New Mac Time

[adrynalyne]

52 minutes ago, NJL said:

Wasn't aware of it only being dual core.  That's kinda shocking.  If only the 2012 had a GPU...

Ha yeah...it is a sleeper. I had two SSDs crammed in there with 16GB of ram. Only the integrated video held it back. 

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

And "held it back" is exactly why a Mac Mini doesn't really suit then.  Damn, seems like a hackintosh is the way to go eventually.

[adrynalyne]

6 minutes ago, NJL said:

And "held it back" is exactly why a Mac Mini doesn't really suit then.  Damn, seems like a hackintosh is the way to go eventually.

Yeah...it’s what I did. Now I have the hardware I want at the price point I wanted it at, but I’m still on the fence as to whether the maintenance of keeping it running with updates is worth it. So far I’ve only needed to reinstall video drivers each update but I’m sure it will get worse at some point. 

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

3 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

Yeah...it’s what I did. Now I have the hardware I want at the price point I wanted it at, but I’m still on the fence as to whether the maintenance of keeping it running with updates is worth it. So far I’ve only needed to reinstall video drivers each update but I’m sure it will get worse at some point. 

So you run a hackintosh?  

[adrynalyne]

1 hour ago, NJL said:

So you run a hackintosh?  

Yeah for the last month or so. 

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Is getting another MacBook Pro that is permanently on your desk an option?

 

A slightly older, heavier model is likely to run circles around a Mac Mini.  And if it has Thunderbolt, won't it be compatible with external graphics cards?

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Absolutely. But they are pricey by nature. Hmmm food for thought though!

[Xenon]

Have you tried the referb store? My sister and her family get all their macs there. 

 

https://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

[nekrosoft13]

On 4/3/2018 at 3:17 PM, farmeunit said:

With Apple going away from Intel, I would be leery of building a Hackintosh is you might not be able to upgrade at that point.  If you are just looking to get by, then maybe.

 

Your budget doesn't leave a whole of room for you in the Apple world, though, either.

 

Not sure how docking is "kludgy".  You might just think about a "better" docking station.

https://hengedocks.com/

https://landingzone.net/

https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/11/05/thunderbolt-3-docks-for-the-macbook-pro-and-2017-imac-by-the-numbers

http://bgr.com/2017/11/19/macbook-pro-docking-station-touch-bar/

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/landing-zone-docking-station-price

 

 

 

you should be more leery about buying a mac, because once they drop intel, they will drop support for all older macs very shortly afterwards.

 

Support for hackintosh will stay alive for as long as intel based macs will have support.

 

you will get more screwed by having a intel based mac when the change happens, you will end up with a useless device that no-one will want to buy.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

14 minutes ago, nekrosoft13 said:

you should be more leery about buying a mac, because once they drop intel, they will drop support for all older macs very shortly afterwards.

 

Support for hackintosh will stay alive for as long as intel based macs will have support.

 

you will get more screwed by having a intel based mac when the change happens, you will end up with a useless device that no-one will want to buy.

again, no, no they won't; it will be several years before intel support is completely dropped; look how long it took them to drop PowerPC support; and then 32bit for x86_x64 as well

 

sure they'll want to phase out the architecture but that will be another 3-5 years down the line AT LEAST

 

at this point in time there's no reason to worry yet

[nekrosoft13]

same reason, why there is no point to worry about hackintosh.

 

by then there will probably be arm based PCs

[Brandon H Supervisor]

10 minutes ago, nekrosoft13 said:

same reason, why there is no point to worry about hackintosh.

 

by then there will probably be arm based PCs

personally i never understood why Apple locks their ecosystem the way they do. They could sell licences to their OS like MS does and make a lot of money.

I would totally dual boot a legit copy of Mac OS on my laptop if able; I actually prefer the Mac OS UI over Windows just can't justify Apples hardware price point any longer.

My last Apple product was a 2011 Mac Book Pro

 

/end of my off topic rant

[Co-ords]

I personally run a hackintosh on an older HP Z400 & it runs like a dream. The only thing that I as yet have not managed to get working strangely enough is the shutdown!! It reboots!! I use it as a Plex media server & is a very faithful workhorse.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

So here’s a thing. I have a weekly task that takes about 3 hours. I have a workflow on my PC that suits it well. This was potentially the last thing that stopped me moving 100% to Mac in the past.

 

This week I tried it on the Mac. Wow... to say it took longer is an understatement. About an hour longer, or a third again.  So what I’m doing is keeping my MacBook Pro docked, RDP into my PC for this one task. Saved a few hundred quid.

 

sorry if I’ve wasted anyone’s timeline here with this. I think the thing is that I keep seeing a hackintosh as a fun project.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

2 hours ago, NJL said:

So here’s a thing. I have a weekly task that takes about 3 hours. I have a workflow on my PC that suits it well. This was potentially the last thing that stopped me moving 100% to Mac in the past.

