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Mac Hardware and Software |OT| - All things Macintosh

amrihua

Member
Anastacio said:
Everything's fine now.
Come to think of it, it doesn't seem like, there's any keyboard protector for the Danish keyboard at all, and I don't want to wear down the letters on the keys - I have done it on all past computers I have had!

Is there anything one can do to solve this problem? It would be sad to see the keyboard wear down on such an expensive machine, yet, it wouldn't benefit if I slowed down my typing, that would be unnatural. Any solutions?

And, does it hurt, if let's say, I charge the MacBook Air over the night, and let the charger in when it's 100% charged?

The letters on the keys wear off? That's new to me. I had my MacBook Pro for over a year and the keys still look as good as new.

I always keep my MacBook Pro connected to power when I'm at home. I don't think there is any harm in keeping it connected even when full.
 

Pachimari

Member
timnich said:
The keys on the pro aren't painted on, so they don't wear out. How else would they light up?
So the keys on the MacBook Air aren't painted on either? Now that it has that backlit keyboard.
I read it on a forum I think, that the letters would wear off, but maybe that was the 2010 model?

Cause right now, I'm really really careful when I write and I'm slowing down when I write my articles, but it would help a lot if I could write with my normal speed, not having to worry about them wearing off.
 
Jasoco said:
Well, if it is the HDD, and it probably is, just buy a new one and migrate from the TM backup.

You'll either need a portable Lion installer or a Snow Leopard disc to start with. If you use the SL disc, just install normally, go to the App Store and redownload Lion and install fresh then migrate from the TM backup.
Thanks for this!
I'm still going to do exactly as you advise though it has now become a moot point now that I've..... got myself a new MacBook Pro!

It's the 13" and the resolution was hard to look at initially but after half a day my eyes have become more forgiving and I'm really enjoying the machine :)
 
POWERSPHERE said:
I'm thinking about getting the Thunderbolt 27" monitor for my MB Pro for video editing. Huge resolution, extra fw & USB outs, and built in power make it a pretty attractive 'dock' I can just plug into. Anyone used one?

No love?
 

Jasoco

Banned
Jo Shishido's Cheeks said:
Thanks for this!
I'm still going to do exactly as you advise though it has now become a moot point now that I've..... got myself a new MacBook Pro!

It's the 13" and the resolution was hard to look at initially but after half a day my eyes have become more forgiving and I'm really enjoying the machine :)
The lower resolution is the only thing pushing me towards an Air. Still can't believe that.
 

Phoenix

Member
Greyface said:
The Pro's SSD will actually be faster. Apple's SSDs are regarded as rather low end and there is a decent selection of third party SSDs that are cheaper and better.

The 13" Pro has a godawful screen though which is what you'll be looking at 99% of the time after the first week of owning either machine. I'd trade a 'better' bezel with a worse screen for a better screen with a 'worse' bezel without a second thought.


The best "compatible" SSDs seem to come from Other World Computing http://www.macsales.com. I've got a few of them and have absolutely no complaints whatsoever.
 

RDreamer

Member
Question for you Mac-ers:

My sister has a problem with the screen on her Macbook. It's doing this:

4lDED.jpg


Now what in the world would be doing that, and can I fix it for her?
 

Jasoco

Banned
Video card is probably going. Take it to the Apple Store. How old is it. What year is it. What model is it. What is it exactly?
 
Got the new 11" MBA. 1.8GHz i7/4GB/128GB. Lost the Samsung/Toshiba SSD lotto, but it's still plenty fast.

May get a faster SSD down the road from OWC or whomever when prices get a bit more sane.

Left my Adobe CS3 disks at work, and due to a lack of WiFi, won't be able to use AirDisk to install them (I could use an adhoc network from my Mac Mini at work, but don't trust the shitty encryption it allows and the people in reception range); scrounged some bits and will be carting this to work:

mba_outboard_dvd.jpg


Just have to wipe my MacBook before selling it. Should probably try and repair the damaged case so the CD-RW can be used. Think I can probably get $200 for it. Case has typical wrist-rest cracks.

I'm also giving away my G3 iMac (350 screaming MHz, yowzas). Finding that there are a lot more usable browsers for an equivalently aged Windows machine, even though the iMac feels a lot faster and more usable for everything else. It doesn't feel horribly slow until you run out of the 512MB of RAM. Google.com crashes Safari 1.whatever.it.is. Camino seems to be the best bet. It's running 10.3 due to a lack of DVD drive.

Will see if I can't hack 10.4 onto it using PostXFacto and Netbooting. Could use the DVD drive via USB1.1, but worry I may die of old age before that install would finish.
 

mf.luder

Member
Just came in my pants. Moments ago I acquired a G4 iMac, you know the ones that had some flavour before becoming a screen and a chin.

