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Mac Hardware and Software |OT| - All things Macintosh

Rootbeer

Banned
Co-worker bought a key off eBay for $9. So... yes, but I hope you're not in a place in life that $6 is the end of the world.

Heh, well... no, however when you think about what you are actually getting for that $15 in terms of materials it is ridiculous. On the flipside, having a perfectly working delete key is easily worth the $15 fix, so it's hard to complain.

Just hope I ordered the right thing :( It shipped today though! Pretty fast.

After poking around in the keys though I see just how fragile the inside really is. It's just bits of VERY THIN plastic that don't take a lot to break. I hope I don't start seeing more keys break...

I've always been the person to treat his computers and accessories like mini gods that need constant upkeep and worship at all times, I don't abuse anything, so when something breaks it usually ends up being something faulty.
 
Hey, anyone have the jumpy iPhone screen problem?

Here's a video of it. Basically you touch the screen and it acts like you've swiped it. I had it intermittently for a while on my 5S last year and then it went away after a software update. My sister-in-law's 5S (7.1.2) is doing it— but mine would have gone away with (or prior) to 7.1.2's release. Her iPhone keeps deleting threads in Messages when she tries to tap them and it's driving her nuts, understandably.
 
Anyone know what the best data recovering programme would be?. The one I'm using at the moment isn't the best.

It also makes no sense to me that the recovery programme I am currently using can access my external hard drive backup, but my pro wont show it at all.
 

Husker86

Member
So I am going to be selling my mid 2012 Macbook Air soon and want a 15" Pro Retina.

I have been holding myself back for a couple of months because of Broadwell. Now, I know something new is always 'coming up', but we are definitely towards the end of the Haswell cycle and I really hate not getting in on the refresh from the beginning.

I guess my main question is, since Broadwell is a die shrink release, is it mainly going to be a battery life increase and just a modest performance increase? I've been trying to read up on it but have been seeing answers for both sides.

If it's mostly a power efficiency thing, I think I'd be fine getting a MBP now.
 

empyrean

Member
Anyone received a 5k iMac yet? Desperately want one but read some bad things over at the forums on mac rumours with regards to the gpu constantly throttling itself when doing anything remotely gpu intensive making it hardly worth upgrading the gpu and meaning the gpu performance is around that of a 2 year old nvidia card. :(
 

whiteape

Member
Yeah i've got the 5k Retina with the better GPU. Until today i never noticed anything, but after reading that macrumors thread i've tested some stuff. Games do run fine. (I don't do games on Macs, so i just tested Portal2 and Diablo3), Unreal Engine 4 does not (but seems to be not optimized for OSX). GPU temperature goes up to 105°C pretty quick.
 

kennah

Member
Anyone received a 5k iMac yet? Desperately want one but read some bad things over at the forums on mac rumours with regards to the gpu constantly throttling itself when doing anything remotely gpu intensive making it hardly worth upgrading the gpu and meaning the gpu performance is around that of a 2 year old nvidia card. :(

It's a laptop GPU, and until the 970 card just recently released all the nvidia GPUs were already two years old. So it's probably an accurate assessment.

That said, everything is so ridiculously fast that as long as you're not expecting to game at ridiculously high settings in 4k you'll probably be fine. It's a computer clearly designed to be a 4k video workstation, not a gaming machine.
 

Water

Member
It's a laptop GPU, and until the 970 card just recently released all the nvidia GPUs were already two years old. So it's probably an accurate assessment.

That said, everything is so ridiculously fast that as long as you're not expecting to game at ridiculously high settings in 4k you'll probably be fine. It's a computer clearly designed to be a 4k video workstation, not a gaming machine.
I think you are still giving too positive of an impression about the graphics performance re: gaming. The M290X GPU is merely sufficient to run modern demanding games like the Crysis series at smooth 60ish FPS at 1080p, and that's only with high IQ settings, not the highest.

