Ye Macce Threade

[HiWire]

The stock headphones have always fallen out of my ears so I got some cheap silicone earhooks from Amazon to cover my spare pair. They still fall out of my ears, but more slowly now.

[ironbut]

I waited to see if the SE would get an update.

Getting a package sans charger/earphones.

No biggie. 

Everytime I open a drawer I stumble across one of those or a lightening cable!

Glad to see they're still taking trade ins for the 6s.

[blessingx]

Anyone interested in the HomePod mini? I'm likely to pick one up for the kitchen. Looks like they're accepting other than Apple Music services (as opposed to just AirPlay) in "the coming months." 

 

[Hopstretch]

No mention of Spotify though.

[HiWire]

I like the size of the iPhone 12 Mini, but I generally avoid 1.0 version rollouts of technology like 5G.

Nice to see it has Wi-Fi 6. I wonder if the Lightning cable will be capable of USB 3.0 speeds?

I guess I'll need to get a new car with MagSafe charging when the time comes...

[blessingx]

39 minutes ago, Hopstretch said:

No mention of Spotify though.

It hard to image they'd open it up only to Pandora and Amazon Music, but who knows?  

[Grahame]

Tidal? Roon?

[TMoney]

5g would be more of a draw if we didn't live in Marin County where the only thing people hate more than vaccines is 5g antennas. 😂

Phones looks nice but the product I really want is that new wireless charger that does the phone and watch at the same time.

[n_maher]

51 minutes ago, TMoney said:

Phones looks nice but the product I really want is that new wireless charger that does the phone and watch at the same time.

It's nice having wireless charging again, considering that my Android phone had it 10 years ago.  Granted, Apple has had it for a few years now to but being behind the upgrade curve as I am, my XS is the first wireless capable iPhone.  The Apple battery case has already come in handy on a couple long days of calls at home too, that way I don't have to even think about plugging the phone it at all during the day.

[HiWire]

I just installed dosdude1's Catalina patcher (to macOS 10.15.7) on a 2009 MacBook – Apple's official support for this MacBook ended with OS X El Capitan in 2015. His patches fixed the backlight, touch pad, and Night Shift automatically.

It's really amazing how dosdude1 and the community have kept old Macs going after all these years. I'm not sure if the same support can be extended to Big Sur, but even if it's impossible, it's been one hell of a good run.

To be fair, I've also installed Windows 10 (version 2004) on some 2008 and 2009 PCs recently. It's nice to see that even a 12-year-old computer can be fully supported in 2020.

Edited October 16, 2020 by HiWire

[Knuckledragger]

I'm trying to decide between two machines.  Both are late 2012 Mac Minis.

Refurb'd 2.5GHz dual core i5 (MD387LL/A), 16GB Memory, 512GB SSD $572.

Refurb'd 2.3GHz quad core i7, 16GB Memory, shitty 500GB spinny HDD (I have a spare 256 GB SSD) $650

It is worth the extra $78 for the quad core i7?  The machine is going to function as media playback box (HTPC, more or less) and possibly a Steam machine for light 2D gaming (something I talk about but never actually do.)  Actual internal storage is irrelevant as I'll have an ext HDD enclosure attached.  

[HiWire]

I would always go for the quad core i7, but replacing the hard drive is trickier than I'd like:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac+mini+Late+2012+Hard+Drive+Replacement/11716

I'd also consider a used or refurb 2018 Mac Mini if it was in the same ballpark (under $900, 16GB RAM).

[Knuckledragger]

I have never worked inside a Mini, but it does not seem particularly appealing.  Especially for someone with as freakishly large man mitts as myself (I am on the opposite end of the spectrum as our esteemed Commander in Chief.)  OWC will include a 512GB SSD for $60 more, raising the price of the quad core model to $710.  TBH, that sounds more than worth it.  

Somewhat related: in February of 2019 I replaced the GPU in my Wintendo.  When I did so, I apparently knocked the power cable for my Blu Ray drive loose and didn't notice until ...yesterday.  I do not use optical media terribly often.  I had a panicked search for photos I took in 2005 that had been missing since February 2006 and only discovered the fact ...also yesterday (more on that in the photography thread at some point.)  It took me a couple hours to disconnect 593 cables from the Wintendo, haul it out from its corner, blow a considerable amount of dust out from inside, find the damn drive power wire and plug it in (SATA connectors are the devil.)  That was inside an extra wide Fractal case which engineered specifically to be easy to work in.  Even in that environment, my hands were too big to get where I needed to reach.  I cannot imaging me trying to wrangle small and delicate components inside a Mac Mini.

