• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs

Jasoco said:
I'm thinking of reinstalling Windows 7 either onto a partition or into a VM (Probably the former) for use just for the times I want to play the random indie game that I can't play on OS X, but W7 takes up so much fucking space for shit I don't need. Is there any easy way to install a slimmed down version of 7 that will still work?

Do you have access to an existing Windows 7 installation? I found this program:

http://www.rt7lite.com/

which basically lets you create a custom Windows 7 ISO that I assume you can then use for Bootcamp.
 
Mustaphadamus said:
anti-glare is actually quit good BUT it depends on how you are using the machine. if you are doing something with that machine that requires color accuracy I would NOT get anti glare.
NO.

The opposite is true. glossy crushes blacks, making it difficult (or even impossible) to resolve and subsequently correct/edit the deepest shades of darker colors. there's a reason the pro's use anti-glare.

Correct statement: "if you are doing something with that machine that requires color accuracy I would NOT get glossy." Glossy's contrasted presentation makes movies and such "pop" a little more, but for pro work where color accuracy is necessary, it's a problem.

btw, who the fuck told you the over-contrasted glossy model is better for color accurate work? That's like saying Torch Mode on your HDTV is best for film editing. lol.


dmshaposv said:
IT HAS FINALLY ARRIVED!

FUCK YEAH GAF got my first macbook pro 15"!!

Typing from it, right now.
congrats!

Now go here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/apple-mac-os-x/515768-ever-growing-free-mac-os-x-software-list.html
 
Firestorm said:
Is hi-res 1680x1050? If so, I love that on my work MacBook Pro. Same goes for the anti-glare screen although I do miss the nice black border :(

Yeah, the hi-res is the 1680x1050 res.

I think I might miss the black border too :/

I'm hesitantly holding out for some sort of "deal" to put me over the edge. $2k+ on a laptop is hard for me to swallow a little bit lol
 
MikeE21286 said:
Yeah, the hi-res is the 1680x1050 res.

I think I might miss the black border too :/

I'm hesitantly holding out for some sort of "deal" to put me over the edge. $2k+ on a laptop is hard for me to swallow a little bit lol
you won't miss the black border. you'll be like, "hey..my border matches the rest of the computer! :-D"
 

dmshaposv

Member
I actually ordered the hi-res antiglare but for some reason got the hi-res glossy. :/

Not that I mind now. Can't honestly go through the excruciating wait all over again. I love zee screen.
 

Wallach

Member
dmshaposv said:
I actually ordered the hi-res antiglare but for some reason got the hi-res glossy. :/

Not that I mind now. Can't honestly go through the excruciating wait all over again. I love zee screen.

You should at least call and get a refund on the cost of the anti-glare, then.

I personally prefer the glossy over the anti-glare myself.
 
My battery was 100% at 6.10pm. It is now 8.23pm and at 27%. Only lightly browsed, the rest of the time the screen was awake. Screen brightness was 6 bars, no keyboard lights.
 

bananas

Banned
After a month of using Lion, I am back to using Snow Leopard. So to anyone with Lion installed on their main drive, if you're wondering you can downgrade back while keeping all your files intact.
 
giga said:
Dropbox? Plex? Screenshot or copy/paste what's running in activity monitor.

I use DropBox all the time but I've never seen it eat battery like that. Here is a screenshot showing CPU usage, with the latter focused on memory.

2uhairm.png

67jya0.png
 
Meus, something is wrong.

You're not using any CPU power, so it makes no sense for your battery life to be going down 1%/minute.

How new is your computer? and what size is it? Something is very wrong.
 

giga

Member
Meus Renaissance said:
I use DropBox all the time but I've never seen it eat battery like that. Here is a screenshot showing CPU usage, with the latter focused on memory.

[IG]http://i55.tinypic.com/2uhairm.png[/IMG]
[MG]http://i55.tinypic.com/67jya0.png[/IMG]
I have. It's constantly monitoring for changes on the server. Try pausing syncing on the menubar.
 
