB and SSD for OS.
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Jul 24, 2011 19:24
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Residency Evil posted:What's the cheapest way to get Applecare? I'm looking at Amazon and found this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000JZ76LM/ref=sr_1_5_olp?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1312149320&sr=1-5&condition=used Might be chancy if you have a newer system. Cheapest is way usually is through apple if you can get a student discount somehow. $183.00 vs amazon's $216.21 and apple's normal price of $249.00 You also have up to the first year to tack it on, so if you are hurting for cash you can wait a couple months and then buy it.
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Aug 1, 2011 00:00
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Binary Badger posted:Yeah, I would be wary about the OWC Aura drives, just from my own experience and this MacRumors thread. That sucks. I have used their memory, optical drive, and SATA SSD upgrades in the past and usually their products are pretty stellar. Sometimes apple doesn't offer the fastest or largest storage on the planet because the hardware wasn't designed to house it. They probably have pretty strict requirements on the components they use.
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Aug 31, 2014 16:22
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I must have been looking at the non-retina listing on the hardware buyers guide or something. I didn't realize the Macbook Pros got refreshed over the summer. I can expense all or part of a new machine for work and here I was waiting for the apple announcement before I started looking. I'm not too crazy about the pricing and options for 15 inch models to replace my 2011 15". Is the iris pro stuff any decent for gaming? I might end up getting a cheaper model for work, adding an external monitor and setting up a PC workstation just for playing games. Meh.
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Sep 4, 2014 21:46
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I really would want the Macbook Pro 15" with the NVIDIA built in, but even if I figure out a way to use someones education discount we are talking $2,538.00 after you add apple care on, plus there is going to be NJ tax (Though I could deduct all of this as a business expense later). It's kinda annoying, but didn't all the 15" models have the dual video before (before retina)? Between that and the integrated parts you can't upgrade they are more expensive than the ones I bought in the past. I always got something really nice for around the $2000 mark before that if you specced out in PC form was still a pretty good deal. I'd end up spending the $100 gift card on fancy white cables.
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Sep 5, 2014 16:37
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ndrake posted:Thanks for the thoughts. Seems like 8 would suffice. I doubt I could tell the difference in processors from 2 to 2.2 ghz. I am faculty and do get the edu discount, but that still leaves the base 15" at 1899 (same price as bhphoto online), but I live in Chicago and so have to pay almost 10% sales tax if I buy from apple which far exceeds the value of the $100 gift card. drat, and I thought having to pay NJ's 7% was bad.
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Sep 5, 2014 17:24
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Flameingblack posted:I don't have a credit card; just a debit card. But I'm responsible enough to know that I need to save money to pay off a computer $200 a month so I'm thinking about doing the finance options to get a mac directly from Apple. Is that advisable or should I still just save my money and get one on Amazon or refurbished, ect. I have pretty decent credit, and 2 credit cards I could buy a laptop with at this point but when I tried to sign up for Apple's Bank of America card they said I was approved and I got it and there wasn't enough credit to buy the drat laptop with it. So maybe its better just to save the money up and not go through the hassle. Though this was 3+ years ago so maybe you would have better luck, add a new line of credit and improve your credit score in the process. In that case if you are responsible enough or have automatic payments it could benefit you.
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Sep 5, 2014 20:28
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We know its usually the iPhone announcement but nothing on their website says it can't be more than that. Weirder things have happened. I'm going to end up getting a new MacBook Pro from MicroCenter cause the one in NJ has 3.5% sales tax. Sure I have to drive 45 minutes but i'll save nearly 90 bucks on a $2500 laptop. I'll have to meet a friend for dinner or something to make it really worthwhile.
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Sep 8, 2014 05:01
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Binary Badger posted:TRIM Enabler is your friend. Yes, this can also be done with several lines of commands in Terminal, but TE gives you other useful info about the condition of the SSD. Well OWC tells you not to enable TRIM on their own SSDs http://blog.macsales.com/21641-with-an-owc-ssd-theres-no-need-for-trim I have never messed with it on mine and I haven't seen a reason to.
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Sep 19, 2014 01:26
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The Macbook Pro models are kinda underwhelming. My 4 year old model is still holding strong after swapping an SSD into it. The only problem I have is the battery life. Retina would be great, but not $3000 great. The video card is barely an improvement. So after seeing those new Macbook Air models I think I might pick one up for work. I am on call 2 weeks at a time, and I can get my job to pay for $1000 worth of it. I'll just build a gaming PC for that kind of stuff instead of trying to do it on my laptop. The lineup is so scattered now, I don't know what they are doing. If you don't need overly impressive video card specs its just about weight vs storage/screen.