I've wanted one for a while and finally was able to find one for the right price. It must've been fate since last night I read through the chapter in Steve Jobs that talks about how Jobs and Ive were in the garden and Jonny became obsessed with the sunflowers there.

I am also on the hunt for a semi-functional G4 cube. I saw a tutorial on the net where some guy through in the previous gen mac mini guts in, which is the same thing I want to do.
 

RDreamer

Member
Jasoco said:
Video card is probably going. Take it to the Apple Store. How old is it. What year is it. What model is it. What is it exactly?

It's just a regular Macbook, and it's probably... 3 years old now.
 
dark_chris said:
Is it possible for the Macbook Pro (mid2010) to have a 1TB hard drive? Im thinking of upgrading and wondering if such an option is available.
If it fits, sure.

There some thicker 2.5" drives that won't fit, but most will. Check the drive's specs for its thickness, then google the max thickness that the MBP allows. It's 9.5mm, I think.

In any case, now is the worst time possible to be shopping for a hard drive. Prices are up like 200% due to flooding in Thailand. Maybe hold off a bit until they get their factories dried out.
 

mf.luder

Member
Spacebar said:
I have a 27 inch iMac with a disc stuck in the trey. I've tried ejecting a bunch of times, but no luck. Any ideas?


Restart with holding down the mouse button. Left click.

If that doesn't work, restart again, this time holding down ALT/OPTION.

Edit: try with a USB mouse as well.
 

RDreamer

Member
Spacebar said:
I have a 27 inch iMac with a disc stuck in the trey. I've tried ejecting a bunch of times, but no luck. Any ideas?

Open Terminal and type "drutil tray eject"

I'm pretty sure I did that on my Macbook Pro when it was doing that to me, and it worked.
 

Spacebar

Member
I tried all of those options and none of them worked. I can hear it trying to eject the disc, but it wont come out. I think it's because the disc I put in there felt really thin. Thinner than a normal CD. I guess I will have to take it an Apple store to get it out.
 

Jasoco

Banned
A few weeks ago I posted about how my DVD drive completely disappeared from my Mac mini while it was trying to rip a DVD. It literally disappeared from the hardware in that it was like it didn't exist. I couldn't eject it with the mouse or through the GUI because it literally didn't exist. It persisted through a few reboots and actually came BACK when our power went out during the snow storm a few weeks ago.

Check Disk Utility and make sure your DVD drive still exists first just in case. If it shows it as being there, then try the eject stuff. If it doesn't appear in the sidebar, it may be a related problem to what I had.
 

Jasoco

Banned
Okay. So it's not that then. It's not ejecting? Might be the actual mechanism. Optical drives have motors for 2/3 things. Pulling the disc in/pushing it out and turning the drive and moving the laser. Question: Does it play the disc fine? Is it just not letting you eject it?
 

Pachimari

Member
I think I got two last questions, hope you don't mind guys.

01) Can the letters on the MacBook Air (2011, the one with backlight) keyboard wear down?

02) I have set OS X Lion to English, but when I looke at the top menu bar in an app (ex: chrome), it's all of a sudden in Danish - why? It must be something in Finder I should change?

Edit: I found out the answer to #02, it was because I had made Danish my preffered language, while I want it to be English.
 
mf.luder said:
Just came in my pants. Moments ago I acquired a G4 iMac, you know the ones that had some flavour before becoming a screen and a chin.

man i would love one of those. not sure how functional it'd be today, but the design is still unbelievably beautiful.

anyone have any specific experiences or thoughts on 11" vs 13" MBA? i'm an imac user, so i'm thinking 11" just to get something as different and portable as i possibly can, but i'm not sure if there's anything the screen size/orientation would make difficult and the lack of SD card slot is kind of a turnoff.
 

Kimosabae

Banned
Hey, I just bought an unlocked iphone 3g from someone. What's the fastest way to remove all their crap and replace it with my things from itunes without restoring and losing the unlock?

Any help would be super appreciated.
 
Kimosabae said:
Hey, I just bought an unlocked iphone 3g from someone. What's the fastest way to remove all their crap and replace it with my things from itunes without restoring and losing the unlock?

Any help would be super appreciated.
Sync everything on the iPhone with your iTunes?
 
Spacebar said:
Checked and the drive and it's there on the side bar. I also tried dragging the disc icon to the trash can with no luck.

As a sidenote, if you don't have Applecare and are still within your first year, by all means buy it. It's dirt cheap at $169, and when the logic board on my 2008 iMac died last year Apple ended up just giving me a 2010 unit, the then-current model.
 