Dreams-Visions said:
Meus, something is wrong.

You're not using any CPU power, so it makes no sense for your battery life to be going down 1%/minute.

How new is your computer? and what size is it? Something is very wrong.

I was able to hear the fans before posting it but saw nothing of note in the activity monitor. It was rather hot as well. Machine is two weeks old, 13inch MBP 2011 base config. I'll keep an eye on it for the next few days and time the battery from 100% to depletion. I wanted to do that today which is why I made a note of when it was fully charged.

giga said:
I have. It's constantly monitoring for changes on the server. Try pausing syncing on the menubar.

Alright
 

Juice

Member
Wallach said:
You should at least call and get a refund on the cost of the anti-glare, then.

I personally prefer the glossy over the anti-glare myself.

co-signed. I like glossy for teh brightness.

Also, counter-intuitively, the glossy displays are much more useful outdoors with moderate sunlight than the matte screens.
 

Jasoco

Banned
Treefingers said:
Do you have access to an existing Windows 7 installation? I found this program:

http://www.rt7lite.com/

which basically lets you create a custom Windows 7 ISO that I assume you can then use for Bootcamp.
The only current install I have is a VM under Virtual Box.. Would this let me make an ISO that I could install onto an actual partition?
 

dmshaposv

Member
So it seems I got the "right" thing. My contact ordered hi-res glossy by mistake.

So I don't have to pay any extra (he bought on my behalf, I am to pay him later). You know what, the whole "reflectionZZZ" is a myth the glossy looks stunning and the hi-res looks really nice. Thanks for the advice on edu discount GAF.
 
Jasoco said:
The only current install I have is a VM under Virtual Box.. Would this let me make an ISO that I could install onto an actual partition?

Yup. The way I understand it is you put in your original Windows 7 disc, then you make any changes you want, and then the program saves the modified ISO. Which you can then burn & use for Boot Camp.
 

Qatar

Member
MacUpdate has an insane deal
you get 11 mac apps of $367 value for only $50
including Parallel Desktop 6 and 1Password
Parallels itself costs $80 and you get it in the promo bundle along with other 10 apps for $50
https://www.mupromo.com/
only three days left till the promo is over
no mac user should miss this
 

Jasoco

Banned
Qatar said:
MacUpdate has an insane deal
you get 11 mac apps of $367 value for only $50
including Parallel Desktop 6 and 1Password
Parallels itself costs $80 and you get it in the promo bundle along with other 10 apps for $50
https://www.mupromo.com/
only three days left till the promo is over
no mac user should miss this
Wow.... that's pretty good. Worth it for Parallels itself. Though, who's currently winning the VM war? Fusion or Parallels? It's like every time you turn around the other program is ahead. Also, I assume you'll still need to pay for updates when Parallels 7 comes out. How much does an upgrade for that cost?
 

Qatar

Member
Jasoco said:
Wow.... that's pretty good. Worth it for Parallels itself. Though, who's currently winning the VM war? Fusion or Parallels? It's like every time you turn around the other program is ahead. Also, I assume you'll still need to pay for updates when Parallels 7 comes out. How much does an upgrade for that cost?

check out this huge article for comparison between Parallels 6 and VMWare Fusion 3.1
http://www.mactech.com/2011/01/05/virtualization-benchmarks
“Parallels Desktop 6 beat VMware Fusion 3.1 in 84% of the general tests we ran.” -MacTech Magazine
EDIT: the upgrade price from Parallels 5 to 6 is $50 according to their website, so I suppose to upgrade to 7, you'll have to pay $50 when it comes out

Also I forgot to mention that you can get QuickPick and The Secret of Monkey Island for mac for free from MacUpdate
https://www.mupromo.com/monkeyisland
https://www.mupromo.com/spring11/twitter/connect.php
 

edgefusion

Member
dmshaposv said:
So it seems I got the "right" thing. My contact ordered hi-res glossy by mistake.

