Secret Mac Owners Thread

[rekator]

[QUOTE="Oh, and OSX HPS+ (or whatsitscalled) file system is ancient and terrible and awful. I've gotten unrepairable disk errors spontaneously several times, which has NEVER happened with NTFS. Although maybe my previous macbook HDD is bad, I'm not sure. Haven't taken the time to check it out yet.[/QUOTE]

Go for Diskwarrior.

 

[Arwin]

I discovered somewhat to my surprise that El Capitan could still be installed on my 2009 Mac Mini, and then I decided to make serious on an attempt to upgrade the RAM. At 2GB, ever since the previous OS/X upgrade it has become unusable, and El Capitan didn't improve that much. So I ordered 2x4GB and tried to install those, but no luck - beeps were my reward for an initially pretty tricky upgrade. I tried a couple of things I read online that didn't help, and then I noticed someone who managed to upgrade to 6GB by keeping one of his original memory chips in there, and I decided to try that as well - bingo, went from 2GB to 5GB, and it's a whole new machine - i.e. suddenly it is perfectly usable.

I had also come across my old Magic Mouse that after three months of use and then a few months of disuse had had a battery meltdown, and decided to see if that still worked - it did! The battery cover was beyond repair, but it works just fine without it. So now I have that hooked up together with my old Bamboo Touch and it's a pretty smooth ride. Really wish that the OS got rid of that stupid menu up-top though, as that makes it feel so decidedly ancient. It's pretty decent looking otherwise.

Edit: running peacekeeper, my iPad inches out my Mac Mini by about 100 points, ha ha. My iPhone 6 Plus loses by 1000, but the iPad was plugged in, so that might help too.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I think El Capitan is a lot better than Yosemite, in terms of performance, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. I still like OSX in terms of usability. Been meaning to setup an external drive for booting Windows 10. It's not straightforward to do, but it can be done. I could play some games that way.

Edit
Since bootcamp won't let you install windows on an external drive, this is what you'd have to do if you want to dual boot to windows from an external.

http://bleeptobleep.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/mac-install-windows-7-or-8-on-external.html

 

[idsn6]

Really wish that the OS got rid of that stupid menu up-top though, as that makes it feel so decidedly ancient. It's pretty decent looking otherwise.

New in El Capitan: System Preferences, General, Automatically hide and show the menu bar.

Removing it makes the OS unusable for me, but to each his own.

 

[Florin]

I discovered somewhat to my surprise that El Capitan could still be installed on my 2009 Mac Mini, and then I decided to make serious on an attempt to upgrade the RAM. At 2GB, ever since the previous OS/X upgrade it has become unusable, and El Capitan didn't improve that much. So I ordered 2x4GB and tried to install those, but no luck - beeps were my reward for an initially pretty tricky upgrade. I tried a couple of things I read online that didn't help, and then I noticed someone who managed to upgrade to 6GB by keeping one of his original memory chips in there, and I decided to try that as well - bingo, went from 2GB to 5GB, and it's a whole new machine - i.e. suddenly it is perfectly usable.

Bad luck on the RAM mate, I got one of those - if it is the one with Nvidia 9400M - and it is running 2x4GB third party SODIMMs without problems.

Yeah it sure is a bit of a pain to open for the first time with the putty knives thing but totally worth it. I upgraded the f*ck out of that little box over time. Swapped out the original 2GB RAM, replaced the 320GB HDD with an SSD and added another TB HDD in place of the Superdrive as well. El Capitan running like a champ.

 

[Arwin]

It's a 2.26Ghz with an Nvidia 9400M, yep. It reports as 'late 2009', but it's that clock that makes a difference apparently sometimes - those who have a late 2009 model with a higher clock tend to not have issues.

Yeah, I was looking towards the SSD as well as another huge boost. So you did manage to replace the DVD drive with an HDD as well? I thought that was only possible with the 2010 model ... How do you install El Capitan on the SSD?

