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MBA questions: I'm considering buying the current model of the 11" MBA with and i5 processor, 4 GB RAM and, and 128 GB memory storage. I wanted an ultraportable because I can't carry around my 17" Dell around and the 3rd gen iPad is no replacement for a computer. I would like to upgrade if Apple releases a new MBA with a Haswell processor and a retina display, but I wanted to figure out if I should be an early adopter and getting it in 2013 or if I should wait another year for them to smooth out any kinks of those features. I wanted to know how much the resale value of the computer would depreciate after 2 generations to figure out if I would be better off upgrading in 2013 as opposed to 2014.
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Jan 11, 2013 21:25
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Pigasus posted:MBA questions: Used Mac pricing is mysterious so you never know. A year-old model might sell for $50 or $250 less than the current one. It also depends on how good you take care of your poo poo.
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Jan 11, 2013 21:28
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Don Lapre posted:OSX should automatically align. Maybe my google-fu is weak, but I've yet to see this cited by an even unofficial source, except by some wave-off of "OS X doesn't need it" by an officer at OCZ of all places who made the statement about 2 years ago. How and when does it do it? When the EFI partition is created by Disk Utility, or during an OS install when the installer is playing around with creating the recovery partition? quote:It also supports trim if you download the trim enabler. I run fsck to manually engage TRIM because at least I get feedback that it's happening. I know it will get triggered eventually but I like to hurry things up.
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Jan 11, 2013 21:49
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I'm too lazy to break out one of our $50,000 SATA bus analyzers to collect a trace, but I've seen traces we've collected before and can guarantee OS X does fine with TRIM ATA commands. Alignment is also a non-issue. We looked into it ages ago when native 4k-sector was moving forward in the HDD industry. edit: I also have access to Apple's storage spec sheets. Star War Sex Parrot fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Jan 11, 2013 |
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Jan 11, 2013 22:15
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Bob Morales posted:Used Mac pricing is mysterious so you never know. A year-old model might sell for $50 or $250 less than the current one. It also depends on how good you take care of your poo poo. I couldn't help but ask since it seems like conventional wisdom around here says that it's best to wait 2 years before upgrading. I wanted to know about the reasoning behind that.
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Jan 11, 2013 22:18
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Don't worry so much over resale value. When you're ready for a new computer just check Apple's refurb prices and see if you can get close to that. You'll probably lose 15-20% with each new generation released.
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Jan 11, 2013 22:20
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Pigasus posted:I couldn't help but ask since it seems like conventional wisdom around here says that it's best to wait 2 years before upgrading. I wanted to know about the reasoning behind that. Mac depreciation levels off after a while. Just upgrade when you need a new machine.
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Jan 11, 2013 22:21
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Mu Zeta posted:Who said wait 2 years? A lot of people. The initial hit from buying a new mac laptop is pretty large and stable until the next iteration comes along- then it's another huge blow to the value. It is then stable the entire year, until the next iteration, but generally the value hit this time is even lower- and it's not a bad time to sell it and upgrade as the performance jump is sizable and the value starts dropping again quickly as new and better features are becoming common place.
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Jan 11, 2013 22:22
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So I'm looking at the Mini with two internal hard drives. They come as separate volumes to the OS and not in a RAID mirror, is that correct?
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Jan 11, 2013 23:32
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Less Fat Luke posted:So I'm looking at the Mini with two internal hard drives. They come as separate volumes to the OS and not in a RAID mirror, is that correct? Correct
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Jan 11, 2013 23:35
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Pigasus posted:MBA questions: There will be no Retina Macbook Air next year just another processor refresh, along with slight improvements to weight and size due to changing out some parts. It will probably take a few generations for Retina to trickle down to the MBA due to the more challenging manufacturing process, lower price vs. Pro Retina and also limited pool of suppliers.
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Jan 12, 2013 00:09
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etalian posted:There will be no Retina Macbook Air next year just another processor refresh, along with slight improvements to weight and size due to changing out some parts. I could definitely see a retina air next year with the new intel chips, lower power and 2x more powerful graphics is perfect for a retina air. Apple tends to adopt technology pretty quickly among their devices.
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Jan 12, 2013 00:12
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Why would they go and put a retina display in the air and make it a "better" retina pro than the retina pro is?
