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Mac Hardware and Software |OT| - All things Macintosh
- Thread starter 3N16MA
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If you're going to buy a display I've heard of some having built in KVM functionality nowadays, like there's two USB uplink ports to connect to two machines at once, and it'll switch based on the video input. Otherwise there's network KVM software that might work if both machines are on the same LAN.
For audio, no clue, those monitors might work for all I know if they have integrated audio? Off the top of my head I'd say try to find a cheap audio mixer, or hook up one machine to the other and pass through the audio. On the Mac there's a free app called Line In iirc, not sure on Windows.
Yeah for storage there's not much point outside the extreme end of speeds. The only other reason I can think of would be that you can boot Windows off TB (and other increasingly niche stuff like native SATA access to drives for diagnostic purposes or something).
Unfortunately I don't think there are solid options. You can find DisplayPort-based KVM switches which are a lot better than the old VGA and DVI ones (especially as most can power themselves through USB rather than having yet another power brick) but then you'll need adapters. Forget about finding a mini-Displayport option, or for displays besides something like Apple's featuring Thunderbolt pass-through.
If anybody needs the European, Korean, Brazilian, and Australian AC adapters, you can contact Apple customer service right now. You will have to tell them that you own the World Travel Kit with all those adapters and require a replacement for safety reasons (they currently have a replacement program running).
They will send you the adapters and an envelope, in which you can send the old adapters back. No return is required though, so it also works for those who don't own the World Travel Kit.
Came in quite handy as I didn't want to buy the set but need some of the adapters.
They will send you the adapters and an envelope, in which you can send the old adapters back. No return is required though, so it also works for those who don't own the World Travel Kit.
Came in quite handy as I didn't want to buy the set but need some of the adapters.
I have the old kit. Are the adapters unsafe?
NinjaCatfish
Member
Ugh, I own and use the world travel kit so I called Apple and ordered the replacements.
But they did require me to authorize them to put $10.97 cash hold on my CC for each adaptor, and I have all four, and they said that if I didn't return the old adaptors then they would charge my CC for the whole amount.
Instead I am going into an Apple Retail store tomorrow to swap them out, it's on my way to work.
chronos4590
Member
So I'm in school maybe a year and a half left. I've been using an original iPad mini to take notes with a zagg keyboard but now I'm feeling the sluggish power of this iPad.
Anyone think I should just look into an air or something else? Don't think the 2015 MacBook is practical tho design and weight is what I want. The price isn't
I just need something mostly for taking notes downloading documents and doing the occasional PowerPoint and excel sheets for school and work.. Any advice? Air? Refurbished or older model?.. Wait for hr inevitable late March April refreshes?...
Anyone think I should just look into an air or something else? Don't think the 2015 MacBook is practical tho design and weight is what I want. The price isn't
I just need something mostly for taking notes downloading documents and doing the occasional PowerPoint and excel sheets for school and work.. Any advice? Air? Refurbished or older model?.. Wait for hr inevitable late March April refreshes?...
At this point might as well wait for the refreshes if you want an iPad. If you buy new you'll get a better device. If you buy used or refurb you'll get it for cheaper.
As for whether getting an iPad or a Mac makes sense, depends how comfortable you are doing the tasks on either. I'd prefer a laptop but I'm old school like that.
I prefer an MBAir for most of that stuff. But if your comfortable with an iPad Air for doing that stuff then it might be preferable to you. Rumor is the IPad Air is gonna be updated in March-April but that would mean your stuck with your old iPad Mini this whole term. It's really up to what you want and when you need it.
chronos4590
Member
Thanks for the responses and i should clarify more, Right now im using an original iPad Mini for my school work with the keyboard and maybe an air or mini 4 might be useful especially with multi tasking but at this point i think a laptop especially a macbook air would be useful for me. Though my 2010 pro is still good as my usual laptop, its very heavy the battery which i replaced once already last only about 3 hours or more if im lucky on a charge, And has way too much media and personal information on it that i dont want to travel with. I need something small and light.
The reason why i went with the ipad but now... its slugging and its not doing the work i need done properly anymore sadly
Whats your budget?
Speaking in generalities, a refurb MBA will be the cheapest, but refurb 13" MBPs might be a better deal depending on what you value and what configurations are available in the refurb shop. Like if you want a retina screen in particular of course, or 8GB RAM, where lower end MBA configs might not have it, the MBP might cost more but it might be worth it to you.
Size/weight wise the MBP has a smaller footprint than the 13" MBA while not weighing too much more, but again thats another tradeoff thing to consider.
(Id like a MacBook myself but itd be a secondary machine if I ever got it...and Id wait for them to get Skylake and TB3 anyway)
Speaking in generalities, a refurb MBA will be the cheapest, but refurb 13" MBPs might be a better deal depending on what you value and what configurations are available in the refurb shop. Like if you want a retina screen in particular of course, or 8GB RAM, where lower end MBA configs might not have it, the MBP might cost more but it might be worth it to you.