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Mar 9, 2015 19:42
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Whirlwind Jones posted:What? Isn't it just haptic vibration? Android devices have had this on their keyboards for years and it's pretty basic / underwhelming. I can't imagine there's any way to actually do it better without some new technology. I was thinking they wouldn't do this, but you know apple usually doesn't just toss stuff in till its fleshed out. They have some of it now in the trackpad, and the watch so maybe they could whip up something new for an iPad. I had an android work phone with some feedback, and it was just strange and I didn't find it particularly useful.
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Mar 12, 2015 03:29
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Well someone in the software thread pointed out the warranty extension for the GPU issues that my 2011 MBP has. I need to keep working on something so I went out and splurged on a 27" 5k iMac. Turns out though, my friend who still work sat apple is going to figure out a way to get me his company discount so I am going to return it when one arrives with the 4GB VRAM. I just couldn't bring myself to buy another laptop with the 15" model being so stale and old at this point. I work from home and the small screen just won't cut it. So my plan is get settled into the new iMac and get my little home office setup with a desk and then I'll get the MBP repaired hopefully and when a new model comes out I'll decide. The current lineup of laptops just does nothing for me, but this 5k iMac is going to be sweet for doing photo editing, playing games, and working. The good thing is that I am single with no kids, and the only debt I have is my car loan which I have no trouble paying off. So Apple gets half my paycheck this month between this unplanned purchase of a computer and the iPad I just bought a couple weeks ago.
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Mar 18, 2015 03:10
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Pivo posted:you are my new favourite Mac thread person I don't think you understand. If I take the laptop in to get fixed, I won't have a machine to work on. I started working from home in September and didn't buy a dedicated work laptop because the options sucked and I wasn't having any hardware issues at the moment. I will get the iMac set up, have an actual desktop going and then get the laptop fixed.
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Mar 18, 2015 14:59
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Pivo posted:Some AASPs have loaners but I wasn't judging you, I actually think it's funny. I've done the same thing in the past, just throw money at a problem. It's nice to have a 'backup', especially when it's the big iMac. Yeah its kinda silly. I only get $1k allowance for hardware through work. Didn't want to buy a cheaper machine I know I wouldn't be happy with long term. So their Pro model lineup is all fragmented now and I end up getting an iMac because its the only thing that felt like I was getting value for the money but I am spending a buttload. When I started the job I was thinking of getting a laptop that would be more for work, but the 15" options sucked so I was thinking of eventually doing a windows gaming pc setup to have as back up but never got around to it. In the past I would get applecare on my laptop, use the heck out of it and carry it everywhere till it was out of warranty. Then I would wait for it to die and get the top of the line to replace it. The past 4 years the main improvement has been in the display technology which hardly seems like getting a whole new machine for. At least the iMac has better graphics, can shove more RAM in it and get that huge screen. Its a weird feeling being annoyed you have to buy such a nice looking machine.
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Mar 18, 2015 15:32
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Electric Bugaloo posted:You say that, but.... Honestly, I haven't been toting it around too much so its been more of a desktop replacement. I upgraded the drive to an SSD and got the kit to move the platter drive to the optical slot so disk performance has been more than adequate. The 8GB of after market RAM I put in it, along with the 1GB VRAM option make it capable enough for most things. Of course they are bound to upgrade the 15" models within the next year and I might end up getting one for the times when I am traveling and want to work there instead of using vacation days. ^^^^Ah see, I knew I wasn't the only one.
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Mar 18, 2015 17:10
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Screenshots on the 5k iMac are 14MB and too big to upload to imgur. It makes me feel special. None of the fancy graphics games I own work on OS X aside from Bioshock Infinite which I beat already. I guess when I get the final machine set up I'll be dedicating some bootcamp space to it. Kinda forgot I need it for work sometimes too, which if you get it set up in vmware, booting from the same partition is pretty sweet. VMWare bootcamp partition for work, reboot native windows for games.