So I don't have to pay any extra (he bought on my behalf, I am to pay him later). You know what, the whole "reflectionZZZ" is a myth the glossy looks stunning and the hi-res looks really nice. Thanks for the advice on edu discount GAF.
Give it a few months and you'll change your tune about the "reflectionzzz" I promise you. Unless you live somewhere that's perpetually gloomy or dark the moment you start using it in sunlight you'll understand.
 

mollipen

Member
edgefusion said:
Give it a few months and you'll change your tune about the "reflectionzzz" I promise you. Unless you live somewhere that's perpetually gloomy or dark the moment you start using it in sunlight you'll understand.

Seriously. If you get used to it, great, but in no way is it a "myth". Yes, glossy is prettier, but after three or so years of living with a glossy iMac, god is it annoying. I especially can't tell you how much I love looking at myself any time whatever is on the screen is halfway dark. *sarcasm*

And, of course, now this trend is going wild with TVs as well. It's becoming ridiculously tough to find an HDTV that can't double as a mirror. I just got a new TV that is bad about this, but its mout-watering beauty in all other regards forced me to try my best to live with the annoyance.
 

Ashhong

Member
dmshaposv said:
So it seems I got the "right" thing. My contact ordered hi-res glossy by mistake.

So I don't have to pay any extra (he bought on my behalf, I am to pay him later). You know what, the whole "reflectionZZZ" is a myth the glossy looks stunning and the hi-res looks really nice. Thanks for the advice on edu discount GAF.

Not a myth at all...its almost impossible for me to use my computer outside in the sun with anything but max brightness. However, I still love the gloss.
 

Jasoco

Banned
I have a question about Parallels.

Does it save its VM images as a single huge file or as multiple small files?

I ask because VirtualBox uses one single file, so if I have it on my computer, and I even boot Windows, the image gets marked as changed and my backup system (CCC > Rsync) copies the entire file over my network. I was hoping Parallels used a broken up VM structure so if only one or two dozen of the smaller files changes, it doesn't have to copy the entire image each time.

Alternatively, does Parallels let me boot from an actual partition with Windows on it? Like say I install using Bootcamp, can I use that partition as my VM?

But I'm mainly concerned with the first question since I haven't decided whether I'm going to make a partition yet. (Since I'd only use Windows occasionally to try out a game that there is no Mac or Flash version of.)
 

sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
Dreams-Visions said:
NO.

The opposite is true. glossy crushes blacks, making it difficult (or even impossible) to resolve and subsequently correct/edit the deepest shades of darker colors. there's a reason the pro's use anti-glare.

Correct statement: "if you are doing something with that machine that requires color accuracy I would NOT get glossy." Glossy's contrasted presentation makes movies and such "pop" a little more, but for pro work where color accuracy is necessary, it's a problem.

btw, who the fuck told you the over-contrasted glossy model is better for color accurate work? That's like saying Torch Mode on your HDTV is best for film editing. lol.


this is a myth. let it go. all you need to do is to calibrate your screen. apple just makes the screens pop out like this (with crushed blacks) to sell the thing in shops. like every god damn tv manufacturer does.

pros use anti glare because it does not glare. thats it.

i really like to see the physical explanation why dispersing your lightsource with an additional layer would make the screen any better. if you have such information (and im not talking forum posts) i would be very thankful.
 

XMonkey

lacks enthusiasm.
The screens should be of the same quality, minus the higher resolution of course. To make it anti-glare, all Apple does is basically take off the front glass covering the screen. That's why you lose the nice black frame if you with with the matte screen... but I wish they would make the matte ones come with the black frame :\
 

sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
Vinterbird said:
So anti-glare isn't "better" in any way to the current screen type?

well you have no glare problem and that is a huge plus.

i have yet to find a reliable source that could explain why a anti-glare screen should be any better. the wikipedia entry is not useful for this topic because the sources are some randome blog posts.

but as i said, a glossy mac screen without calibration is shit for photo/video editing

(simple fact: as soon as you enter the calibration set-up (not using expert mode) you can only choose between "gamma 2.2 (apple standard)" and "gamma 1.8" and the results with only this option are no more crushing blacks)
 

hirokazu

Member
bananas said:
After a month of using Lion, I am back to using Snow Leopard. So to anyone with Lion installed on their main drive, if you're wondering you can downgrade back while keeping all your files intact.
...yeah you should not have installed Lion over your existing OS X installation unless you knew what you where in for or have a way to revert, be it backups or whatever.
 