To run at 1440p resolution, which would be the most reasonable res for gaming with a 5k display (1080p would be awfully blurry when upscaled), you already need 80% more power. If the M295X didn't throttle in the slightest, it still wouldn't deliver quite enough for comfort, but should be OK for playing at 1440p at medium image quality. If it does throttle - and I saw at least one set of benchmarks where it only managed to be 10-20% faster than M290X across multiple games - it probably won't make enough of a difference to be worth the price of the upgrade.

One shouldn't expect to be able to run games at 4K, much less 5K, with the iMac. The GPUs are simply underpowered, as any laptop GPU is for those resolutions. It doesn't take "ridiculously high settings" to bring them to their knees.
 

Rootbeer

Banned
Heh, well... no, however when you think about what you are actually getting for that $15 in terms of materials it is ridiculous. On the flipside, having a perfectly working delete key is easily worth the $15 fix, so it's hard to complain.

Just hope I ordered the right thing :( It shipped today though! Pretty fast.

After poking around in the keys though I see just how fragile the inside really is. It's just bits of VERY THIN plastic that don't take a lot to break. I hope I don't start seeing more keys break...

I've always been the person to treat his computers and accessories like mini gods that need constant upkeep and worship at all times, I don't abuse anything, so when something breaks it usually ends up being something faulty.
Just an update... the Delete key I ordered was the wrong one :( I don't know what to do now... can anyone help? I need to replace my delete key on a rMBP [15" retina Macbook pro (late 2013) Model Identifier MacBookPro11,3 (2.6Ghz variant with Dedicated Graphics ]... but I don't want to waste another $15 on a gamble that it's the wrong key again.

I ordered it from replacementlaptopkeys.com which only had TWO types available which they claimed were for retina macbooks: AC06 and AC07. The pictures on their site did not match my keys exactly but the AC06 looked slightly closer... so I ordered that one. And it won't work: both the delete key itself as well as the plastic piece it comes with are different from the one I need to replace.

I'm not sure the AC07 is right either...

Here is the page with the listings
http://www.replacementlaptopkeys.com/servlet/the-22119/Macbook-Pro-Laptop-Keys/Detail
 

empyrean

Member
I think you are still giving too positive of an impression about the graphics performance re: gaming. The M290X GPU is merely sufficient to run modern demanding games like the Crysis series at smooth 60ish FPS at 1080p, and that's only with high IQ settings, not the highest.

To run at 1440p resolution, which would be the most reasonable res for gaming with a 5k display (1080p would be awfully blurry when upscaled), you already need 80% more power. If the M295X didn't throttle in the slightest, it still wouldn't deliver quite enough for comfort, but should be OK for playing at 1440p at medium image quality. If it does throttle - and I saw at least one set of benchmarks where it only managed to be 10-20% faster than M290X across multiple games - it probably won't make enough of a difference to be worth the price of the upgrade.

One shouldn't expect to be able to run games at 4K, much less 5K, with the iMac. The GPUs are simply underpowered, as any laptop GPU is for those resolutions. It doesn't take "ridiculously high settings" to bring them to their knees.

Think I'm going to hold off until they refresh, hoping they put nvidia chipset in next time as they run much cooler.
 
Just bought the higher end Macbook Retina (the one with the dedicated GPU in it).

Anyone here a Zbrush user?
When I use it, my CPU maxes out and the fans scream like a jet engine - Looked into it a little and I've seen a few people have this problem.

Although I can't find a viable fix... Anyone manage to sort it?
 

Fuchsdh

Member
I think you are still giving too positive of an impression about the graphics performance re: gaming. The M290X GPU is merely sufficient to run modern demanding games like the Crysis series at smooth 60ish FPS at 1080p, and that's only with high IQ settings, not the highest.

To run at 1440p resolution, which would be the most reasonable res for gaming with a 5k display (1080p would be awfully blurry when upscaled), you already need 80% more power. If the M295X didn't throttle in the slightest, it still wouldn't deliver quite enough for comfort, but should be OK for playing at 1440p at medium image quality. If it does throttle - and I saw at least one set of benchmarks where it only managed to be 10-20% faster than M290X across multiple games - it probably won't make enough of a difference to be worth the price of the upgrade.