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Jan 12, 2013 00:14
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Why wouldn't they. They do it now with the MBP and and MBA. The MBP and AIR are the same price now and the air probably costs less to make. No reason they wouldn't do the same thing with the rMBP and rAIR.
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Jan 12, 2013 00:18
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Don Lapre posted:Correct
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Jan 12, 2013 02:03
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Electric Bugaloo posted:Eventually. Of course they've done it before- with basically every product they've ever made. Pigasus posted:I couldn't help but ask since it seems like conventional wisdom around here says that it's best to wait 2 years before upgrading. I wanted to know about the reasoning behind that. Don Lapre posted:Why wouldn't they. They do it now with the MBP and and MBA. The MBP and AIR are the same price now and the air probably costs less to make. No reason they wouldn't do the same thing with the rMBP and rAIR. On the other hand there'll be a huge range of CPU/GPU power options which could be reason enough to keep separate form factors, like the MBA would continue getting thinner and lighter, MBP would sacrifice some (relative) portability for more power...so yeah, the same as they do now.
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Jan 12, 2013 02:27
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japtor posted:And for a notebook specific example, just look at the MBA. Something like $1600+ when they came out, a year or two later they're down to $1000. And could easily reach $3000 if you doubled the SSD capacity and also had lots of thermal problems due to CPUs not being caught up with the overall concept. It took a few years to get a get reasonably price laptop that's pretty much annoying issue free.
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Jan 12, 2013 02:34
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japtor posted:And for a notebook specific example, just look at the MBA. Something like $1600+ when they came out, a year or two later they're down to $1000.
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Jan 12, 2013 05:06
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Bob Morales posted:To be fair, the $999 Air is the 11", 2GB (4GB now) 64GB model. The $1199/$1299 Air is still there. Apple has the base 13" model for $1000 refurb and the rumor mill says another price cut is due in 2013 to compete better with the lower priced ultrabooks. Probably another minor $100/$50 price cut similar to what was done with the Ivy bridge models.
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Jan 12, 2013 05:20
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Apparently I misremembered the original base price: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook-air-core-2-duo-1.6-13-specs.html quote:Original Price (US): US$1799* 
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Jan 12, 2013 06:10
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japtor posted:Apparently I misremembered the original base price: The 2008 MBA was Frankenstein product since many things such as CPU and integrated graphics hadn't caught up yet with the form factor. Only had around 2.5 hours of battery life for real-world use due to the higher power consumption for all the components and lower capacity battery. It's pretty amazing to see how much things change in 5 years.
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Jan 12, 2013 07:05
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lol 
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Jan 12, 2013 07:42
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The first-gen Air was such a piece of poo poo. To be fair most first-gen Apple products are/were.
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Jan 12, 2013 11:23
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I just wanted to thank you all for recommending the SSD to upgrade my 2008 iMac. It was pretty painless and its like a whole new computer. I was close to dropping 1400 on a new iMac and this saved me about 1200. Endless thanks and appreciation.
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Jan 12, 2013 12:00
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Sprat Sandwich posted:The first-gen Air was such a piece of poo poo. It didn't even have stereo sound, it was quite the wreck looking back at the 1st Gen product. etalian fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Jan 12, 2013 |
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Jan 12, 2013 14:03
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Replaced the screen on my rMBP 15" and got a Samsung for those thinking of doing the same. Still haven't heard of anyone being given a LG screen as a replacement.
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Jan 12, 2013 15:38
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rsjr posted:Replaced the screen on my rMBP 15" and got a Samsung for those thinking of doing the same. Still haven't heard of anyone being given a LG screen as a replacement. Do they actually replace the screen or do they just give you a new rMBP?
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Jan 12, 2013 18:44
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etalian posted:It didn't even have stereo sound, it was quite the wreck looking back at the 1st Gen product. It had stereo sound - it just didn't have stereo speakers. Just a speaker.
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Jan 12, 2013 18:44
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I may have missed this, but here goes. Picked up a late 2012 Mini (500gb model) to replace my 2011 - which I am sending in to a colo company. I pulled the 256gb ssd from my 2011, put it in the 2012 and booted up. Immediately I am getting the international 'no' icon (circle w/ slash). If I boot to the 500gb it shipped with, it is fine. I can connect the ssd via external enclosure and *sometimes* it will see it. If I set it as startup drive, it won't boot - just goes to the 500gb. Additionally, I can not startup w/ cmd-r or Opt. I've read about the Fusion issues with adding a drive, but this isn't a Fusion drive (only 1tb are, correct?). Any thoughts? Bad hardware? Demons?