Vinterbird said:
So anti-glare isn't "better" in any way to the current screen type?
If you are a every day user then anti glare is good. If you are using the mac for anything that requires you to be able to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate colors, tonality etc then its bad.
 
Vinterbird said:
So anti-glare isn't "better" in any way to the current screen type?
I don't know why there are so many Mac users here who don't know how to answer this yet. I'm going to assume that these GAFers -- and I mean no disrespect -- either (a) did little/no research with regard to the the actual differences in screen quality and color reproduction or (b) did no basic side-by-side comparisons with a variety of pictures and consequently don't want to think about the question. Either way, they are not the same screen and present images in a noticeably different way. As a prospective buyer, you should know the differences. I'll try to articulate them here:

My experience.
I did both. I researched the differences for a few weeks and spent about 3 hours in Apple Stores doing side-by-side tests with glossy and matte MBP's. I went over approximately 100 images of varying photographic styles. Maybe nobody else cared enough to go through such efforts...but for people who *care* about getting the display that provides the most accurate colors, it is simply a necessity. It should be mentioned that I purchased my MBP in April of 2010 after coming over from the God-like 18.4" Sony VAIO AW 290 line. 137% of the Adobe RGB color spectrum. Perhaps the greatest laptop display ever made (semi-glossy finish), the laptop was plagued with design and consistency problems (rubber palmrest bubbling, display power inverter failing, various repair center-created issues) that ultimately forced Sony to issue me a full refund 10 months after purchase. I still miss that laptop because of how beautiful that display was. It was truly on another level. But the point here is only to articulate that my expectations are high and settling for less than the best accuracy of the two was unacceptable. Anyway...

Answers
To answer your question directly (one that I've answered several times in this thread but people many seem to fail to absorb): matte is the choice for color accuracy. It resolves its range of colors better than the glossy version of the display. If that wasn't the case, I would not have bought it. Period. The deepest blacks are resolved (visible) and there is little/no perceivable crush or artifacting. These are all essential things for video/photo professionals.

IMO, the glossy version screen was tailored in the same way that HDTVs on a showroom floor are set up to get them sold: they emphasized "pop". The colors are a bit more saturated and exaggerated by default on the glossy screen. It's slight, but apparent. This is not inherently a big problem, as most people do not care about the loss of a bit of color accuracy in favor of more "vibrance". Non-pro users tend to associate higher vibrance with "better" colors, when just the opposite is true - accuracy is sacrificed for slightly brighter, "enhanced" and artificial color richness. It will look a wee bit more colorful when watching movies or looking at photos or some such. It will not be a display you'll want to do your professional graphics work from.

Additional Notes:
Also, the matte is non-reflective. That's a nice plus. Glossy isn't horrible, but I have seen slightly less glare-prone "glossy" finishes. You'll get used to it if you go glossy, so it's not a big deal. Matte features a silver border that matches the rest of the laptop where glossy features an edge-to-edge glass and black border. The glossy screen is slightly heavier than the matte, which I would attribute to the shedding of the edge-to-edge glass.