One shouldn't expect to be able to run games at 4K, much less 5K, with the iMac. The GPUs are simply underpowered, as any laptop GPU is for those resolutions. It doesn't take "ridiculously high settings" to bring them to their knees.

Ars disagrees with you thoroughly regarding 1440p gaming: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/the-retina-imac-and-its-5k-display-as-a-gaming-machine/

No doubt there are weaknesses with the machine, both as a first-gen retina machine, and the usual limitations of iMacs, but at least on modern current titles you get a large boost over previous iMacs.
 

whiteape

Member
Just bought the higher end Macbook Retina (the one with the dedicated GPU in it).

Anyone here a Zbrush user?
When I use it, my CPU maxes out and the fans scream like a jet engine - Looked into it a little and I've seen a few people have this problem.

Although I can't find a viable fix... Anyone manage to sort it?

Same here on my retina iMac.
 
Same here on my retina iMac.

I've had to get a new laptop because of this, Unreal Engine 4 was doing the same thing :(
3D art is my jam... Having Zbrush / Unreal not really work is a deal breaker.

Hope it gets fixed in the future, although the problem seems to have been around for a while now.
 

adroit

Member
ZBrush looks like a commercial product. Does their support department have anything to say about CPU utilization on OS X? If it behaves on Windows and misbehaves on OS X, sounds like a bug they need to fix.
 
ZBrush looks like a commercial product. Does their support department have anything to say about CPU utilization on OS X? If it behaves on Windows and misbehaves on OS X, sounds like a bug they need to fix.

Pixologic (creators of Zbrush) are aware of the issues - There's a recorded response from them in this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5784709?tstart=0

The problem has been around since 2012 though, and it's still not fixed so... I don't have my hopes up for it being sorted anytime soon.
 

corn_fest

Member
What's the deal with this (Airport Extreme)?

Isn't the router's one job, basically, to not assign the same IP to two different things? And why would the second thing take precedence and kick me off the network?
Pretty sure it's not an issue with static IPs because the address is different every time.

2Um4BzE.png
 

mrkgoo

Member
What's the deal with this (Airport Extreme)?

Isn't the router's one job, basically, to not assign the same IP to two different things? And why would the second thing take precedence and kick me off the network?
Pretty sure it's not an issue with static IPs because the address is different every time.

2Um4BzE.png

There are lease times and different devices can be more aggressive at requesting their last known IP.

My router does it occasionally, my older router did it even more frequently. It never kicked me off though and would just assign a new IP
 

Fuchsdh

Member
Hi YA'LL!

My girly friend wants a 21.5" iMac. She's a writer so does not need power.

what is her best bet? Buying a refurb of last year's 21.5" iMac from Apple? There were new ones just released, right? Maybe try to find somewhere that still has the older model in stock new?

this looks pretty decent...
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FF883LL/A/refurbished-215-inch-imac-14ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5

I woudn't recommend the Dual Core 1.4GHz models just because they're stuck with a 5400 rpm drive; they'll feel a lot slower for that reason. Problem is a lot of the entry-level 21.5" will have those 5400 rpm drives. For me, I'd just buy one and then swap it myself, but removing the iMac screen isn't exactly for the faint of heart… you might find better options elsewhere besides Apple's site; for example, you're getting a much better deal with this for only $170 more here: http://www.macofalltrades.com/iMac-21-5-inch-2-9GHz-QCi5-Late-2012-p/im-215-29-l12a.htm
 
What's the deal with this (Airport Extreme)?

Isn't the router's one job, basically, to not assign the same IP to two different things? And why would the second thing take precedence and kick me off the network?
Pretty sure it's not an issue with static IPs because the address is different every time.

2Um4BzE.png

My sister had a crappy Dell laptop that would constantly steal other machines' IPs. It's likely a single bad device on the network.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
Hi YA'LL!

