Mac Hardware - 5k Supremacy - The Something Awful Forums

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MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Mu Zeta posted:

Ooh, I like the refurb prices for the 15" MBP with i7 processors. You can get one from Feb 2011 for $1300.

drat, that's better than buying it new with employee discount from back then.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2011 18:44

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:24

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Do we trust time capsules yet or should I look elsewhere for my time machine needs? It looks like my external Western Digital drive is on the way out.

While I'm at it, anyone got any recommendations for external hard drives? I'm tempted to just choose the cheapest seagate or WD with firewire 800. Building my own would be about $185 - $120 for a 2TB drive and $65 for this enclosure: http://www.amazon.com/Macally-Hi-Speed-FireWire-Enclosure-G-S350SUAB2/dp/B003VTZFN4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333595728&sr=8-1

# ¿ Apr 5, 2012 04:14

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Sent from my iPad posted:

So has Apple simply abandoned the Mac Pro line? It's been nearly two years since they were updated and the prices are the same as they were in July 2010.

More like Intel doesn't care about keeping xeons bleeding edge, or isn't able to.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2012 18:52

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Factory Factory posted:

You'd prefer ATI over AMD? AMD bought ATI in 2006.

As for why Apple would use both the Intel IGP and a discrete chip, the answer is really, really simple: better battery life without sacrificing the option of more horsepower.

I think he's really wishing that intel was out of the picture. I guess he's buying machines that are intel-only (air? mini?).

Shmoogy posted:

I know it's awesome for editing and is super powerful, but that loving name makes me giggle all the time. Why would they name it that...

They love south park more than the rest of us!

# ¿ Apr 17, 2012 02:15

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Secx posted:

How hot do MBA or the MBP run now?

I remember when I had my Macbook Pro (late 2007 model I think), anytime Flash was involved (watching YouTube, streaming Starcraft matches), the fans would kick in (very loudly) and the bottom would be so hot I wouldn't be able let it sit on my lap.

Have they fixed the heat issue?

I have both a 2010 and 2011 MBP and neither get obnoxiously hot unless your CPU is pegged all the time.

Now I have to decide whether to get a 2012 MBP if it has usb3 and retina. That's going to be tough to resist.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2012 18:48

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

Mountain Lion still lets you install what you want because Gatekeeper is configurable.

I love the knee-jerk reactions that are exactly the same as when UAC was introduced.

Yeah, it's really been quite silly. UAC was annoying as poo poo in Vista, but has been dialed back to a reasonable amount in 7 and is even configurable. ML looks like it's just starting with configurability right off the bat.

I'm not thrilled about the skeumorphism, but it's not a deal breaker for me. Even something as egregious as calendar had a mod in Lion, so I'm hoping for the same in ML.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2012 03:25

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Bob Morales posted:

You could connect 2 non-Thunderbolt monitors. That means two $100 monitors from Staples (or ones you already own), without having to buy at least one Thunderbolt monitor that costs $800.

There's also a few external devices that don't already have daisy chaning on them. See the new matrox docking station, and smaller things like the seagate 2.5" connector. It's non ideal, but 2 ports is a suitable workaround.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2012 03:34

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

terriyaki posted:

Hmm, really? But then why is it possible to buy Thunderbolt-HDMI and Thunderbolt-DVI one piece cables?

Sorry, not trying to be argumentative or anything like that. I'm just really anti-dongle, heh.

Aren't those just display port cables anyway?

# ¿ Jun 14, 2012 03:04

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

NOTinuyasha posted:

I think everything was "discrete" back then... and they weren't doing any favors with the Go5200 in the 12" PB, that card was terrible even in 2003, by 2006 it was a running joke, definitely worse off at the time then any Intel HD-equipped Mac ever was/is. IIRC it just barely eked by in UT2004 and WoW, and both Quake 4 and Civ 4 were unplayable on any settings.

The FX5000 series was I think, by far, the worst nvidia graphics generation ever, desktop or mobile.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2012 19:43

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Akujunkan posted:

Causes Eliminated:

ISP. PC connected via ethernet gets 70 Mbps

Router. Replaced a Buffalo router running DD-WRT with a Asus router running Tomato.