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Mar 19, 2015 02:22
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Mercurius posted:They may have fixed it now (I haven't used BootCamp since a month after I got the iMac) but I'll give you a heads up that Windows sees the screen as 4K, not 5K. I assume that's driver based more than anything but it scales 4K up to 5K instead of supersampling so it can look a bit weird at times. Yeah I read about that last night while doing some research. Not a huge deal as long as whatever the resolution I am using scales well to the display. Was just trying to find a game to slap on and put the machine through its paces for fun but I guess most of the stuff I have is mid range. The 2011 MBP couldn't quite handle BF3, but Bishock Infinite and Arkham City were playable. Photo editing is going to be so sweet on the 5k screen though. I just opened a few shots from my 14 megapixel camera and they look pretty drat good. Will be able to edit photos 1:1 and still understand what I am looking at.
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Mar 19, 2015 03:13
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Fanatic posted:I took my Mac to the genius bar to get the diagnostics checked when the battery died and the guy commented on how lovely my Magsafe looked when I whipped it out, but didn't offer to replace it. I didn't ask about it because I assumed they would charge me for it since the warranty has expired. But thanks, I'll try that next time I go there. Not getting my hopes up though since everything is expensive in my country, especially Apple products. Sometimes it really depends on who you end up with. I once took a macbook pro in because it was having RAM issues, and the guy said my top case looked kinda warn. I ended up with an entire new keyboard/trackpad area.
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Mar 19, 2015 14:04
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Social Animal posted:I'm looking for a device i can plug in and leave on without worrying about my electricity bill making GBS threads itself, basically a home server (sickbeard for downloading off usenet, file server, that sort of thing). I've been looking at old Mac Mini's but considering new ones are $500 and ebay having a lot of G4 versions still going for $100, is this feasible? Like the core 2 duo 1gb ram (I believe they are from 2009) versions go for $150-$200 on ebay. Should I jump on those? The only Apple products I've ever purchased have been iPods and iPhones so I'm pretty green when it comes to their desktop offerings. Not sure what constitutes a good deal or not since it looks like most Macs of any kind seem to hold their value pretty well. I have been using a mac mini for my media server for the past few years. The only problem I have had with it is the HDMI being fiddly and sometimes needs a reboot to make it see the TV again. I am not sure about power consumption, but it can't be too high. In my apartment I am just running a 46" TV, the mac mini, a Drobo connected to the mini for storage, my macbook pro and charging for iOS devices. Not much else outside of lights and I paid $45 last month on my electric bill (And I should mention that I work from home) I have the mini set up running plex, grabbing files with sabnzbd, sickbeard, couch potato, flexget running via cron for certain sites. Its the 2012 model and hasn't ever had any issues transcoding or anything.
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Mar 25, 2015 16:23
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Bob Morales posted:The 13" Retina is $1,999 with 8GB/512GB I guess if you don't care about the resolution, it could be a good amount of machine for your money. I put the OWC kit in, which let me add SSD and keep the spinny drive as a secondary for storage plus the DVD drive went in the included USB enclosure so I can still use it with any of my machines. I couldn't see doing real work on a 13" model no matter what pixel density it is. I'm usually about getting something that I plan to use for 4-5 years and hopefully still be happy with after 3-4 years. So wouldn't buy any of the 15" models for myself and would rather wait till they refresh them like they did the 13" models.
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Mar 25, 2015 18:44
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Whirlwind Jones posted:Also on a non-endless derail note... Oops I did a thing. Now you'll be able to run vmware in new and exciting resolutions like I was messing with earlier 
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Mar 26, 2015 00:43
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~Coxy posted:HighPoint RocketRAID, but I didn't originally mention it in the Hackintosh thread because I believe that technically it's not full hardware RAID. Thats kinda sad if thats the option. 3ware cards were so good before LSI bought them out. Highpoint stuff always ends up being buggy (At least on linux anyway). I was thinking about getting an enclosure that does RAID and connects via thunderbolt for my iMac. My main storage is on an old Drobo that is attached to a machine and shared via network. Works ok for stuff like Lightroom photos, streaming media etc.
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Mar 31, 2015 05:25
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You can save some money if you buy the RAM elsewhere. I just added 8GB to my retina iMac for $80. Apple would have charged $200 for the same configuration, though I think I would have ended up with 2 8GB sticks instead o the 4 x 4GB I have now. In that case I guess if you buy it with 16GB you can add 16GB more without wasting the memory it came with. Also if you go for the iMac and plan on needing a bunch of storage you might as well match it with a big disk attached via thunderbolt. If you did that and then put an SSD in it that would cut down on the chance of needing to open the thing up later to replace a dead drive. Might not be too bad of a task depending on how good you are with sticky tape. The screen is awesome and the performance on mine has been great, but having the RAM be the only easily serviceable part is a downside.