 

[Florin]

Mine is a 2.0 Ghz C2D and it's an 'early 2009' but they have the same motherboard, only real difference is early had choice of slower CPUs, smaller HDs and less RAM.
RAM compatibility may just be spotty.

I didn't reinstall fresh but just made a disk image to an external USB, booted from it, and then imaged back to the newly installed SSD boot drive.
I think that was back on Mountain Lion but should work no different now. I used Super Duper because it rocks but Disk Utility should also work fine.

The DVD drive can be replaced or removed - mine had died anyway - and then there's enough space for another 2.5 inch drive with a bit of padding on top but you do need a slim SATA power cable.
They're a few bucks on Ebay or you can make one yourself.

 

[Scott_Arm]

You should be able to back up to time machine and then do an install to a new drive from your last time machine backup ... I think.

 

[msxyz]

My gaming rig has become a MacPro since the last year. It's a decent gaming machine and, on top of that, it manages to stay cool and quiet without extensive plumbing and exotic liquids flowing inside the heatpipes

On top of that, my wife loves the design. She still hasn't made any sarcastic remark unlike all the desktop/laptops I had owned before it.

 

[Scott_Arm]

@msxyz Mac Pro? Like the tubular thing?

 

[msxyz]

@msxyz Mac Pro? Like the tubular thing?

Yep. Pretty slick design, good looking AND functional. If you can forgive that it's as expandible as a laptop (ram and ssd is all you can swap without voiding the warranty), it's a solid PC. Unlike may other Macs it also runs quite cool; the vertical chimney arrangement grants excellent airflow.

 

[rcf]

Mac Pro's D700 seems to be significantly slower than current gaming cards. But I guess a lot of people don't need uber videocards.
Is CrossFire well supported by the relevant Mac games and applications?

 

[Grall]

Is CrossFire well supported by the relevant Mac games and applications?

Crossfire support only under windows on Mac Pro. OSX doesn't support it at all; the secondary GPU is only intended for compute.

...So yeah, world's most advanced desktop computer OS and can't do multi-GPU rendering. Can't do surround sound output either (another of my pet gripes with OSX. )

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Can't do surround sound output either (another of my pet gripes with OSX. )

Wait what? How is that even a thing? This isn't the early 1990's anymore.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

Good question, but there's not a single Mac with more than stereo sound output hardware, and there's no included software codec for DTS or DD surround sound for Macs that have digital optical output...

One of the things OSX does do that I'm missing in windows is hot corners support. I use it for putting screen in power save mode on demand, which I find quite useful at times.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I used to have both hot corners and a .bat file that would do the same thing in XP. But as I get older, I feel less and less the need to modify Windows. For me, it's good enough to just have a 10 minute timer for the screen going into power save mode now days.

Is it possible to at least install a program or something to enable surround sound output on the Mac? I'm just completely boggled by this as Mac's are supposed to be media friendly.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

Is it possible to at least install a program or something to enable surround sound output on the Mac?

If you have pre-encoded DD/DTS (like, from a DVD movie) and an optical output on your Mac, then it will output this stream to an external decoder of course. But other than that I don't know of any possibilities... Maybe an external USB soundcard can add surround sound? I don't know if OSX has built-in drivers for such hardware.

 

[Blazkowicz]

What about sound on HDMI output?

 

[Grall]

What about sound on HDMI output?

Really good question! My Macbook is too old for HDMI out so I can't check. Maybe it works, I've no idea. It would require the ability to set sound output to more than two speakers in the system settings applet tho and I haven't the faintest if there's such an option at all, or if all you ever get is stereo...

 

[Florin]

I went and splurged on a 2016 13" Macbook Pro so you could say I'm moving further into the Mac fold.
Here's hoping it'll arrive in time for Christmas ('Delivery 3-4 weeks').

Still using my late 2010 Air every day and I guess that helps me rationalize the expense but lately with Sierra it's just really starting to be a struggle.