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DEUCE SLUICE posted:I don't know how to check FPS in Starcraft II, but running the demo at 1900x1200 it looked great and performed as fast as I'd expect on the 2.5 mini. I think if you mouseover the Menu button in the top left, it will pop up the frame rate. Failing that Ctrl-Alt-F on Windows gives FPS, so possible either Ctrl-Option F or Ctrl-Command F
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Jul 23, 2011 06:29
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I think this Mini really needs an SSD. The 5400 rpm drive just can't hang - I'm getting more beachballs in Safari than I ever have. It's either the drive or Lion, I guess.
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Jul 23, 2011 06:53
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DEUCE SLUICE posted:I think this Mini really needs an SSD. The 5400 rpm drive just can't hang - I'm getting more beachballs in Safari than I ever have. It's either the drive or Lion, I guess.
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Jul 23, 2011 07:25
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FCKGW posted:Yeah, really sucks about you getting a free harddrive. My new iMac was *just* dispatched an hour ago. I hope it doesn't have a faulty drive 
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Jul 23, 2011 10:49
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Hardflip posted:My new iMac was *just* dispatched an hour ago. I hope it doesn't have a faulty drive Very likely not. They know about these things in advance before they issue a recall.
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Jul 23, 2011 15:33
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andyf posted:If you're in Lion, they disabled key repeat in some/most apps, it seems NVM. I'm an idiot. KidDynamite fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Jul 23, 2011 |
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Jul 23, 2011 15:37
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fishmech posted:The 13 inch Air also lasts like 7 or so hours on battery while the 11 inch does 5 or so. I can get almost 6 hours on my 11.6" MBA 2010 on lowered brightness and no wifi.
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Jul 23, 2011 15:39
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If all I want to play is SWTOR, will the base mini be all right for that? I figure that as an MMO, it'll scale well, and I won't need the machine for much more than productivity/work/maybe some programming (CPU stuff, no graphics). I want a Mac again since I sold my Air but don't want to spend much. I know the game's not out yet so it's kind of a hypothetical but I would like to get one. (I figured that since the better model is running Crysis/SC2 pretty ok, even on the base one an MMO of all things should be fine) double sulk fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Jul 23, 2011 |
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Jul 23, 2011 16:57
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I'd get the $799 one with discrete graphics if you care about games. This thing crushes. Or at least, coming from a 2.26 C2D + 9400M, it crushes. edit: I'm starting to suspect that something else was going on last night. I unplugged my Duet and external HD, rebooted, killed everything that started up automatically before (Rivet, Dropbox, and Radium) and everything seems cool today. I bet it was the Duet - that thing is a greasefire on Lion right now. DEUCE SLUICE fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Jul 23, 2011 |
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Jul 23, 2011 17:02
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My friend is buying me a MBA 13" and giving me his F&F discount. How much is applecare through the F&F program? Is it also 15% off? Am I better off getting it via the edu discount?
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Jul 23, 2011 17:11
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i think its 25% off - it's pretty significant, i'd stick with it
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Jul 23, 2011 17:17
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Corin Tucker's Stalker posted:I've actually been considering an iPad + Mini combo, with the Mini doing HTPC duties, light gaming, and whatever the iPad can't do. My only concern is that I do a lot of long-form writing, and I'm a little wary of how that would work out with that setup. Since the iPad came out, it has been my primary machine for writing, and... it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great either. I just ordered an 11 inch MacBook Air, because I'm tired of carrying an iPad and a bluetooth keyboard around all the time. Serious typing on the screen is not feasible. (Also, the Apple Bluetooth keyboard is not cut out for portable use, because the power button gets hit all the time accidentally and then it turns on the screen, and the batteries in your keyboard and iPad get drained. I could probably have found a more suitable keyboard, but  .)On the software side, it's good, since so many apps support cloud services like dropbox and google docs and crap. Still though, the lack of memory and true multitasking suck when you need to reference stuff on the web and look at emails while writing, though that stuff is probably a bit better on the iPad 2. edit: I still plan to use my iPad for some writing-related tasks, like when I'm walking around the floor at something like GDC. Then, when I get back to my hotel room, I'll break out the air to write stuff up for real. So basically what I'm saying is that depending on what you do, you should get one of each Apple product, and then your bases will be covered. Shart Carbuncle fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jul 23, 2011 |
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Jul 23, 2011 17:28
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Chim posted:i think its 25% off - it's pretty significant, i'd stick with it 25% is the personal discount and they get 1 of those a year, F&F is 15%,
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Jul 23, 2011 18:05
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The $799 Mini really seems like the way to go, just because you're going to spend some amount to upgrade the base model to 4GB of RAM anyway.