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Apr 7, 2015 14:51
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I've been playing stuff on my 5k iMac in windows and OS X and it hasn't had any big issues. Sometimes you have to get the resolution down a bit, and maybe use medium quality settings to get better performance for online play. Single player though I can run things maxed out in most of the things I have tried and it looks pretty drat good. I plan on getting a thunderbolt external drive of some sort eventually to put my steam library on cause sharing between two OS fills things up quick. I noticed earlier today that on the steam home streaming page there is a little note at the bottom mentioning they will be coming out with some sort of hosted option. I know OnLive will let you use some of your steam games but you have to pay an extra fee there and are limited to what games they support. It would be interesting to see what valve offers. If I can spin up any game in my library and stream in 1080p with the kind of performance I used to get with OnLive when I was a regular user it would be pretty cool.
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Apr 26, 2015 22:31
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Feenix posted:Chiming into say my top-Spec riMac handles bootcamped games great. Yeah the driver support kinda sucks. There is one newer driver than what is in bootcamp from 12/16/2014 on the website. You have to select "MAC Graphics" (yes all in caps because maybe they think it is made by the cosmetic company) I don't know how different the chip could be from other implementations, but I can't imagine it would be too involved to roll it in with everything else. Maybe there is some dumb contractual thing or they just have one guy that is the "MAC" driver guy.
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Apr 27, 2015 15:57
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Feenix posted:oh no poo poo?! Thats the one I meant. It is newer than the bundled boot camp one if you check the driver info in windows, but its still not the latest. Better than nothing though.
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Apr 27, 2015 19:02
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admiraldennis posted:~The Saga Continues~ SMART can be kinda dumb sometimes.
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Apr 28, 2015 02:55
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Pivo posted:Well, they killed the PowerMac. But then that became the Mac Pro, right? Well that was kinda tied to the fact that it was using PowerPC architecture. It would not have made sense to keep calling things Power when they were intel. The iPod touch was practically a modern day Newton. They no longer make printers or webcams but nobody needs those anymore. Paper is practically dead and cameras are integrated into basically everything on earth. Speaking of cameras... 
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Apr 28, 2015 21:52
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Shaocaholica posted:You guys never print shipping labels at home? I guess i used to, and I have a brother laser printer stored in the closet but I haven't used it in 3 years.
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Apr 28, 2015 22:14
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ShadeofBlue posted:The original Powerbooks did not use PowerPC architecture I was too poor to get one of those. I always had the hand-me-down macs. First a Mac Classic with black and white screen and 40MB hard drive, and then later a Performa or whatever it was PowerPC machine which I remember running VirtualPC or whatever it was on it, thinking it was so powerful I could have a 386 inside my mac after installing Ram Doubler.
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Apr 28, 2015 23:00
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I had discovered an annoying thing on my iMac. It has the dual audio jack with mic/headphones like the iOS devices and laptops have these days. The apple drivers would do this dumb thing where shut off the internal speakers every time something is plugged into it no matter what it may be. I know it is a driver issue because when I boot into windows it works as I like. For a while I was using a zoom h4n via usb as a mic and plugging headphones into that or the back port. When I got the Antlion ModMic the zoom apparently didn't have the right input levels. Ended up picking up this usb sound card on amazon http://www.amazon.com/Syba-SD-CM-UAUD-Adapter-C-Media-Chipset/dp/B001MSS6CS So that basically solved both problems. I can leave my headphones/mic plugged in 24/7 and switch inputs at while in software, and the input levels work. It said $8 but somehow the amazon checkout ended up being $4 when I bought it, but even at $8 its a good buy and simple solution. Cheaper than going out and buying one of those thunderbolt docks that does a bunch of things I don't need just to get some extra sound and USB ports.
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May 8, 2015 19:52
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fleshweasel posted:The retina iMac seems like a better bang for the buck for a 5k monitor and a PC that can power it. That pretty much is what made me buy one. It would just be nice if it supported target mode to make it act like its own display for another machine. Them leaving that out kinda makes me thing stand alone 5K displays will be coming eventually. The price isn't that much more than the really nice Dell 5K display, but I don't think the jump from 4K to 5K for just a monitor is even worth it. Unless you do any video and photo editing the higher resolution doesn't help. Everything ends up being scaled, and even though I have a 5K monitor and windows supports 4K in bootcamp I don't play games in the higher resolution unless they are single player because it makes for a big performance hit.