Pachimari

Member
Talking about AppleCare, honestly I have never understood it. I have an iPad, iPhone, Mac Mini and MacBook Air (had an iMac 27" for a day before I got a refund) but have never bought AppleCare. We have two years of warranty when we buy it, so if anything breaks down and it's not my fault, then I can get it repaired, exchanged or refunded.

Why should I buy AppleCare?
I just want to understand it, cause I think I'm missing the point. Does it cover everything, even if I'm the one who broke the product?
 
Anastacio said:
Talking about AppleCare, honestly I have never understood it. I have an iPad, iPhone, Mac Mini and MacBook Air (had an iMac 27" for a day before I got a refund) but have never bought AppleCare. We have two years of warranty when we buy it, so if anything breaks down and it's not my fault, then I can get it repaired, exchanged or refunded.

Why should I buy AppleCare?
I just want to understand it, cause I think I'm missing the point. Does it cover everything, even if I'm the one who broke the product?

The regular warranty is one year, unless you bought with a credit card that extends it. But I have used AppleCare once on my 2009 iMac and it paid for itself. The display was going and getting burn in and they just outright replaced the LCD panel. The customer service is fantastic, and super simple. I got the AppleCare because three year full service warranty was quite nice to have.
 

Kimosabae

Banned
Treefingers said:
Sync everything on the iPhone with your iTunes?


this only works for music. It doesn't seem to work with apps and photos. If I sync, it will just add the new stuff from my itunes account and the old stuff will remain. I got the apps off through manually deleting each one on the phone itself. The chick has almost 2000 photos on this thing.

FUCK.
 

Blackhead

Redarse
Kimosabae said:
this only works for music. It doesn't seem to work with apps and photos. If I sync, it will just add the new stuff from my itunes account and the old stuff will remain. I got the apps off through manually deleting each one on the phone itself. The chick has almost 2000 photos on this thing.

FUCK.
Restore from scratch with whited00r.
 

Pachimari

Member
PhoncipleBone said:
The regular warranty is one year, unless you bought with a credit card that extends it. But I have used AppleCare once on my 2009 iMac and it paid for itself. The display was going and getting burn in and they just outright replaced the LCD panel. The customer service is fantastic, and super simple. I got the AppleCare because three year full service warranty was quite nice to have.
Here in Denmark it's two years warranty on everything, including my Macs, without AppleCare.
 

Riptwo

Member
I have a 15" 2011 Macbook Pro, and I finally installed the recent EFI/SMC/whatevertheywere system updates. Now my display seems to randomly dim, and occasionally the brightness turns itself entirely off. The brightness will restore after moving the mouse around, but it takes 20-30 seconds to do so. I turned off the automatic screen brightness adjustment feature, but it still seems to be occurring. Is this happening to anyone else, or should I just take this thing in for an Apple store appointment?
 
PhoncipleBone said:
The regular warranty is one year, unless you bought with a credit card that extends it.

I believe some jurisdictions have stronger consumer protection laws (the UK is one, IIRC) and the 'stock' warranty is two years, and Apple Care is just one additional year. Could explain why the prices are higher there, too.

I've purchased it and used it on some things, but I'm quite sure my anecdotes don't make a good case either way. FWIW, I'll probably not buy it for my new MBA, though we'll see in a year.

Edit: beaten; stupid work distracting me from distractions.
 

Spacebar

Member
Jasoco said:
Okay. So it's not that then. It's not ejecting? Might be the actual mechanism. Optical drives have motors for 2/3 things. Pulling the disc in/pushing it out and turning the drive and moving the laser. Question: Does it play the disc fine? Is it just not letting you eject it?

Sorry for the late reply. I gave up and went to bed.

Yea, the disc runs fine. When I try to eject it the icon on the desktop disappears and you hear the drive trying to eject it. The CD doesn't come out and then the icon on the desktop reappears.


Get a friend to help. Hold iMac on side with disc-drive opening pointed down and then try, so you let gravity help.

I'm going to try this later tonight when I get home from work. Thanks everyone for the tips.
 

Kimosabae

Banned
SO if the apple logo gets stuck on screen when trying to boot up the phone, does that mean the phone is bricked?


If so, I'm done with iOS.
 

RDreamer

Member
RDreamer said:
Question for you Mac-ers:

My sister has a problem with the screen on her Macbook. It's doing this:

4lDED.jpg


Now what in the world would be doing that, and can I fix it for her?


Anyone else wanna have a go at what this might be? I can't really find anything like it by searching through the net. If it's just ram or something I could probably replace that for her.
 