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Jan 12, 2013 19:07
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If you never updated the OS on the 2011 Mini, it only came with OS X 10.7.2. 2012 Mini requires OS X 10.8.1 at the minimum. Apple has a history of locking out certain OS levels in firmware. Also, the 2012 Mini has an Intel HD 4000 GPU, which there's no drivers for in 10.7.x. If you have Mountain Lion on a USB stick or have an App Store account you can update the older drive to Mountain Lion and get bootabiity back. Binary Badger fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jan 12, 2013 |
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Jan 12, 2013 19:22
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pipebomb posted:Any thoughts? The 2012 Mini ships with a custom build of OS X (10.8.2 plus new drivers for the new hardware). My 2012 Mini is running build 12C2034 according to About This Mac, whereas my 10.8.2 Macbook Pro is running 12C60. Presumably the different number indicates the new driver support. In general, a new Mac only boots with new OSes and updates to new OSes that are released after the hardware comes out. To get the special version of OS X installed on a new drive, you may be able to boot the 2012 Mini into recovery mode with that disk attached and install to that drive. In theory it would be able to install overtop your old OS without erasing it first, but you should back up just in case. Usually what happens is once a new OS update (10.8.3, as it's the next number) comes out for both 2011 and 2012 Minis, you'll be able to drive swap after installing the update. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Mountain_Lion#Release_history
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Jan 12, 2013 20:47
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Do you guys with MacBook Pros use a case or keyboard cover? I think I'm definitely going to get a keyboard cover. As far as I can tell, Moshi is the best but also the most expensive. Is there a difference between the Moshi covers and the $5 covers on Amazon?
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Jan 12, 2013 21:16
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I've seen a few people here mention covers...but I've never actually run into anyone using them in the wild.
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Jan 12, 2013 21:25
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keevo posted:Do you guys with MacBook Pros use a case or keyboard cover? I think I'm definitely going to get a keyboard cover. As far as I can tell, Moshi is the best but also the most expensive. Is there a difference between the Moshi covers and the $5 covers on Amazon? Moshi makes a really nice product, the more difference is better durability vs. the cheaper products. I have iGlaze for my MBA and the plastic they use is high quality enough to pass the key scratch test.
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Jan 12, 2013 22:16
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Alright, so I need two replacement batteries for Mid-2009 Unibody MacBook Pros. I know I can pay Apple $130 to do a swap, but I'd really like a cheaper DIY alternative. Anyone know of a reliable source for these batteries? I've seen some results on Amazon, but a lot of them are labeled "Six-Cell Replacement Battery" and as I understand it these system used molded LiPolymer batteries. I've also seen a few sites that are selling apparently used (with only a few discharge counts) batteries, but that seems sort of shady to me. Anyone have a good resource for OEM or aftermarket batteries that they can vouch for?
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Jan 13, 2013 00:28
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Aftermarket batteries are a real hit or miss and usually a miss.
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Jan 13, 2013 03:21
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I bought a an external housing for my old 2008 iMac 3.5 hd. It has an external power supply that lights up when I push the button. When I plug it into my computer I get nothing. Doesn't recognize it anywhere (in terminal or disk utility). Any advice?
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Jan 13, 2013 05:38
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keevo posted:Do you guys with MacBook Pros use a case or keyboard cover?
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Jan 13, 2013 05:46
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HATE TROLL TIM posted:Alright, so I need two replacement batteries for Mid-2009 Unibody MacBook Pros. I know I can pay Apple $130 to do a swap, but I'd really like a cheaper DIY alternative. Anyone know of a reliable source for these batteries? I've seen some results on Amazon, but a lot of them are labeled "Six-Cell Replacement Battery" and as I understand it these system used molded LiPolymer batteries. I've also seen a few sites that are selling apparently used (with only a few discharge counts) batteries, but that seems sort of shady to me. NuPower from OWC
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Jan 13, 2013 06:05
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Bob Morales posted:NuPower from OWC It's $100 online looks like there's not a good cheapskate option online. etalian fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jan 13, 2013 |
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Jan 13, 2013 16:21
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