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Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs
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UtadaBarkley
Member
I just upgraded my C2D 2.4Ghz 2010 Mini to 8GB of Ram and an 80 Gig Intel SSD. I think that's probably the most I can get out of this little box. I'm thinking I probably just should have gotten an iMac instead.... It equals out to the same price when all is said and done, and the iMac has more upgrade potential plus an i3... Oh well. There's always something "better"...
Is Wake-up-on LAN a hardware feature or an OS feature? Can every Mac do it? Is it possible to wake up a laptop with the screen closed? (I use InsomniaX but it's not ideal). Can a laptop screen be locked to display nothing while a VNC client on some other computer is accessing the real desktop and windows?
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Bluetooth and wired keyboard and mouse can wake up a sleeping Mac (maybe USB wireless too, I can't check that). Wake-on-LAN only works consistently if you have a full Apple setup including an Airport router and the latest OS, so I assume it's a software feature.Charred Greyface said:
Ollie Pooch
In a perfect world, we'd all be homersexual
I have my 2008 MBP plugged into my Samsung LCD at 1920x1080 with a regular monitor cable (vga cable? not sure what the proper term for it is) the same as in that pic. Works fine.Jimmy Stav said:I don't think so--just this:
There is no dust. The thing is opened up right now exposed and there is not a thing inside. In fact running with the topcase off is the only way it'll run processor intense stuff. The fan spins, but not all the time. If there's dust it's inside the axis. But in order to just remove the fan I have to disassemble so much of it. The thing is built like a puzzle.Burger said:
It's 4 years old. It probably should just be scrapped on eBay for whatever parts machines go for. But I would need a replacement first before I got rid of it because it still "works". Just not 100%. Just wish Apple didn't gradually raise the price of the former "cheap entry level Mac" from $500 to $700 base price.Burger said:
notworksafe
Member
It's possible they could announce new machines. You've got a 30 day grace period to exchange anything you buy if new products launch though. Sometimes Apple will even hold your online order until the new machines are announced, then ship the new stuff. 
Himuro said:
if you need it RIGHT NOW for work. get it. the potential update to macbooks will be a slight spec bump, if anything. and I think its unlikely the notebooks will get updated at all. only the niche macbook air needs a major refresh.
and if there is a bump to the mainstream portables, you can return the macbook since youll have just got it and get a new one.
no real risk.
edit: go here if curious.
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Pro
I take back what I said about the macbook pro updates being a slight possibility. I forgot that they were last updated in april. I thought it was the june/july timeframe.
UtadaBarkley
Member
I had my complaints about the mini at first... but now it just screams... what can I say. As I said earlier, I maxed it out with 8 gigs of RAM, and 80 gigs of solid state loveliness. I still can't believe I had the gall to crack open the Mac mini like I did... it wasn't just a simple HDD swap, I had to tear out some of its guts and pull out to torx screwdrivers :-O
Everything is packed in SO incredibly tight. truly an amazing engineering job. And this thing runs quiet as a mouse now with the SSD. You can't tell it's on by listening.
What ensues is nothing short of spectacular. Although I probably could have bought an i3 iMac for what i've put into my mini :-/ oh well, I love this little guy all the same.
Now my mini does a full reboot in like 12 seconds, a shutdown in 5 seconds. I don't think I could ever go back to a conventional HDD.
Check it out in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFIrJi7DwRI
I still can't believe I had the gall to crack open the Mac mini like I did... it wasn't just a simple HDD swap, I had to tear out some of its guts and pull out to torx screwdrivers :-O Everything is packed in SO incredibly tight. truly an amazing engineering job. And this thing runs quiet as a mouse now with the SSD. You can't tell it's on by listening.
What ensues is nothing short of spectacular. Although I probably could have bought an i3 iMac for what i've put into my mini :-/ oh well, I love this little guy all the same.
Now my mini does a full reboot in like 12 seconds, a shutdown in 5 seconds. I don't think I could ever go back to a conventional HDD.
Check it out in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFIrJi7DwRI
New OS announcement usually comes with new hardware announcement I think. They may have new Pros by the end of the month. If not, go for it. They always announce these things after the student promo is over so I knew I'd be losing out. Was just hoping they'd hold off until December or January!Himuro said:
Oh well, got my rebates in the mail today at least =)
So recently my Macbook that I have had since August of 07 starts randomly shutting down. It seems to do it most when I'm watching a Youtube video or something along those lines. It just makes a chirp sound and then goes off, it's not even shutting down really. Then I can't get it to come back on for a little while.