Final thought.
If you don't need color accuracy, you'll probably be fine with either. But even if I didn't use my MBP for pro photo work, I'd still want matte. It looks fantastic whether I'm working on photos or watching a movie (LED backlit = fantastic contrast that's not overdone). I can take it outside without being bothered by reflections. Personal preferences, of course. You may be okay with the glossy and prefer the slightly more "vibrant" look. It looks great for movie watching, so long as you're okay with some black crush (many won't even notice or will attribute to the quality of the film rather than the actual culprit: the display itself)

If you're still not sold on matte, just go to a local Apple Store. They usually have a Matte and Glossy version sitting next to each other. Take some pictures on a USB stick, load them up in Preview and compare them yourself. Be sure to have some pictures of people with say...dark hair on a slightly darker background. The superiority of the matte will become apparent.


$0.02

(I'm probably going to bookmark this post because I'm sure I'll need it again eventually)
 

th3dude

Member
I went with AG for a few reasons:

1. No glare obviously
2. Much less of a fingerprint magnet (no, I'm not groping my screen all the time)
3. Just looks 'cleaner' to me
 

ericexpo

Member
UnluckyKate said:
Is there some kind of application on OSX (or website for that matter) that let me type and send text to phones numbers ? Even manage text just like it was from my phone ? Just like emails !

Basicaly, I hate to type text on a phone keyboard and even more with the iPhone. 90% of the time, when I receive text, I'm in front of my computer and it would be 100% easier to not grab the phone to anwser but directly read/respond through the keyboard, like emails, instead of all the crap you have to go through to text with a phone.

you can send emails to phones and they come up as texts, you just have to know the persons carrier so the phone number and then the carrier so 5555558484@vtext.com
vtext.com = Verizon
 

Treefrog

Member
Hi, I'm trying to create a partition on my Time Machine drive to install Windows onto. Whenever I use Disk Utility to create a FAT partition, it crashes my entire Mac.

How can I fix it?
 

SnakeXs

about the same metal capacity as a cucumber
Treefrog said:
Hi, I'm trying to create a partition on my Time Machine drive to install Windows onto. Whenever I use Disk Utility to create a FAT partition, it crashes my entire Mac.

How can I fix it?

You shouldn't be doing that. Boot Camp Assistant handles it for you.
 

Jasoco

Banned
Jasoco said:
I have a question about Parallels.

Does it save its VM images as a single huge file or as multiple small files?

I ask because VirtualBox uses one single file, so if I have it on my computer, and I even boot Windows, the image gets marked as changed and my backup system (CCC > Rsync) copies the entire file over my network. I was hoping Parallels used a broken up VM structure so if only one or two dozen of the smaller files changes, it doesn't have to copy the entire image each time.

Alternatively, does Parallels let me boot from an actual partition with Windows on it? Like say I install using Bootcamp, can I use that partition as my VM?

But I'm mainly concerned with the first question since I haven't decided whether I'm going to make a partition yet. (Since I'd only use Windows occasionally to try out a game that there is no Mac or Flash version of.)
Anyone?
 

JonCha

Member
Safari chugged an insane amount of memory and froze ALL THE TIME before I used Chrome. It was pathetically bad. It makes me wonder how Chrome can run flawlessly all the time.
 

dmshaposv

Member
sn1pes said:
I went with AG for a few reasons:

1. No glare obviously
2. Much less of a fingerprint magnet (no, I'm not groping my screen all the time)
3. Just looks 'cleaner' to me

Unlike most people, I actually also prefer the silver bezel to the black bezel.

However, since I'm mostly going to use my laptop in-doors I don't think the reflectivity issue is gonna bug me too much. I honestly just wanted hi-res for more screen real estate doing graphic design/video work.
 

Jasoco

Banned
SnakeXs said:
One single .pvm file.

Also curious about mating Parallels and Boot Camp, though.
That sucks. I wish Rsync (The backend of most cloning utilities) could be smarter with large files and only copy what has changed.
 