My girly friend wants a 21.5" iMac. She's a writer so does not need power.

what is her best bet? Buying a refurb of last year's 21.5" iMac from Apple? There were new ones just released, right? Maybe try to find somewhere that still has the older model in stock new?

this looks pretty decent...
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FF883LL/A/refurbished-215-inch-imac-14ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5
The current models were not updated at all. All they did this year was add a terribly underpowered almost useless low end and a super expensive high end. So if she can, get a refurb of anything in the middle. As long as it's not that dual-core low end because that thing is terrible for anyone who isn't a school. She might as well get a MacBook Air since she's a writer and could take it with her anywhere rather than be tethered to a desk. If she needs an iMac then make sure it's one of the quad-cores. That low end is a terrible deal for everyone.

The MacBook Air idea is a good idea though if she's willing. Does she really need a desktop? As a writer she might benefit from the portability of a laptop.
 

mrkgoo

Member
The current models were not updated at all. All they did this year was add a terribly underpowered almost useless low end and a super expensive high end. So if she can, get a refurb of anything in the middle. As long as it's not that dual-core low end because that thing is terrible for anyone who isn't a school. She might as well get a MacBook Air since she's a writer and could take it with her anywhere rather than be tethered to a desk. If she needs an iMac then make sure it's one of the quad-cores. That low end is a terrible deal for everyone.

The MacBook Air idea is a good idea though if she's willing. Does she really need a desktop? As a writer she might benefit from the portability of a laptop.

I wouldn't say a TERRIBLENESS deal. If all they need is the power of a MacBook air, which is essentially what the low end imac is, you do get that gorgeous 21.5" display for a little bit above the cost of a MacBook air.

That said there's no arguing that the "real" iMac starts at the quad core machines though.

We here in no got a bum deal though. When they brought out the retina the price line of all the iMacs got readjusted to current exchange rate (as happens with refreshed lines), and all the imacs increased in price by about 10%
 
So I'm going to upgrade the ram on my 2011 MBP, but I havent decided between 8gb or 16gb. Is making the jump to 16gb worth it or am I better off sticking with 8gb?

I'm using my Mac for a lot of music production and recording if that helps any.
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
Do the 2011's have capability for 16GB?
edit: Yep, looks like they can.
If you notice slowdowns and such while doing heavy work, it might be worth it.
 

mrkgoo

Member
MacBook Air has a 600MB/s SSD. The cheap iMac and Mac Mini models do not have such and it makes a huge and painful difference.

Doesn't matter. Even the slowest MacBook Air SSD would be lightyears faster than the HDD they put in the Mac mini and low end iMac.

Yes, this is true. Pretty much bottleneck for apparent system responsiveness is pretty much HD access. SSD solves this for the most part. But yeah, while I do agree the low end iMac is a pretty big compromise compared to the "real" imac, there are some very basic users who don't need anything more than that. Email, documents, etc.

Generally though, I would always recommend the next one up if at all possible.
 

Water

Member
Ars isn't a good source on game performance and that article is a particularly poor one. The benchmarking is done badly (no data on dropped frames, frame graphs, or even minimum FPS, but a ridiculous "maximum FPS" measure is included). Hutchinson also manages to demonstrate that his subjective judgment on game rendering performance is worthless. Look at the numbers on the 4K rendering that he reports as "visually smooth". What he's watching while making that judgment is either a low stuttery framerate and tearing, or a 15 FPS vsynced slideshow.

The machine can almost run Alien: Isolation smoothly at 1440p maxed out (again based on the data from Ars) but you can see even the average framerates are considerably below 60, thus you'd have to turn down IQ a bit to reach output that is actually smooth.

Then there's the fact Alien: Isolation is far from the most demanding AAA game. For Crytek stuff, running smoothly at 1440p will require you to turn IQ down all the way to medium - as I said.
 

Husker86

Member
Alright, I'm not going to wait until potentially next summer for Broadwell, so...

Macbook Pro 15" with 512GB/750m on Amazon is $2,374.99.

I was going to get the $2,000 one, but since the upgrade is $125 less than retail on Amazon I am debating going for that.

The dedicated GPU will likely not be used a whole lot by me, but I do want to keep this laptop for longer than my usual 2 years.

My main question is, are there any issues at all that I should be aware of with the dual GPU nature of these Macbooks?
 

mug

Member
What's the deal with this (Airport Extreme)?