I googled it and the search came up with a bunch of stuff about "random shutdown syndrome" or something like that, but that seemed to affect the Macbooks as soon as the customers got them, not three years later. It does seem like the same thing though.
Just wondering if anyone else on GAF had had similar problems, and if so what they did about it.
I googled it and the search came up with a bunch of stuff about "random shutdown syndrome" or something like that, but that seemed to affect the Macbooks as soon as the customers got them, not three years later. It does seem like the same thing though.
Just wondering if anyone else on GAF had had similar problems, and if so what they did about it.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Those restarts with everything open are impressive as hell. Steam alone takes that long to chug away on my computers.JeffDowns said:
Overheating or bad RAM. Very likely overheating. A fan may be busted.Drewsky said:
I got my MacBook in March 2009, with 160 GB. What's the best possible way to upgrade the HDD without losing/changing anything. And by anything, I mean anything. I want my cookies and search results and everything. Is this possible? (by Time Machine for example, but I just don't know.)
Echoes said:
best way is to get the new drive, hook it up in an enclosure and use super duper or carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your current drive to the new drive.
then take the new drive out of the enclosure, pop it in the macbook and get back to work.
alternate: get a dedicated drive to use for Time Machine backups. make sure your entire machine is backed up to this 3rd drive.
take out your existing drive in the macbook, put in empty new drive. insert Mac dvd and boot from this. choose restore from time machine backup as option for setting up this new system on the new drive.
if you have a bootcamp partition you want to keep around, there are extra steps using third party tools. I had to do this last spring. I used Winclone
movie_club
Junior Member
is there software that comes with the mac that has templates for flyers? thanks!
Hey guys. I inherited (lol) my sister's 3 and a half year old Mac Book when I came to college. So far it's been great and I love OSX, but lately I've been having a LOT of problems with connecting to wi-fi spots. For example, when I go to the coffee shop, regardless of where I sit or anything, I can only connect to their wi-fi like half the time. Some days I won't be able to connect at all for hours, and some days it works just fine. Same with the university internet. They have it at all their buildings, and it usually works just fine, but some days I just won't be able to connect for hours. When I'm in study groups with friends, they're all connected just fine and I'm the only one who has problems with it :/ Anyone have any guess as to what it could be? It's really frustrating.
Also, this is pretty unrelated but I downloaded the Mac demo for Amnesia and when I run it I get a black screen for like a second and the game crashes.
Also, this is pretty unrelated but I downloaded the Mac demo for Amnesia and when I run it I get a black screen for like a second and the game crashes.
Expendable.
Member
I think I'm getting a Macbook Pro. I just need it for basic writing, photo editing, browsing and video watching. I was thinking the basic 13 inch lower end model. Does GAF agree?
Dreams-Visions
Member
hey guys, I'm having a regular problem that maybe GAF has seen...
regularly when using Adium or TextEdit (some other apps too, on ocassion) and typing, my typing will suddenly appear to not be recognized and the blinking cursor will just be a solid line. OSX won't be frozen, and usually if I single click on the top bar (where it says "Untitled" in textedit, for example), the text that it appeared to not register all shows up. usually it takes a few more clicks like that, but eventually the blinking cursor will go back to blinking and all will be normal.
It appears to be totally random. No special combination of open applications seems to result in it. It is more an irritant than a problem, but it has been a great inconvenience at times...trying to quickly jot down information from a client on the phone only for textedit to "spazz out" on me and I have to fight with it to just act normal.
I've looked at the Console, but I don't see anything that really stands out. I have made sure everything in Font Book is working correctly, done the various disk fixes...ran a few things in Onyx...no permanent solution. it's been going on for as long as I can remember. don't know where else to look.
regularly when using Adium or TextEdit (some other apps too, on ocassion) and typing, my typing will suddenly appear to not be recognized and the blinking cursor will just be a solid line. OSX won't be frozen, and usually if I single click on the top bar (where it says "Untitled" in textedit, for example), the text that it appeared to not register all shows up. usually it takes a few more clicks like that, but eventually the blinking cursor will go back to blinking and all will be normal.