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Jul 23, 2011 18:38
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Binary Badger posted:I can get almost 6 hours on my 11.6" MBA 2010 on lowered brightness and no wifi. Yeah but who really goes with no wifi? You get 5 hours easily with the wifi on, it's great.
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Jul 23, 2011 18:39
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Kind of a related question: Does having WiFi on but not connected eat battery? I'm sometimes with my laptop in places that just don't have WiFi (like my grandpa in-laws house.) I've never thought to actually turn off the AirPort in the menu bar, I just let it sit there unconnected. Am I wasting battery while it polls for occasional nearby hotspots or something?
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Jul 23, 2011 18:44
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MrChupon posted:Kind of a related question: Having the WiFi on means that your wireless adapter's antenna is on and scanning/waiting to connect and transmit/etc. It won't use nearly as much power as if it's connected (since it's not actively transmitting regularly), but it's still consuming some power. I doubt it's that much power though.
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Jul 23, 2011 19:09
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Wikipedia Brown posted:Since the iPad came out, it has been my primary machine for writing, and... it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great either. I just ordered an 11 inch MacBook Air, because I'm tired of carrying an iPad and a bluetooth keyboard around all the time. Serious typing on the screen is not feasible. Anyone who wants to try writing for any stretch of time on an iPad needs to get iA Writer. The screen keyboard in that program makes writing bearable. I'm not going to lie and say it's as good as a real keyboard, but I've written for hours on it, and it works 100 times better than Apple's lovely screen keyboard.
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Jul 23, 2011 19:10
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I sent my iMac to the Apple Store to get the hard drive replacement. It's going to take 5 days.  Kinda surprised it's going to take that long, but I guess they don't have the hard drive in the store yet.
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Jul 23, 2011 19:12
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Residency Evil posted:My friend is buying me a MBA 13" and giving me his F&F discount. How much is applecare through the F&F program? Is it also 15% off? Am I better off getting it via the edu discount? If it's 15% off, you're better off getting it through the edu discount. AppleCare for regular is 249, 15% is 211 (calculated, no idea of actual), and edu is 183. I imagine you'd also be missing out on the $100 edu gift card, and possibly the $100 printer thing, so ask him about that.
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Jul 23, 2011 19:13
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Any suggestions on what to spend the $100 gift card on? I'm not finding much I'm interested in.
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Jul 23, 2011 19:24
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fishmech posted:Yeah but who really goes with no wifi? People writing papers, doing non-web design work, reading predownloaded books.. 
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Jul 23, 2011 19:25
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fishmech posted:Yeah but who really goes with no wifi? You get 5 hours easily with the wifi on, it's great. I turn mine off when I need to concentrate on work.
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Jul 23, 2011 19:42
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e: wrong thread
withak fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Jul 23, 2011 |
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Jul 23, 2011 20:08
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chimz posted:If it's 15% off, you're better off getting it through the edu discount. AppleCare for regular is 249, 15% is 211 (calculated, no idea of actual), and edu is 183. Yeah I'm missing out on the edu gift card and the printer. I'm against printing at home however and I'd rather not be locked into spending $100 at the app store (even though I will).
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Jul 23, 2011 20:20
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Was at the Fruit Stand today, opened a ton of tabs in Safari w/ sites + every app that was on it, only dropped to like 400MB free RAM still, didn't swap. I think I may get one now...glossy coming from matte will suck, but there's no other choice, really. Now to just decide between 128GB and 256GB SSD. I need to find some drive benchmarks somewhere, I wonder if they behave like SandForce drives where performance goes way up when you increase the number of flash dies.
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Jul 23, 2011 20:36
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Residency Evil posted:Yeah I'm missing out on the edu gift card and the printer. I'm against printing at home however and I'd rather not be locked into spending $100 at the app store (even though I will). The gift card also works on iTunes and the iBookstore, but if you're anti-iStore then you should go for the 15%.
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Jul 23, 2011 20:38
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chimz posted:The gift card also works on iTunes and the iBookstore, but if you're anti-iStore then you should go for the 15%. Not anti-store, but if you calculate it out, the FF discount is still better than the edu discount. FF: 1300*.85*1.07 = $1182 total Edu: 1250*1.07 - 100 = $1237. Not a huge difference, but you still come out ahead.
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Jul 23, 2011 20:54
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So my left USB port kept messing up on my new MBA 11". I had to reset the SMC each time which was annoying. So I ended up trying to exchange it but ended up upgrading to the 13" version. I thought I would miss the portability of the 11" but taking it to campus today, the benefit of having more screen real estate benefitted from the bigger form factor.
