Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Does your monitor have sockets? I know my Dell has lots of USB ports on the back, and I think can work as a repeater for another monitor.

They don't have anything other than hdmi or vga.

This looks like it'd do the job
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-universal-dock-d6000/apd/452-bcyt/pc-accessories/overview

Seems people have got it working with a MacBook from a brief Google

We are being handed down a 2011 Imac i5.
Plan is for my wife to use it for Illustrator for vectors etc with her illustration work.
My question is, will Illustrator run happily on this system?
12gb of ram which obvs could be upgraded. Is it worth maxing it out to 32gb?
And would there be any point upgrading to a SSD?

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Illustrator (using vectors) is super lightweight until you get very complex, it'll run just fine.
CPU and Ram are more than enough.
GPU is lacking but will suffice.
I'd very very much recommend an SSD though, that old spinner will be getting rusty and prone to fail, that plus the insane amount of time it takes the damn things to boot/load data. Any reputable brand 500 GB SSD will do ya.

Upgrading to a SSD is strongly recommended, regardless of the iMac's suitability to run Illustrator. It blew my mind when I first used a SSD. Good times.

External or upgrade internally?

Internal.
Ssd would make a huge difference

Ta. I'll see if work will pony up.

👍

Deliberating options as got an itch for a new laptop...currently using a MacBook Air (13 inch, mid 2012) w/2GHz i7, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD mainly for InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator with a bit of Premiere Pro thrown in (short 2-3min pieces to camera with titles etc.) along with generic Office stuff. Would quite like to start dabbling in After Effects this year, so wondering if it's worth switching over to the MacBook Pro?

Weighing up either the 13 inch MBA w/1.6GHz Dual-Core i5 or the 13 inch MBP w/2.3GHz Quad-Core i5 (both with 16GB RAM and 512SSD, which seem sensible spec. bumps) - I'm assuming the new Air would be fine for what I'm intending to use it for, but for the sake of £300 over the lifetime of the thing will I regret not going for the Pro in a few years?

My MBP keyboard lasted around two months before shedding key surface again.

I can't afford the downtime to get it fixed, as they take it away for a week, so it's gone beyond their one year warranty now.

Pretty poor.

which version of MBP is this @Dammit ?

PS and Indesign can be pretty heavy on hardware, I'd 10000000% go Pro over Air - the Air's really are not designed for your use case.
Premier and After effects wise you need a decent CPU but a GPU would be super useful too, I'd be kinda tempted to get a smaller SSD and an eGPU and massive external to store most things on.

also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUbfDilfutE

13” touchbar/four port, this is the second keyboard, first one took ten months to flake, this one less than two

Yeah, what made me bit the bullet and hand my MBP over for a week was one of the keys stopping working.

scary .. I am in market to buy one of these ..

I've experimented a little since, and depending on what I am doing I can (if for e.g. travelling, when I'm usually giving presentations, or technical workshops) use my iPad Pro.

If I'm at home/in the office then I'm usually creating content (AKA, dicking about with Powerpoint), and having a proper laptop is a lot better for that.

So! I may (once again) bite the bullet and hand the MBP back for a week, and Work From iPad (WFP?).

Very irritating to have to do so for the second time, with zero belief that it won't be a third time before the end of summer.

this is the second keyboard, first one took ten months to flake, this one less than two

butterfly such cute tho

Middle management problem.

I'd call it a Mac problem, but you do you.

I've got a 2018 macbook Pro. Are all my keys going to fall out?