Size/weight wise the MBP has a smaller footprint than the 13" MBA while not weighing too much more, but again thats another tradeoff thing to consider.
(Id like a MacBook myself but itd be a secondary machine if I ever got it...and Id wait for them to get Skylake and TB3 anyway)
chronos4590
Member
I gues everything is too abstract for me right now. I don't have a defined budget yet but I'd prefer to stay under 800 but I want to see if I can be flexible.
This is only cause my 2010 mbp is fine. This would be solely for school and eventually a work machine. Basic office applications nothing too demanding. I just need something very light and easy to travel with and pack. Good battery too.
I might wait for the refreshes and see at this point but I could highly benefit from getting something now to use for this school semester and work. I appreciate the responses. Taking everything into consideration. Gonna head to Best Buy after work today
This is only cause my 2010 mbp is fine. This would be solely for school and eventually a work machine. Basic office applications nothing too demanding. I just need something very light and easy to travel with and pack. Good battery too.
I might wait for the refreshes and see at this point but I could highly benefit from getting something now to use for this school semester and work. I appreciate the responses. Taking everything into consideration. Gonna head to Best Buy after work today
SomedayTheFire
Member
I'm interested in getting a Mac Mini as a media server, do we know when they will be getting a refresh or if it will be worth waiting or not? I wanted to buy a second hand 2012 model but they seem to have kept their price.
They seem to be on a 2-year refresh cycle, so they may get a refresh during Fall 2016. But there is no guarantee of it.
SomedayTheFire
Member
Ah thanks so refresh could be in the autumn. I'm not too sure the upgrade would be worth the wait if I can get a refurbished one.
CrudeDiatribe
Member
For that task, I think the only reason to wait is to save money on the current/old models. I remember hearing that there's an app/website/service to notify you when certain models show up in the refurb store; you may want to just grab a current or previous model when one shows up.
AwayFromInfinityx
Member
Managed to get my hands on an iMac 27 inch.
Is it possible to connect my Gaming PC onto this and use it as a display or no?
Is it possible to connect my Gaming PC onto this and use it as a display or no?
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
Depends on your model.
http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/qt/using-target-display-mode.htm
Note: I don't know if it'll work with HDMI if that's all you have. Unless HDMI is DisplayPort compatible. I was wondering myself if there was any way at all to plug my Wii U into it. Or an Alienware Alpha when I get it.
There are adapters to input HDMI, but not if there's no Target Display mode.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592
"Note: iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014) and later iMac models can't be used as Target Display Mode displays."
They killed it off for the 5K models likely because of bandwidth limitations.
http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/17/retina-5k-imac-external-display-no/
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/3/10900612/walt-mossberg-apple-iphone-ios-mac-osx-app-problems
This article makes some good points. iCloud mostly still sucks. The only thing I like about it is Photo Stream. Otherwise I just use Google Drive.
This article makes some good points. iCloud mostly still sucks. The only thing I like about it is Photo Stream. Otherwise I just use Google Drive.
The Albatross
Member
Posted this in Apple Watch looking for this thread:
I have a Mac Mini that is pretty beastly but it's a few years old and I'm thinking of selling it... But don't know how much I could get for it. Figuring I'd post in here.
It's a Mac Mini (Mid 2011)
2.7 Ghz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 Mhz DDR3 Ram
512 SSD
AMD Radeon HD 6630M 256MB
If anybody has a guess in this thread too I'd appreciate it.
I have a Mac Mini that is pretty beastly but it's a few years old and I'm thinking of selling it... But don't know how much I could get for it. Figuring I'd post in here.
It's a Mac Mini (Mid 2011)
2.7 Ghz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 Mhz DDR3 Ram
512 SSD
AMD Radeon HD 6630M 256MB
If anybody has a guess in this thread too I'd appreciate it.
CrudeDiatribe
Member
I will give you $5 for it if you throw in shipping to Canada.
Search eBay for 2011 Mac minis, looks like the lower bound for them is around $400...higher end who knows, maybe $600-700? Problem is that you need buyers that know the value of the upgrades and want and are willing to pay for them, when I'm guessing a lot of people are just trying to get a cheap Mac, course it also depends where you're selling it.
Alternatively if those were your own upgrades and you have the original parts, the SSD might be more valuable separately depending on what it is, or just swap into another machine if you have a use for it. Maybe the same for the RAM but probably not as much of a deal.
CrudeDiatribe
Member
eBay is a much better fit for that than Craigslist/Kijiji/Gumtree/etc, the latter of which will give you offers like mine, above.
...or agree to $400, then try to deal down to $300 once you meet up.
CrudeDiatribe
Member
Mercifully haven't had that happen. Certainly have to weed through a lot of email.