[morphsci]

Having wrestled an SSD into a 2012 Mac mini I would concur that the $60 is worth every penny.

[Pars]

^ I didn't find mine to be that hard to work on, though I was pissed when I had to swap the SSD for the HD spots in order to keep it from buzzing (IIRC). But $60 for a 512Gb SSD would be worth it to avoid the fun.

[Knuckledragger]

Hello, I am an officer in the Obvious Army.  I bear the rank of Captain.  I bring you this warning: Don't buy cheap bluetooth keyboards.  Cough for for an AAPL branded one (even if it has really lame arrow keys) or at minimum a Macally.  

[HiWire]

I've been buying mostly Logitech K380 for my coworkers. The Apple keyboards are ok too, but super expensive.

I bought a Macally (once) for a cowoker – the letters wore off the keys in a matter of months and I was not impressed (glad my coworker is a touch typist).

Edited October 22, 2020 by HiWire

[Knuckledragger]

After two days of attempting to install Mojave, I just said "uncle" and started the upgrade process for Catalina on one of Macs.  RIP all of my old 32 bit apps (and like 2/3 of my Mac-compatible Steam library) but at least I'm moving forward again.

[Knuckledragger]

...ayep, Catalina is its own unique brand of Cupertino crafted hell.

[Torpedo]

On 10/16/2020 at 6:49 PM, HiWire said:

I just installed dosdude1's Catalina patcher (to macOS 10.15.7) on a 2009 MacBook – Apple's official support for this MacBook ended with OS X El Capitan in 2015. His patches fixed the backlight, touch pad, and Night Shift automatically.

It's really amazing how dosdude1 and the community have kept old Macs going after all these years. I'm not sure if the same support can be extended to Big Sur, but even if it's impossible, it's been one hell of a good run.

To be fair, I've also installed Windows 10 (version 2004) on some 2008 and 2009 PCs recently. It's nice to see that even a 12-year-old computer can be fully supported in 2020.

Do you recommend update to Catalina on such old machines, did you notice any performance improvement or something justifying the work and risk?

[ironbut]

I'm surprised you had an easier time installing Catalina?

What was installed on the machine before and did you use Migration Assistant or do a clean install?

If you're sick of the whole thing and would rather forget it and get on with life, I totally understand your reluctance to reply.

[HiWire]

2 hours ago, Torpedo said:

Do you recommend update to Catalina on such old machines, did you notice any performance improvement or something justifying the work and risk?

I'm lucky enough to have several spare Macs at work. So far, I've upgraded a 2009 MacBook (white plastic), a 2010 13" MacBook Pro, and a 2008 MacBook (aluminum unibody) to macOS 10.15.7 without problems.

In this case, I did it as an experiment and there was no risk as the previous user had upgraded to a newer Mac (i.e., complete drive erase and new macOS install for each of the Macs), but I haven't done any kind of benchmark testing after updating to macOS Catalina. macOS 10.15 seems to have some GUI optimizations that make Catalina feel snappier as well as background security and stability optimizations, so those are part of the reason for me to upgrade.

I would definitely recommend a full backup of your system and apps using Time Machine before installing the dosdude1 patched update. You can also install a full version of macOS on an external drive and migrate your internal drive's data to that system to boot from USB (or Thunderbolt) as a backup system.

The main reason to upgrade macOS is software compatibility: I noticed that the latest version of Adobe apps no longer work on macOS 10.13 this week, for example. Microsoft has officially announced there will be no new updates for Office apps running on 10.13 as well.

Apple itself is even more ruthless: Safari, the newest versions of the iWork apps (Keynote, Pages, and Numbers) as well as free apps like GarageBand, iMovie (and paid apps like Logic, Final Cut Pro, and FileMaker) often require the latest or next-last version (Mojave) of macOS, so it leads to a never-ending hamster wheel of upgrading hardware and macOS. Apple often removes easy access to old versions of macOS and its apps online, but the dosdude1 tool allows you to download macOS from a repository.