It appears to be totally random. No special combination of open applications seems to result in it. It is more an irritant than a problem, but it has been a great inconvenience at times...trying to quickly jot down information from a client on the phone only for textedit to "spazz out" on me and I have to fight with it to just act normal.
I've looked at the Console, but I don't see anything that really stands out. I have made sure everything in Font Book is working correctly, done the various disk fixes...ran a few things in Onyx...no permanent solution. it's been going on for as long as I can remember. don't know where else to look.
Saren is Bad
Member
Expendable. said:
Do it. (13 inch is fine)
Ok my MacBook Pro '08 model (I believe) has started acting weird in the past week. It all started earlier in the week while playing FFXI on windows boot camp that the game crashed and the system itself frooze with this weird visual glitch that had lots of artifacts and banding that distorted the screen. After a quick power off and on it would work fine till I either played a game, watched a flash video in full screen or random do the same thing. I thought it was a Windows glitch so I watched a video on OS X and while full screened it did it too. Now it will boot up with the artifacting and not want to go into either OS X (It puts up a warning screen asking me too reboot) or Windows (black screen). Here's a pick of what it looks like booting up cause no it just hangs on the apple logo with the loading thing
Obviously I'm taking this to the Apple Store, as soon as I can, to see what they will do but has anyone heard about this happen or knows what the hell is going on? I literally can't do anything on it. Might as well be a dead laptop.
Obviously I'm taking this to the Apple Store, as soon as I can, to see what they will do but has anyone heard about this happen or knows what the hell is going on? I literally can't do anything on it. Might as well be a dead laptop.
Risible
Member
Oyashiro said:
Is it a white plastic body Macbook? Mine had similar problems - the airport card was going bad. I went on eBay and bought a new airport card for that model (something like $20 or so) and then followed the directions on one of the many sites that show how to do it. Example:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4850079_upgrade-airport-wireless-card-macbook.html
It's not for the faint of heart, but if you can follow directions you'll be fine. My suggestion? Get a bunch of envelopes and label them Step 1, Step 2, etc and place the minute screws from each step into the appropriate envelope.
Good luck!
Expendable.
Member
Saren is Bad said:
Firestorm said:
Awesome. I heard they were only announcing Macbook Airs there? I will wait though.
War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
I've never had a Mac and I'm seriously considering getting a Macbook soon (I know about the potential update very soon). I am not interested in gaming on it or photo-editing or whatever so I am not going for a really souped up one, just a fairly basic Macbook with 4Gb RAM. However I was wondering if there is anything I should know about what software to get (iWork?) or whatever?
Thanks!
Thanks!
Mecha_Infantry
Banned
vcassano1 said:
Just make sure you don't get your RAM from Apple. Also iWork comes with a 30 day trial (I'm sure this offer is still on) so try it first then decide
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
Mecha_Infantry said:
There is a trial I think BUT IIRC you can only get it at the discounted price of $50 at the time you purchase your mac.
Edit: To add to that, iWork isn't a bad suite of programs but I think it really depends on how intensely you use those programs. I have iWork on my Macbook pro and typing reports and the such has been more than fine for me on it but if you have to do highend work on it constantly, I don't think it comes close to microsoft office.
JeffDowns said:
:lol :lol :lol All those bouncing icons and still going that fast is pretty epic. DAMN.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
It's not going to be out of warranty. Doesn't the '08 MacBook Pro have an nVidia 8600/8800 or something? Those were defective parts and Apple is repairing them.NeoForte said:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
I was thinking the same thing but couldn't remember the age range. I think '08 was the defective since mine is an '09 had they switched to 9400. I remember hearing about it not long before I bought my mac so I'm pretty sure it is.Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Dreams-Visions
Member
anyone?Dreams-Visions said:
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
Dreams-Visions said:
Maybe a background program is messing up your mac? I've had my mac act funny with unstable background programs.
Dreams-Visions
Member
Thanks for the reply.Zaraki_Kenpachi said:
I'll look through them...but I don't think I'm using any odd programs.
I do have 2 instances of Bowtie Butler and iTunes Helper running. outside of that, nothing out of the ordinary and nothing really using CPU in an unexpected fashion. idk.
out of do you have Kernel_task using a few hundred MB of memory?