Might depend on your location. I'm in Germany and received them today with a letter in which they asked me to not send back the original adapters. Now I have all adapters apart from the Chinese as my MacBook came with the US and UK adapters.
Mr. Wonderful
Member
For the complexity piece, I would say the only app where complexity has crept in is Apple Music and iTunes.
The iOS operating system is where the real complexity has come in, as Apple has opened the OS up.
Every time that has happened I have walked from the deal and refused to sell to them, even if they match my original offer.
Fuck those people.
Yeah that's jerky.
Going to be picking up an old PowerMac this weekend. Hopefully not murdered in the process.
The Albatross
Member
I bought it from a coworker and he ordered it with those updates (as far as I know).
Good to know though. Thanks!
If there's dents and blood stains on the aluminum just run away.
Haha think older. Looking to pick up one of these babies.
Still my personal favorite for best-looking pro Mac. Looking for a machine to run all my old classic OS 9 and early PPC OS X games on.
My Mac is stuck on the account loading screen.
Well, not my Mac, my boss's. We decided to update it. It was running 10.7.5 on a Macbook Pro that's probably from 2009-2010 (no earlier). Installing El Capitan took a while, but it eventually worked.
Now the computer boots up normally and gets to the account login screen just fine. But when we type the password and press enter, the loading wheel spins... and never stops. It can't go past the home screen.
What should I do? I don't know Macs well, I'm a PC user.
Well, not my Mac, my boss's. We decided to update it. It was running 10.7.5 on a Macbook Pro that's probably from 2009-2010 (no earlier). Installing El Capitan took a while, but it eventually worked.
Now the computer boots up normally and gets to the account login screen just fine. But when we type the password and press enter, the loading wheel spins... and never stops. It can't go past the home screen.
What should I do? I don't know Macs well, I'm a PC user.
Try two basic resets:
SMC reset - while shut down, but with the charger connected, hold the left shift, control, option buttons down and tap the power button.
Then try PRAM reset - turn on machine, and hold option-command +P+R until you hear the machine chime once and keep holding until it reboots and chimes again.
these are basic resets that MIGHT get it going. If not, you can try a few other things including:
Safe boot: hold shift when booting - this boots with only the drivers necessary to get going. If this works then there might be some bad software install or driver issue.
You may try booting to the recovery partition (hold R) and from there run disk utility and check the volume structure. If that needs repair it might be a corrupt file system.
Anything beyond that may require a call to an apple centre as you may need to reinstall the OS, or potentially may have a failing hard drive or other hardware issue.
Thanks, I'll give those a try.
I've already tried safe-booting. It worked. Now I just tried rebooting in normal mode: it successfully went past the home screen, but now it's stuck with the colored wheel cursor and the wallpaper. No taskbar, no icons.
Sorry for the repost, but I have a question: I tried resetting NVRAM (which I guess is the same thing as PRAM) using this guide: http://appletoolbox.com/2015/10/mac-os-x-el-capitan-will-not-start-up-after-update-fix/
It worked!
However, now I'm wondering: is it a good idea to run all this other stuff (SMC resetting, disk drive utility...) just to make sure everything's okay and to improve general performance?
My boss's computer tends to be sluggish, and I suspect that's because she doesn't do anything/doesn't know to do anything to maintain it in any way. Case in point: she was still running 10.7.5.
Will doing all this potentially improve performance?
It worked!
However, now I'm wondering: is it a good idea to run all this other stuff (SMC resetting, disk drive utility...) just to make sure everything's okay and to improve general performance?
My boss's computer tends to be sluggish, and I suspect that's because she doesn't do anything/doesn't know to do anything to maintain it in any way. Case in point: she was still running 10.7.5.
Will doing all this potentially improve performance?
It won't improve performance unless something was actually wrong to begin with.
SMC Reset is the System Management Controller reset - basically a low level hardware reset of the power management system. This may work if your symptoms are power-related.
PRAM reset (and yes this is the same thing as NVRAM reset - "Parameter RAM" or "Non-volatile RAM" is resetting some pre-boot parameters, including last set system volume, destination boot disk etc. This might work for a number of things, but a reasonably common problem it can fix is not booting correctly after an update.
Disk Utility: you run the checks onto system to repair some minor file system corruptions. Doesn't hurt to try them if you get in there, and you can "verify" instead of "repair" if you just want to check for errors.
Just a note - since you have reset PRAM, one thing it actually resets is the choice of startup disk. Usually it doesn't mean much, as the Mac will boot to the closest drive, which is usually the main one, but in some instances, it can take a bit longer to find that drive after a PRAM reset, causing it to appear to take a long time to boot. IF you're experiencing a slow boot up after resetting PRAM (or even if you're not really):
GO to System Preferences -> Startup Disk. You'll notice there is probably only one option; Macintosh HD - typically it will have under it that it is selected to boot to, but after a PRAM reset, it will be deselected. Select it again and restart.