 

This week I tried it on the Mac. Wow... to say it took longer is an understatement. About an hour longer, or a third again.  So what I’m doing is keeping my MacBook Pro docked, RDP into my PC for this one task. Saved a few hundred quid.

 

sorry if I’ve wasted anyone’s timeline here with this. I think the thing is that I keep seeing a hackintosh as a fun project.

what kind of task? is this an automated process you let run in the background or a manual process on your part? to say your task takes an hour longer on mac doesn't seem right to me

 

maybe we could help you work on the Mac side flow if you're interested

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Hi ok, so I run a weekly quiz night at 2 pubs.  Each week I need to write a quiz - looking stuff up and tapping it into Excel.  Do a picture round - again looking stuff up and photoshop work.  Music rounds - again looking music up and trimming with Audition.

 

This week I tried on Mac:

 

Firstly, Numbers is absolutely terrible.  Missing so much functionality from Excel (copy without formatting please?)

Audition was in fairness fine - basically same.

Photoshop - again, fine, same.

 

But the swapping between apps, the keyboard shortcuts being different just kept throwing me off to the point it just took a LOT longer.

 

And then the printing - wow.  On my PC, if I want to print 10 pages from Photoshop, it sends them over and done.  The printer churns away after buffering the data.  On the Mac it seemed to send a page, print a page, send a page, print a page.

 

I found the whole thing just a complete pain.  Perhaps it's because I'm using a Windows keyboard on a Mac (Logitech K350 - I adore this keyboard)?  Perhaps it's muscle memory from Windows shortcuts?  Perhaps I should use Excel on the Mac?

 

On to the keyboard (and mouse).  I've installed the Logitech app on the Mac, plugged in the Logitech unifying dongle and while the basic uses of keyboard and mouse are fine, the app doesn't recognise them, thus not allowing me to map my really frequently used options from PC.

 

I'll happily follow advice and retry.

[Circaflex]

1 hour ago, NJL said:

Firstly, Numbers is absolutely terrible.  Missing so much functionality from Excel (copy without formatting please?)

Microsoft offers a Mac version of the Office Suite, maybe give it a try. If you have Office 365, depending on your tier, you might have the ability to load a copy with your current license.

 

1 hour ago, NJL said:

And then the printing - wow.  On my PC, if I want to print 10 pages from Photoshop, it sends them over and done.  The printer churns away after buffering the data.  On the Mac it seemed to send a page, print a page, send a page, print a page.

Did you install the Mac driver from the Printers webpage, or did you use the built-in Mac driver?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

check out this app; it adds a lot of common windows style window previews and shortcuts. it was a godsend back when i used OSX

 

https://bahoom.com/hyperdock/

 

and as Circaflex said MS does offer Office for Mac and it's just as good as its Windows counterpart now a days.

 

the printing issue i've never run into though, that's an interesting sounding one

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

I believe I can get office for Mac from work for very little money so will do. The printer is wireless so I just let it find it. Assume what we are getting at here is that it’s using the most basic drivers and so isn’t aware of the buffer memory?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

4 minutes ago, NJL said:

I believe I can get office for Mac from work for very little money so will do. The printer is wireless so I just let it find it. Assume what we are getting at here is that it’s using the most basic drivers and so isn’t aware of the buffer memory?

seems possible; are you able to direct connect the printer just to verify?

does the printer have any proprietary drivers you can install for the wireless functionality on Mac OS?

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Moving forward... I've now installed Office For Mac, and those addons noted above (nice, I love little addon packages such as those so any more suggestions welcomed).

 

I'm now going to look for drivers for the printer, but any comment on the Logitech situation?

 

Thanks

[Brandon H Supervisor]

10 minutes ago, NJL said:

Moving forward... I've now installed Office For Mac, and those addons noted above (nice, I love little addon packages such as those so any more suggestions welcomed).

 

I'm now going to look for drivers for the printer, but any comment on the Logitech situation?

 

Thanks

make sure you have the latest version of the app installed. if still not detecting then i'd recommend reaching out to logitech support directly; they're usually pretty good

i never used the logitech software back when i was on a mac so cannot comment on the functionality of that one...

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

28 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

make sure you have the latest version of the app installed. if still not detecting then i'd recommend reaching out to logitech support directly; they're usually pretty good

i never used the logitech software back when i was on a mac so cannot comment on the functionality of that one...

Well , a step forward.  High Sierra blocks the daemon that the app needs to use.  I've now got my Keyboard and Mouse working too

[Brandon H Supervisor]

7 minutes ago, NJL said:

Well , a step forward.  High Sierra blocks the daemon that the app needs to use.  I've now got my Keyboard and Mouse working too

that'll do it

 

now just to figure out that printer. what's the model?

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Samsung Xpress c430w - not finding much on their site...