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
Dreams-Visions said:
They're easy enough to uninstall/reinstall. You can try to uninstall one by one until it's stable again.
I don't have anything called Kernel_task in my activity monitor. Some act weirdly when installed together and causes conflicts.
JeffDowns said:I had my complaints about the mini at first... but now it just screams... what can I say. As I said earlier, I maxed it out with 8 gigs of RAM, and 80 gigs of solid state loveliness.
Everything is packed in SO incredibly tight. truly an amazing engineering job. And this thing runs quiet as a mouse now with the SSD. You can't tell it's on by listening.
http://files.droplr.com/files/185680350/RlUC.teardown2.jpg[img]
[img]http://files.droplr.com/files/185680350/SPtO.teardown.jpg[img]
What ensues is nothing short of spectacular. Although I probably could have bought an i3 iMac for what i've put into my mini :-/ oh well, I love this little guy all the same.
Now my mini does a full reboot in like 12 seconds, a shutdown in 5 seconds. I don't think I could ever go back to a conventional HDD.
Check it out in action: [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFIrJi7DwRI[/url][/QUOTE]
So is it the RAM or the SSD that makes it fast? I want to max out my RAM, but the SSD's are so small and expensive that I'm keeping my HD. How much more speed would I get from just the RAM?
Dreams-Visions
Member
it's the SSD. having more than 4GB of ram is really just a waste of money unless you're doing some fairly serious video/image work. and it will have no impact on how fast any of your apps open or close. rather, RAM will allow you to have more open.Jasoco said:
think of ram as the size of your car. how many people you can fit into it and how comfortable all those people will be. think of the SSD as a 600HP engine under the hood.
UtadaBarkley
Member
Dreams-Visions said:
You're right of course, but I must say that disagree about 8GB of RAM being a waste of money. I easily go over 4GB of used RAM in a session, and max out around 7GB on a normal basis now. I don't do any hardcore video editing or anything, or even gaming for that matter. I just use a lot of apps simultaneously, which heavily benefits from the extra memory.
Take Parallells for instance, that application is a resource devourer to the third power. It's crazy liberal about how much RAM it digests. So definitely, not a waste of money if you need it, which you likely do if you're multitasking with today's resource hogging apps.
This is with a few apps running, but I use them all, frequently.
But you are correct, the RAM won't influence the speed of the computer after a certain point. Once the initial bottleneck has been satisfied, RAM will not speed you up at all. It's the SSD that is making my mini scream like it is. And it's a worthy investment as well. For what it's worth, you don't buy a SSD right now because you need to store a lots of data (although that will certainly be the case in the future when mechanical HDD's as we know it inevitably become extinct), you buy it because you want to boot your OS and start your applications expeditiously.
For my storage needs, I have a Windows Home Server that I connect to over Gigabit ethernet, so the size of the SSD is irrelevant after a certain point. 80 gigs is the sweet spot in my opinion, and an Intel drive can be had for around $200. Definitely worth it. I'd upgrade to a SSD before Ram if your multitasking isn't that intensive.
EDIT: actually after reading again, you were just answering his question. I'm not trying to be all "lecturey," so I hope I didn't come off that way. If I did I apologize.
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
I'm having a problem with my external Drive that I use for my Time Machine Backups. When I plug it in you hear and feel it spinnning a lot but the computer never detects it. It doesn't even show up under disk utility but the thing is spinning full blast a lot. Is it dead or why isn't it getting recognized?
I wish Apple would build a small 8-10GB Flash into their laptops, but leave the HD slot so you could install the OS to the Flash and have the second slot as more files. I really only need like 4GB for the OS. I'd just move all my User folder stuff to the separate drive. Then you'd get both the speed of SSD and the capacity of a HDD. (Just make the SSD removable and replaceable in case it dies so you can take it to an Apple Store and have it swapped out easily.Dreams-Visions said:
Either that or science needs to release a 1.5TB HD with a hybrid SSD on board for OS installing and booting.
Also, I think RAM is very important. I have 4GB and I still reach my ceiling more often than not. I run a lot of processor-intense programs so I can't wait until I can buy my 8GB. But an SSD is just too small and expensive for me right now. I have 125GB of files on my laptops HD. I'd need a large SSD. A HUGE SSD. But they're so overpriced it's not even funny.