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Jul 23, 2011 20:55
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movax posted:..glossy coming from matte will suck, but there's no other choice, really. The Air's screen isn't matte, but it does have some sort of anti-glare coating that actually works well. Think of it as in-between matte and glossy.
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Jul 23, 2011 21:25
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jfreder posted:Any suggestions on what to spend the $100 gift card on? I'm not finding much I'm interested in. That said, if you need some Photoshop type app, Pixelmator is still on sale for $30 and decent, and Adobe just released Photoshop Elements for $80. If you want general system utility type stuff Many Trick's apps are pretty nice, particularly Name Mangler, Moom, and Witch (...well those are the only ones I've used). BetterZip is pretty great as far as an archive handling app, probably excessive if you just need to compress/decompress stuff though. And of course there's the iWork apps if you need to do some Office-y type stuff. Or just keep it around for 10.8  .
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Jul 23, 2011 22:09
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I'm sure I sound like someone at Macrumors who has their panties in a knot, but it appears there's a MBA-roulette going on with the SSD and the Displays. The Samsung SSDs are slightly faster than the Toshiba ones (at least in benchmarks) - though in practice it makes zero difference. The problem is that the LG displays aren't as good as the Samsung ones. This might sound like obsessing over nothing, and I originally passed it off as such, but I had a 2011 13" with an LG and a 2011 13" with a Samsung display sitting next to each other in a light-controlled room and the Samsung display is superior even after some (admittedly basic) calibration. The LG seems much more washed out and the contrast is lower. I'll probably exchange my i7 and try and get one with the more common Samsung display. I put up with the SR 8600m problems so I figure Apple "owes" me at least that /justification.
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Jul 24, 2011 00:44
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Welp, my new mini has the same bullshit screen flickering with the 24" Cinema Display as all the other new thunderbolt macs. Great. http://www.macrumors.com/2011/03/11/some-new-macbook-pros-causing-flickering-in-24-inch-cinema-displays/ https://discussions.apple.com/message/15710604#15710604 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2765598?start=480&tstart=0 Guess I was wrong to expect that they'd fix something they've known about since the first T-bolt Macs came out.
DEUCE SLUICE fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Jul 24, 2011 |
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Jul 24, 2011 00:46
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mik posted:MBA-roulette This stresses me out. As I sit here obsessively  ing the tracking info (Alaska!), I'm now going to be worrying about whether or not I got stuck with a lovely display.I would rather have not known there was a difference!
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Jul 24, 2011 01:59
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Is there a way to tell from the box, or do you have to get system properties once you open it?
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Jul 24, 2011 02:05
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Apparently I have the slower SSD but I'm not sure how to check the display panel. Bummer Apple
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Jul 24, 2011 02:07
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A goal of mine when I got my 2009 Mac Pro was to try an EFI install of Windows 7. Linux doesn't have an issue booting from EFI so getting triple boot systems isn't as much of a pain in the rear end. However, the EFI implementation Apple uses before these new machines is at latest 1.4. Here is a link describing what I want to do: http://darobins.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/native-uefi-windows-7-boot-on-mac-mini/ According to the following Apple KB article, recent Macbooks have an EFI 2.0 implementation: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237 My question to you guys is if the new hardware that was just released is running a 2.0 EFI implementation, and if so, is a native EFI install of Windows 7 possible? If anyone can get back to me with this, it would be appreciated, as I may purchase one strictly for this functionality.
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Jul 24, 2011 02:10
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Wikipedia Brown posted:This stresses me out. As I sit here obsessively
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Jul 24, 2011 02:36
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mik posted:I'm sure I sound like someone at Macrumors who has their panties in a knot, but it appears there's a MBA-roulette going on with the SSD and the Displays. The Samsung SSDs are slightly faster than the Toshiba ones (at least in benchmarks) - though in practice it makes zero difference. The problem is that the LG displays aren't as good as the Samsung ones. This might sound like obsessing over nothing, and I originally passed it off as such, but I had a 2011 13" with an LG and a 2011 13" with a Samsung display sitting next to each other in a light-controlled room and the Samsung display is superior even after some (admittedly basic) calibration. The LG seems much more washed out and the contrast is lower. I'll probably exchange my i7 and try and get one with the more common Samsung display. I put up with the SR 8600m problems so I figure Apple "owes" me at least that /justification. Is the display difference really noticeable in quality or do you have to nickpick?
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Jul 24, 2011 02:53
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Good news everyone (just me actually)! I went to the Apple Store today and they confirmed two things for me: 1. My iMac won't have a bad drive because it was manufactured in late July 2. If I bring the whole box in I can swap out the magic mouse for the trackpad
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Jul 24, 2011 03:05
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