Wifi: iPhone on the same network gets over 20 Mbps (if it's in range of a MBA with Bluetooth on however, that speed is greatly reduced)

Computer: My wife has a Macbook Air that has the exact same issue

Outdated OS: We're both on Mountain Lion but had this issue on Lion as well

General Wifi issues: My link speed in the menu shows 72 and the Network Utility link speed shows 144 Mbit/s

I'm going loving crazy

What router are you using? This sounds like it's configured for single-stream 2.4ghz only, esp cause of the 72mbps part. Get a dual-band router if you don't already have one. With wifi overhead you will never get 70 mbps that way, more like mid-20ish at best in the real world.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2012 22:05

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

My work machine has a 500GB apple SSD, but my personal machine has the factory 500GB 5400RPM drive

~Coxy posted:

Are you the guy who wanted a minimal OS X partition and as much as possible for Windows? You can resize it after in Disk Utility, preferably before installing Windows.

Linux live CDs are surprisingly good at this too actually.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2012 08:34

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Mu Zeta posted:

They think Mac users are dumb. It might have backup software made for Macs but I just erase that stuff before using any way.

Yup, pretty much. I don't know if that case is plastic or actual metal, but that's pretty much the only difference I saw. It was USB3 though, so maybe the Mac usb3 variant is brand new?

There is a Mac WD drive that has the metal look and FW800 ports, which would explain a cost difference but that drive is not it.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2012 18:10

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

NOTinuyasha posted:

B&H has the 680MX models on backorder too, as does everyone else. So I don't have a specific reason to order from B&H unless I want to support the most racist retailer or something.

Wait what?

# ¿ Feb 14, 2013 00:38

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Is it insane that I want to buy an 11" air refurb to travel with because I dislike the idea of lugging my 15" 2011 Pro around europe? I already have an iPad but kind of want a Mac for photos and iTunes content syncing.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2013 19:46

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

etalian posted:

Yeah it's pretty hilarious for Apple refurb pricing such as occasionally offering ancient unibody Pros for $1700-$1800.

Anything more than 1 gen out and the refurb store has quickly vanishing rewards

# ¿ Jun 17, 2013 16:55

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

flavor posted:

1.3 to 1.7 is >30% for CPU constrained tasks, minor clock speed bump chief. And again, people need to determine their usage profiles because that's what their needs depend on. If they can't do that, too bad.

I love your judgment of people having CPU-oriented tasks. If I'm in a situation where I only have the Air with me, I'll still be glad that I have that kind of power instead of saving $150 or how much the difference is. Yes, I should have brought the rMBP, but I simply didn't. I'll probably take the Air on a foreign trip later this year, and maybe I'll edit some things in FCPX for fun. According to you, this makes me a buffoon.

That's just the base clock though. With a similar thermal profile turbo boost probably can throttle up to max just as before.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2013 02:38

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

The saga continues...

Got it home and the Wi-Fi was acting up so I had to haul it back in about 30 minutes later. I think it's just a loose/incorrectly connected antenna, but they ordered parts just to be safe.

<3 applecare

# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 18:38

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Does anyone have an opinion on 2012 vs 2013 iMacs? My parents are in some need of an upgrade and would prefer a mini + display, but those seem to be passing us by this year.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2013 19:11

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

BobHoward posted:

No, that's not correct. No intel chipset, Xeon or otherwise, supports thunderbolt natively. Thunderbolt is provided by extra controllers which connect to PCIe lanes provided by the CPU or chipset, and also to DisplayPort channels from the CPU graphics or discrete graphics.

The DisplayPort part would make including full function (that is, capable of video output) thunderbolt in a Mac Pro interesting since you have to find some way of routing DisplayPort from the video cards to the motherboard. But not at all impossible, so long as they were willing to make slightly nonstandard GPU cards with an extra connector tab for DP. They used to do that for extra power delivery to ADC video cards so there's really no reason why they could not have been making tower Mac pros with thunderbolt the last few years.