TUSR

Banned
Kimosabae said:
this only works for music. It doesn't seem to work with apps and photos. If I sync, it will just add the new stuff from my itunes account and the old stuff will remain. I got the apps off through manually deleting each one on the phone itself. The chick has almost 2000 photos on this thing.

FUCK.
Check to see if she left any good photos first.
 
I need to tap the gaf Mac wisdom. My Macbook [Snow leopard 13 inch circa 2006 white plastic body] always restarts when coming out of sleep. Either when you open toe lid or hit a key to awaken it, it restarts everytime. The battery is fine (does it plugged in or not), I reset the SMC, and PRAM, adjusted the energy saver setting but nothing makes a difference. I received it from work and it has done this since I have been using it.

Any ideas? BTW it has a Core Duo so it cannot be upgraded to Lion, if that makes a difference.
 

Blackhead

Redarse
RDreamer said:
Anyone else wanna have a go at what this might be? I can't really find anything like it by searching through the net. If it's just ram or something I could probably replace that for her.
from here it looks like the screen is broken. You might want to take it to the closest apple genius bar...
 

Jasoco

Banned
Spacebar said:
Sorry for the late reply. I gave up and went to bed.

Yea, the disc runs fine. When I try to eject it the icon on the desktop disappears and you hear the drive trying to eject it. The CD doesn't come out and then the icon on the desktop reappears.




I'm going to try this later tonight when I get home from work. Thanks everyone for the tips.
Sounds like the eject motor. Definitely need a new drive.
 

Spacebar

Member
Jasoco said:
Sounds like the eject motor. Definitely need a new drive.

Yea i think so too. I just tried turn the imac sideways and eject it with no luck. It's been well over a year and I bought my imac from amazon. I can just buy apple care and they will fix it if I take it to a store?
 
Spacebar said:
Yea i think so too. I just tried turn the imac sideways and eject it with no luck. It's been well over a year and I bought my imac from amazon. I can just buy apple care and they will fix it if I take it to a store?

Typically you have to buy AppleCare within the year's coverage. Sometimes there are exceptions (this the first and only disc you've used?).

Can you try something like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkMJDOER4uM
 

Spacebar

Member
CrudeDiatribe said:
Typically you have to buy AppleCare within the year's coverage. Sometimes there are exceptions (this the first and only disc you've used?).

Can you try something like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkMJDOER4uM

This isn't the first disc I've used. It's been well over a year so I guess I can't get Apple care. I don't usually use CD's that much anyway. Most of the times if I need files off a disc I'll use my macbook then save the files to an external hard drive and then transfer.

I'm going to try that credit card trick as soon as I get a chance.
 
Damn my Macbook Pro seems to use a ton of memory!
With Safari, Mail, iTunes and iPhoto open only 680MB of the 4GB memory remains free. How is this even possible.....?
Ahh well just ordered 8GB :D I initially thought it would be overkill but now I'm not so sure...
 

noah111

Still Alive
Wow, I think Spacebar cursed me because now i'm fucked. My MBP disc drive won't eject the CD. It all started when I was watching movie and then the reserve battery message came up so I put in the charger. I kept watching, but somehow it just stopped and the computer shut down. I tried ejecting (computer off/sleep I think) and there's the clicking sound that doesn't stop. The charger light is flashing green fast as well. I leave it alone for a while (pull out the charger) then come back later and it boots fine. I'm back on my user, but it won't fucking eject. What's worse, the battery doesn't seem to be bloody charging, it just stays green and the indicator says 'not charging. When it turns orange, I click the menu bar icon and the cable light is green again. WTF? I need to find a way to get the disc out somehow, and I hope that will cure the battery issue (computer dies if I unplug btw), I don't know what to do... HELP?
 

noah111

Still Alive
Nothing? Well, i'm fucked. Can't even unplug it without having it die on me, fuck. Worse yet is there isn't an apple store I can go to in this country or tbh any of the bordering fucking countries either.

Damn..
 
Sentry said:
Nothing? Well, i'm fucked. Can't even unplug it without having it die on me, fuck. Worse yet is there isn't an apple store I can go to in this country or tbh any of the bordering fucking countries either.

You can usually eject a disc with a pin...dunno was setup you have but usually there is a tiny little hole where you can use a pin to manually eject the disc...
 

noah111

Still Alive
Yeah, i'm on the newer MacBook Pro models that won't work. I ended up stripping and opening the entire thing up, removing the disc manually after removing the drive itself, and then reassembling.

The disc drive now makes weird sounds so I need to get that replaced, don't dare to put a disc in there right now.. also have a problem with my computer not charging properly as mentioned before.

Not sure if that's due to my charger dying or my MBP's battery dying... hope it's not the latter.
 
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