The biggest caveats to the dosdude1 patches for unsupported Macs are the AMD Radeon 5XXX and 6XXX series of GPUs. Specifically, these GPU models are in the 2010-2011 iMacs and the 2011 15" MacBook Pros – if you have one of those, you should stay on macOS 10.13 (which works with most contemporary software but support is being withdrawn). They can't be run with graphics acceleration in the 10.14 and 10.15 patches, so they are almost unusable with the new OS versions.

And to be clear, the dosdude1 patches (for 10.13, 10.14, 10.15) do work with graphics acceleration on the rest of the supported Macs, so whether you have an integrated Intel or discrete Nvidia or AMD GPU, it will continue to work with macOS apps with full acceleration.

If you use graphics-heavy applications, support is probably patchier. The major graphics apps and games moved to Metal graphics years ago, so I would hesitate to use OpenGL-era Macs to do any kind of heavy lifting.

The dosdude1 patcher installs updates to address hardware issues after installing macOS: these include fixes for the display backlight, trackpad, USB, wi-fi, iSight/FaceTime camera, APFS booting, Night Shift, and more. Definitely watch the Tutorial Video to get an idea of the install process. Make sure to find out exactly which model of Mac you are working with (for example, a 2010 15" MacBook Pro is a MacBookPro6,2 – you can find the model number for your Mac on https://everymac.com) as the hardware patches are specific to each model.

There are good reasons to keep old Macs running the latest macOS versions – some of them have FireWire ports for example, and not everybody has transitioned to Thunderbolt 3 equipment. Apple removes support for old Macs for specific reasons – old Macs don't have some of Intel's security hardware or SGX media controls (for Ultra HD Blu-ray playback, for example). These checks have been disabled in the patches to keep macOS happy and capable of installing updates, so keep that in mind regarding system security.

If you're thinking about trying the patched macOS update, it might be a good idea to consult a friend who is experienced with Macs. The dosdude1 patches are fairly well known in the community by now, and most people working with Apple computers on a professional basis have probably tried installing them on old Macs. Carefully read all the notes on dosdude1's page (linked below), and also check out the accompanying forum thread at MacRumors (also linked):

http://dosdude1.com/catalina/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/

 

Edited October 25, 2020 by HiWire

[Torpedo]

Thank you for the elaborated reply. I visited the dosdude page and watched the video, it seemed somewhat time consuming to implement the upgrade, that's why asked if it's worth it. I hadn't considered the security implications and the compatibility issues with the newest versions of software. I'm not an intensive user, I might try it once I get the new machine.

[HiWire]

I agree. It's good to have another computer in case things go wrong and especially if there isn't an urgent reason to upgrade. I did a lot of research before I decided to upgrade and I performed the first upgrade on a computer that I could afford to lose (i.e., one that nobody wants).

The upgrade process itself doesn't take much longer than a normal macOS upgrade, but you want to be sure your data is safe before proceeding. I haven't tried doing the upgrade version of the process, only erasing drives completely and installing a fresh copy of macOS (and then migrating data back in afterward using Migration Assistant) as I think it has the best chance of completing without complications.

Edited October 25, 2020 by HiWire

[Knuckledragger]

4 hours ago, ironbut said:

I'm surprised you had an easier time installing Catalina?

What was installed on the machine before and did you use Migration Assistant or do a clean install?

If you're sick of the whole thing and would rather forget it and get on with life, I totally understand your reluctance to reply.

2012 Mac Mini quad core etc etc.  It was running Sierra.  My issues were based primarily about Apple's shitty policy with older versions of OS X (you have to download it, or start downloading it before they update it or you can't have it in the App Sore) not loading from .dmg.  Even a known good .dmg sourced from a friend gave me errors.  After two days of that and still being stuck on Sierra, I said the hell with it and went with Catalina. 

The actual install of Catalina was slow, but relatively painless.  What's been a headache is ...everything since.  In Cat everything has to have permission to do anything.  I've got a few basic apps working, but nothing more.  For the last (checks watch) 18 hours I have been trying to get Migration Assistant to move (some of) my old data on to this machine.  Then I have to get Little Snitch (firewall), 1Password (does what it says on the tin) and my photo and audio apps up and running.  Then I might get daffy and try to get Steam to run.