Isn't there something in the intel platform required to enable it though? IIRC it's something in the chipset, which would explain why we had to wait this long for a Xeon to support it.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2013 04:23

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Ugh I'm unsure whether my 2011 MBP is having hardware or software failures. There's two notable problems I've been having:

1. mouse will freeze randomly. Seems to happen more often when doing something with Steam but it just happened for me after wake from sleep
2. Won't wake from sleep randomly. Seems to turn on but doesn't turn on the external monitor. This is the much more annoying of the 2 problems.

If I take it to a store they're not going to make me flatten and reinstall are they? I also have a 3rd party HDD and memory in there.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2014 09:31

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

suddenlyissoon posted:

Airplay display is a joke, right?

I have a new rMBP 13' spec'd out and connected through AC to my router (getting 300mb/s+ to my NAS). Using a 2nd Gen AppleTV it's a jerky mess and is beyond useless. Is that normal?

How far is the appletv from your router?

# ¿ Jan 20, 2014 23:06

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

drat, now I can't decide 13"/16GB/512GB for $2k, 15"/16GB/512GB/750M for $2500, or continue to wait for mythical broadwell.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2014 17:55

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Facepalm Ranger posted:

For just $24.99 a year.

Funny how when it was announced people were kind of surprised it was as low as it was.

I'm in the same bind though - with TV shows and movies my itunes library is ~350GB and I need to slim that down for an SSD to possible, or just live with having an external HD attached a lot of the time.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2014 20:44

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Laserface posted:

So I am basically complaining that my mid 2011 27" iMac is too good.

I would really like to own a laptop instead of a desktop these days but the iMac is just too good even with 3 years under its belt. I put 16gb RAM in not long ago and it's as quick as ever ( and hardly using half of it)

Looking on eBay I wouldn't even have trouble getting half of what it cost back.

God drat this hardware is good.

I almost have that problem with my 2011 MBP. I do all my heavy lifting on my work machine so all my personal stuff the MBP handles just fine. My only complaint is that I didn't get an SSD which is something that I'm definitely feeling, and the computer itself is kind of heavy so I'm pulling the trigger on a 13" RMBP upgrade.

At this point it's up to Intel to make the CPUs markedly faster, but what are you going to do.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 17:05

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Choadmaster posted:

^^^ That

Find some way to reproduce the issue on demand is the most important step. That way, they can't claim it's fixed or "we were unable to reproduce it." Then bring it into the store, show them, and it should get fixed (or replaced).

I had many months of runaround from Applecare about one of my Minis (something like 5 or 6 visits to the store including 4 repairs and two calls to AppleCare attempting to escalate the issue) and jack poo poo got fixed until I found a way to consistently reproduce the problem.

Alternatively if you can get video or photographic evidence of it the next time it happens, that will go a long way toward making them believe something's up.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 06:50

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Captain Pike posted:

I just bought a new 13" Retina Macbook pro from MicroCenter in Dallas. Should I get the 'MicroCenter' version of 'AppleCare', or the regular AppleCare?

Depends on what the store version covers and how much you trust them to deliver, but applecare proper gives you an actual warranty from Apple, including any retail store or phone support.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 20:39

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Does anyone have a KVM switch that they'd recommend? I need to switch between a desktop and laptop. Amazon's selection is somewhat bewildering, as well as having a surprising amount of VGA ones.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2014 17:16

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

GreatGreen posted:

http://synergy-project.org/

Best KVM ever, and it's free software... unless you plan on closing your laptop and only using one monitor, in which case this won't really help.

edit: Holy crap the guy has started charging for it! But it's just $5 though. Easily worth the price if you need that kind of solution.

I actually do leave the laptop closed

# ¿ Oct 2, 2014 17:48

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

rufius posted:

I have this one at work: http://www.amazon.com/Targus-SuperSpeed-8-Tablet-Compatible-ACP71USZ/dp/B006FXVT6K/

I usually use it with a Lenovo ThinkPad, but have used it a couple times with my MBA and haven't had any trouble with it. It's been a pretty reliable dock overall.