Thanks for the explanation and the tips. I think everything's fine now. Thank you so much!
In terms of performance, the "nuclear option" but most straight-forward way of making sure hardware is performing at its best is a clean installwiping the drive and starting a fresh copy of the new OS. In most cases I find that makes the computer feel brand new, with the caveats that it's obviously not going to make 2010 hardware as fast as 2015 hardware.
As mrkgoo explained, most troubleshooting tasks themselves aren't really harmful to your computer, nor can they really speed things up.
Spoke too soon. Man, these updates really screw with your settings.
Now the Calendar doesn't display all the events that were in it prior to the OS update. How can I get them back?
From what my boss tells me it doesn't sound like she's ever used iCloud to sync her calendar (iCloud is currently turned off), so I suppose the problem is different.
Any ideas?
Also, the computer generally seems sluggish (more so than before). Is El Capitan much more resource-intensive than 10.7.5? She's got a 2012 Pro with 4gigs of RAM.
Yeah, but she's got too much work-related data on it, organized in a specific way, multiple e-mail accounts that were set up a specific way. On top of that, she's completely tech-unsavvy, and she never remembers (or try to remember) her passwords. She just uses the save password feature all the time. She can't just do a clean wipe.
Now the Calendar doesn't display all the events that were in it prior to the OS update. How can I get them back?
From what my boss tells me it doesn't sound like she's ever used iCloud to sync her calendar (iCloud is currently turned off), so I suppose the problem is different.
Any ideas?
Also, the computer generally seems sluggish (more so than before). Is El Capitan much more resource-intensive than 10.7.5? She's got a 2012 Pro with 4gigs of RAM.
Yeah, but she's got too much work-related data on it, organized in a specific way, multiple e-mail accounts that were set up a specific way. On top of that, she's completely tech-unsavvy, and she never remembers (or try to remember) her passwords. She just uses the save password feature all the time. She can't just do a clean wipe.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
The T key on my Retina MacBook Pro is becoming hard to push. By which I mean I have to press it multiple times before it works. It's the only key I'm having trouble with. I'm afraid to try and take the key off though. And I'm sure it'd cost a pretty penny to replace the entire thing which I don't have.
ranslaion:
he key on my Retina MacBook Pro is becoming hard to push. By which I mean I have to press it multiple times before it works. I's he only key I'm having rouble with. I'm afraid o ry and ake he key off though. And I'm sure it'd cost a pretty penny o replace he enire hing which I don have.
ranslaion:
he key on my Retina MacBook Pro is becoming hard to push. By which I mean I have to press it multiple times before it works. I's he only key I'm having rouble with. I'm afraid o ry and ake he key off though. And I'm sure it'd cost a pretty penny o replace he enire hing which I don have.
So last Sunday the video card on my mid 2011 27" iMac died. I'd heard of the replacement program Apple have going for this but feared that ship had sailed. After taking a look it seems l might just sneak in with one month left till the four year cut off.
It's been at the repair centre since Tuesday and l've not heard from them. Hopefully no news is good news and they're just going ahead under the repair program.
It's been at the repair centre since Tuesday and l've not heard from them. Hopefully no news is good news and they're just going ahead under the repair program.
Skel1ingt0n
I can't *believe* these lazy developers keep making file sizes so damn large. Btw, how does technology work?
I've taken my Macs to the Apple Store in the past - even outside of warranty - and they've fixed sticky keys on the spot for free. They have a lot of extra keys lying around, and for someone who knows what they're doing, it takes all of about 45 seconds. You might just have something stuck (food crumb) and/or the butterfly mechanism is just worn. Worth a shot.
The worst thing that can happen if you take it to an Apple Store is being charged for the fix.
More often than not for me, they fix them for free. Just strike up some good dialogue, and tell them about the issue.
CrudeDiatribe
Member
IIRC (don't use Apple's calendar app), you can choose what calendars to display, check the prefs.
No, 10.11 has much better memory management. However, a couple of thoughts: sometimes the upgrade doesn't catch everything that's incompatible had a VMWare Fusion driver kick around too long that was causing huge Spinning Beachball of Death problems and UI freezes and sometimes some old preferences get carried forward that shouldn't.
Troubleshooting is a matter of squinting at the Console log just after it's been slow and then googling the likely-incomprehensible robot barf.
Also worth spending time in a new account on it to see if it's magically better, which points to problems in her hidden library folder ( ~/Library/ )
All of that is stored in /Users/[her_account]/ and is easily backed up (if its not already!) and restored.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
Yeah I'll definitely take it somewhere, but it's not often ha I am in he vacancy of an Apple Sore.
Fuck i, I give up trying o yep he key. If I ry o pry i off myself, is here a worry of me damaging anything? hank goodness for mostly Auocorrec.