Dreams-Visions said:
I don't know why there are so many Mac users here who don't know how to answer this yet. I'm going to assume that these GAFers -- and I mean no disrespect -- either (a) did little/no research with regard to the the actual differences in screen quality and color reproduction or (b) did no basic side-by-side comparisons with a variety of pictures and consequently don't want to think about the question. Either way, they are not the same screen and present images in a noticeably different way. As a prospective buyer, you should know the differences. I'll try to articulate them here:

My experience.
I did both. I researched the differences for a few weeks and spent about 3 hours in Apple Stores doing side-by-side tests with glossy and matte MBP's. I went over approximately 100 images of varying photographic styles. Maybe nobody else cared enough to go through such efforts...but for people who *care* about getting the display that provides the most accurate colors, it is simply a necessity. It should be mentioned that I purchased my MBP in April of 2010 after coming over from the God-like 18.4" Sony VAIO AW 290 line. 137% of the Adobe RGB color spectrum. Perhaps the greatest laptop display ever made (semi-glossy finish), the laptop was plagued with design and consistency problems (rubber palmrest bubbling, display power inverter failing, various repair center-created issues) that ultimately forced Sony to issue me a full refund 10 months after purchase. I still miss that laptop because of how beautiful that display was. It was truly on another level. But the point here is only to articulate that my expectations are high and settling for less than the best accuracy of the two was unacceptable. Anyway...

Answers
To answer your question directly (one that I've answered several times in this thread but people many seem to fail to absorb): matte is the choice for color accuracy. It resolves its range of colors better than the glossy version of the display. If that wasn't the case, I would not have bought it. Period. The deepest blacks are resolved (visible) and there is little/no perceivable crush or artifacting. These are all essential things for video/photo professionals.

IMO, the glossy version screen was tailored in the same way that HDTVs on a showroom floor are set up to get them sold: they emphasized "pop". The colors are a bit more saturated and exaggerated by default on the glossy screen. It's slight, but apparent. This is not inherently a big problem, as most people do not care about the loss of a bit of color accuracy in favor of more "vibrance". Non-pro users tend to associate higher vibrance with "better" colors, when just the opposite is true - accuracy is sacrificed for slightly brighter, "enhanced" and artificial color richness. It will look a wee bit more colorful when watching movies or looking at photos or some such. It will not be a display you'll want to do your professional graphics work from.

Additional Notes:
Also, the matte is non-reflective. That's a nice plus. Glossy isn't horrible, but I have seen slightly less glare-prone "glossy" finishes. You'll get used to it if you go glossy, so it's not a big deal. Matte features a silver border that matches the rest of the laptop where glossy features an edge-to-edge glass and black border. The glossy screen is slightly heavier than the matte, which I would attribute to the shedding of the edge-to-edge glass.

Final thought.
If you don't need color accuracy, you'll probably be fine with either. But even if I didn't use my MBP for pro photo work, I'd still want matte. It looks fantastic whether I'm working on photos or watching a movie (LED backlit = fantastic contrast that's not overdone). I can take it outside without being bothered by reflections. Personal preferences, of course. You may be okay with the glossy and prefer the slightly more "vibrant" look. It looks great for movie watching, so long as you're okay with some black crush (many won't even notice or will attribute to the quality of the film rather than the actual culprit: the display itself)

If you're still not sold on matte, just go to a local Apple Store. They usually have a Matte and Glossy version sitting next to each other. Take some pictures on a USB stick, load them up in Preview and compare them yourself. Be sure to have some pictures of people with say...dark hair on a slightly darker background. The superiority of the matte will become apparent.


$0.02

(I'm probably going to bookmark this post because I'm sure I'll need it again eventually)


Thanks a ton for a great answer. Matte makes sense now. I just assumed that when Apple went for anti-glare over matte, it was due to better picture quality and nothing else.

Now for them to launch new 13 inch models with matte and high resolution options (does anyone have any sort of guess as to when the Air or 13-Pro will get upgraded and presumably get a new screen as well?)
 

Jasoco

Banned
I'll just say I don't care if it's matte or glossy. I just don't like how the matte border looks. I like the black bezel of the glass front over the silver raised bezel of the matte. I like being able to clean the entire screen instead of pushing dirt into the cracks between the glass and bezel.
 
Top Bottom