Oh, that's more a straight up docking station right? I'm looking for a DVI KVM switch to swap back and forth between 2 physical machines. Thanks though!

Martytoof posted:

Just FYI, most, if not all servers still ship with VGA since there's literally no reason to upgrade the technology; most KVM switches are for that market so that's why you're seeing that large abundance.

Oh, I guess that makes sense. I'm still a bit surprised there's a big market for 2-port VGA KVM switches as I'm imagining a rack full of mounted servers, so something more like a 16-port KVM switch, but I clearly don't operate in that market

# ¿ Oct 2, 2014 18:59

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Twerk from Home posted:

It's been in there just over 6 months now, battery life is better than when the machine was new, but I'm not sure how much of that is because its a slightly higher capacity battery and how much is because newer versions of OSX have gotten more efficient. It came from some ebay seller with a bunch of positive feedback and was called "Battery For Apple MacBook 13" A1342 Unibody Rechargeable A1331 020-6809-A". Note this was a white plastic macbook, so you will need something else for your MBP of course.

As a side note, we replaced it because the machine was constantly dying even when the battery indicated it had some charge, the Apple store diagnosed it as a bad battery but the problem kept happening even after we replaced the battery. Apple then diagnosed it as a bad logic board, but figuring I had nothing to lose I opened it up, poked around, taped down a loose internal connector with scotch tape, and it hasn't turned off unexpectedly since then. It gets used really heavily, so it can't be that fragile a fix. Scotch tape seems to hold up really well. Apple would have replaced the battery for $129 and the logic board for $349.

FYI if you have access to it, I believe Kapton tape is the stuff that's actually meant to go into electronics. It's meant to work better with the adhesive and high temperatures. It's the yellow-ish stuff that's already inside the Mac when you look.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2014 17:55

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

smackfu posted:

I've used this IOGear one for 3.5 years with a Mac mini and a Thinkpad: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002TQYSN8/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Generally works great. I like that the only thing I need on my desk is the little switcher unit. And there's no lag after switching until the keyboard and mouse reconnect, which I've seen with other units.

But my one complaint is that I couldn't get it to work with Logitech's unifying receiver. I think the KVM hooks into the USB keyboard to do the hotkey switching, and the unifying receiver acts like a hub and messes it all up. Mouse wouldn't work at all in OS X. So that limits your mouse choices, although I have managed so far. I would read the reviews of any model carefully for this.

Also I have never gotten it to do the "hold down keys while you power on" thing. Have to plug keyboard in directly when that is needed.

Hm I wonder if that's part of my problem. I tried using one of those and I couldn't get the mouse to do anything even after turning off their "mouse emulation," nor could I get the keyboard to do anything either. I might play around with this more but that one might be a dud for my peripherals

# ¿ Oct 3, 2014 20:39

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Does anyone have an opinion on drobo 5D vs. the regular 4-bay USB3 version? Is thunderbolt worth it? It's about a $250 premium :\

# ¿ Nov 21, 2014 09:18

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Aphrodite posted:

So then why would you buy someone a $1400 laptop with a Chromebook CPU in it?

Isn't Core M better than a chromebook CPU? Those have typically been ARM, atoms, or at best celerons from what I've seen.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 22:26

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

My guess is you'll see the Air fade away in favor of this one once the costs on a retina screen fall to an even cheaper point. The MBP will probably continue to resemble the more typical laptop form factor.

I don't know why we're harping about multi-gigabyte files on USB dongles so much. This is more targeted at the Air-class of consumer that isn't especially bothered about the occasional dongle to do things they don't need super often - someone that doesn't transfer files over USB or SD on a daily basis. Worst case they buy a USB 3.1C dock adapter with a hub, ethernet, and display in there and keep that tethered to their desk. A web developer that does everything on a server would probably get by great with one of these too.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 03:47

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Isn't 80% of the complaining here that USB-C accessories don't exist yet? Apple is probably the first major OEM to ship machines, give it time. I guarantee you'll see some belkin hub/dock in 3 months and a shitload of monoprice cables soon enough.