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May 10, 2015 16:09
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On a whim I was checking out the AMD drivers again for my 5K iMac. I found this post http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1866962 I thought I had tried this before, but I read it over. I had upgraded to the beta catalyst already so I navigated to the directory and ran the installer and let it do its thing and it actually worked. The screen flashed a few times and now I am seeing the display at full brightness which I was having issues with before. It doesn't have 5K resolution, but at least they are slightly newer drivers than when you choose "MAC" 
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May 17, 2015 00:15
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I said come in! posted:Get the 850 Pro instead or an Intel brand SSD, in my opinion. I put a EVO 850 in my MBP 2012 and it didn't even last a month in a half, although it's still not known exactly why that was, but I got a new one back and it was dead on arrival. From what i've read, I really wouldn't enable TRIM either. Garbage collection in SSD's is perfectly fine (you're shaving maybe a couple years off of the 35+ year life span of an SSD), and disabling kext signing opens up the possibility that your Mac won't boot, which is an easy fix but annoying. The pro dropped in price too, its $239.00 for 500GB. For an internal that extra price isn't much to get the better drive. I put an EVO in a USB 3 enclosure for my iMac and its actually faster than the internal hybrid drive for loading steam games. I was going to find the right Thunderbolt 2 enclosure and all that but they are so expensive. With a $20 UASP enclosure and $200 drive I was pretty drat pleased with the performance for price.
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May 20, 2015 16:28
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So I got a mouse off amazon for gaming type stuff. It was cheap but works well, except there are no custom drivers for the mac like other brands. My extra mouse buttons aren't showing in the Mission Control control panel. I just wanted to set a button to show the desktop as a convenience. Only real solutions I have seen that apply to Yosemite were to install a 3rd party software like USB Overdrive or SteerMouse. USB Overdrive I have on now but it kinda sucks and there is no direct way to set up a simple option. Are there any fixes that don't involve 3rd party software? I saw some mentions of removing files and that kind of thing but they looked old.
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May 28, 2015 18:14
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flosofl posted:I am a dumb. Well I don't know why none of the things I found in my searches mentioned BetterTouchTool, but it seems like a way better suggestion than the other ones I checked out. Since I do own the magic trackpad in addition to the mouse it would be more useful. So thanks.
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May 29, 2015 00:18
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So apparently for the video issue warranty extension program on my 2011 Macbook Pro it has to pass their diagnostic software to flag it as having the issue, and it didn't. Also after talking to a friend with inside info at some point they changed their policy on allowing exceptions/overrides so they couldn't even cut me a deal. $330 to replace the logic board, so I guess it could be worse but kinda left a bad taste in my mouth with them being so anal about it. If the extension didn't exist I probably wouldn't have batted an eye at paying and would have said yes the day I took it in. I think I might stick to having a higher powered desktop and not sink a bunch of money into another laptop because this is the second Macbook Pro I have owned that has had issues within a year of the 3 year apple care expiring. I feel like a drug addict and apple is the only one who has the good stuff.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:38
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1st AD posted:I dropped my PowerBook G4 because it was sitting in a messenger on a piano bench and someone just pulled the bench without paying any attention or removing my bag. Mine still boots up to this day even. If the thing ran intel I would have turned it into a mini server running in headless mode years ago. That G4 model outlasted both my intel ones.
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Jun 6, 2015 03:31
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Shaocaholica posted:I'm pretty sure 99% of all FW800 cables are 'thick' and the same gauge. I'm just hunting to see if there is a 1% out there that's thicker. Off the top of my head I don't know the exact gauge but its like this: It looks like Lacie used to make one that was flat instead of round. http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-FireWire-Flat-Cable-130851/dp/B001NXDQ9U
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Jun 11, 2015 00:42
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huhwhat posted:Would I be better served with a Mac mini and a Samsung 4k monitor, which is cheaper overall, or should I just get a non Retina iMac 27"? I want an OSX system similar or more powerful than a rMBP 15" non-Retina base model, without the hassle of building a hackintosh. The mini can't push a 4K display: The mini would be kinda meh with a display like that: quote:Support for up to two displays at 2560 by 1600 pixels, both at millions of colors So if you want to do 4K via HDMI you aren't going to be able to even do 60Hz. May depend on what you want to do with it. You could save a lot of money just going with something thats not 4K, and two monitors since it supports it.
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Jun 18, 2015 15:02
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