Isn't the router's one job, basically, to not assign the same IP to two different things? And why would the second thing take precedence and kick me off the network?
Pretty sure it's not an issue with static IPs because the address is different every time.

2Um4BzE.png

Do you have an AppleTV on your network by chance?
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
Still getting graphics lockups on dynamic graphics switching with Yosemite.

Has there been any word from Apple about a resolution to this issue?
 
Im selling my laptop and some guy is asking for the serial number of my macbook Pro. Will anything bad happen if I gave him the serial #?

Also, are iPhone 6 Plus on Verizon unlocked?
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
Im selling my laptop and some guy is asking for the serial number of my macbook Pro. Will anything bad happen if I gave him the serial #?

Also, are iPhone 6 Plus on Verizon unlocked?

No. It's common practice when buying an Apple because you can search the Serial# on their site to see the warrenty/AppleCare status.
 

RustyO

Member
I'm a Windows guy, so this is a bit of a sanity check post...

I'm looking at getting an external hard drive for my partners Mac (running Mavericks). And having this as purely Mac format (she mainly uses Photoshop & Lightroom).

We have a voucher for an office supply store, so looking at the options there is a limited selection of pre-formatted Mac drives, and they tend to be 50% more expensive as well...

My understanding is that it is quite an easy process to format an external hard drive to be purely a Mac drive, by simply formatting the drive in HFS+ format, specifically as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" via the OS's "Disk Utility" function. And it is quite easy to setup a couple of partitions on there as well.

Am I missing something obvious, or is that pretty much as complicated as it gets?
 

TUSR

Banned
I'm a Windows guy, so this is a bit of a sanity check post...

I'm looking at getting an external hard drive for my partners Mac (running Mavericks). And having this as purely Mac format (she mainly uses Photoshop & Lightroom).

We have a voucher for an office supply store, so looking at the options there is a limited selection of pre-formatted Mac drives, and they tend to be 50% more expensive as well...

My understanding is that it is quite an easy process to format an external hard drive to be purely a Mac drive, by simply formatting the drive in HFS+ format, specifically as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" via the OS's "Disk Utility" function. And it is quite easy to setup a couple of partitions on there as well.

Am I missing something obvious, or is that pretty much as complicated as it gets?

format any usb 3.0 drive in disk utility, its dead simple.
 

Husker86

Member
I'm a Windows guy, so this is a bit of a sanity check post...

I'm looking at getting an external hard drive for my partners Mac (running Mavericks). And having this as purely Mac format (she mainly uses Photoshop & Lightroom).

We have a voucher for an office supply store, so looking at the options there is a limited selection of pre-formatted Mac drives, and they tend to be 50% more expensive as well...

My understanding is that it is quite an easy process to format an external hard drive to be purely a Mac drive, by simply formatting the drive in HFS+ format, specifically as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" via the OS's "Disk Utility" function. And it is quite easy to setup a couple of partitions on there as well.

Am I missing something obvious, or is that pretty much as complicated as it gets?

That's as complicated as it gets. Disk Utility is all you need to use to format the drive with the filesystem you prefer.

"Mac" harddrives are always more expensive...it's rather insulting how they are always more expensive. Though I guess there could be people out there who don't want to use Disk Utility.
 

mrkgoo

Member
That's as complicated as it gets. Disk Utility is all you need to use to format the drive with the filesystem you prefer.

"Mac" harddrives are always more expensive...it's rather insulting how they are always more expensive. Though I guess there could be people out there who don't want to use Disk Utility.

This is true 99% of the time, although I have heard of one instance where a series of drives had a firmware that had them sleep after a time when the computer went to sleep. This caused issues with some macs during wake - the drive wouldn't wake up in time and the Mac would detect it as having been "unplugged without ejecting". The "Mac" version of this series, alongside being formatted for macs, als brad this part of their firmware disabled.

This was an exception, however, and usually I purchase any old drive and just reformat.
 

rezuth

Member
Anyone tried Yosemite on a MacBook? I know the last model in 2010 can run it but I wonder how tough its gonna be. Looked at some threads and some people say its fine while others don't.
 
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