The USB drive thing might solve itself too. I'm sure Sandisk would be more than happy to sell people uninterested in converter cables another 32GB drive with a USB-C plug.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 17:21

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Pivo posted:

As I told you guys, I paid something like $170 for mainboard replacement minus $110 gift card, but Apple refunded me over $600.... If you're eligible for the GPU fuckup warranty program, definitely check it out.

Whoa wha? I only got back exactly what I paid for my repair. Nothing to complain about, but I never get randomly lucky

# ¿ Apr 2, 2015 18:53

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Whirlwind Jones posted:

Why? It's still got USB-C. And no other device currently available supports tb3 anyway, so....

You need chipset support for it, which I don't think the current Core M has.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 19:04

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Neco posted:

This is what I mean:

No slider for computer sleep, just display sleep. I read it has something to do with Haswell. It pretty weird and a little annoying, but I guess I will survive.

By the way, it's amazing that so few sleeves have the zipper around three edges so the laptop doesn't have to be removed completely when in use. I had the Gimp by Crumpler for my 13" MBP and was pretty happy with it, so I bought the 15" version.

Yeah I think the 2014 Macs took away the system sleep options. If you must tweak them, look into using 'pmset' on the command line.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 20:26

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Back blaze stats are a bit weird because they do buy the cheapest possible drives in batches, so if a particular model has a temporary bad run for example that would inflate their stats a bunch, eg those Seagate 3TB drives.

Really the best thing to do is realize that all drives of all sorts can suffer unexpected catastrophic failure and back up your data accordingly.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2016 19:50

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:24

MrBond: Feb 19, 2004; FYI, Cheese NIPS are not the same as Cheez ITS

Cyrano4747 posted:

Looking at that picture it looks like the real sticking points are keyboards and screens. You need keyboards to be at least big enough to type on and you need screens to be big enough to see poo poo. Ditch the keyboard requirement or take it off the main body and you basically re-invented the ipad.

That's kind of what I see as so silly about all this. It's great that you can get the motherboard down to the size of an iPhone if you put the ram and HD on-board, but all you're doing is giving yourself the ability to make it super thin. Until you find a way to make a laptop that is functional as a computer (so usable keyboard, a screen you don't mind working on) without going with a clamshell that has a built-in monitor you really aren't doing anything that's all that ground breaking.

Face it: at this point the difference between a ultra-thin notebook and a tablet with an external keyboard is mostly operating system. Stick OSX on a iPad Pro and call it good for the people who really want a computer that they can throw in a purse. Meanwhile there are plenty of people out there who don't mind something a bit thicker and a bit heavier if it gets them a keyboard with good travel and ram/HD that are user-servicable.

I'm not saying that the people who want the ultra-thins are wrong and that they don't have a use case, but I really don't see why everything needs to barrel in that direction. Thinness might be a useful talking point for an Air or a rMB, but the push to do that with the MBP line is what I cringe at.

edit: and yes, tiny boards make for big batteries, but it's not like apple's laptops ran out of juice in half an hour back in the dark ages of replaceable RAM. My 2011 15" MBP got something like 6 hours brand new and while that isn't enough to sit on your couch all day without a plug it's plenty for your average work-on-the-go that you would actually want a 15" laptop to do.

edit x2: and if it was really all about huge batteries they could just drop the tiny boards in the old big cases and have laptops that ran for days. God, imagine how many batteries you could cram in an old MBP unibody with one of those teeny tiny motherboards with everything soldered to them.

Comparing my unibody MBP and my 13 RMBP there's no way I would buy a computer that thick again.

Thinness does help it be lighter, which does have value. They might've gone a bit too far on the MB, but only because I think the keyboard is worse than the old one. I'm also a weirdo that has a mechanical keyboard though, so I am clearly not the market they were thinking of with the new MB keyboard.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2016 07:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Mac Hardware - 5k Supremacy

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