Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Its not doing it all the time, I have the important stuff backed up so i'm not worried about losing it but its not ideal as I know a repair on this won't be cheap.

Anyone have an old MagSafe 2 charger for a 2011 MacBook Pro 13" as mine has died.
Many thanks

is it just a very brief flicker?

i had this issue and a PRAM or SMC reset (can't remember which) managed to fix it (on the advice of apple -- as it was on apple care)

Loved that broom.

Yeah like the odd flicker and not like every 15 mins just the odd time but ive seen it a few times over the last week maybe.

I'm also intregued. People's Apple customer experience seems to vary so much. Are you ok with this?

My own was so bad I vowed never to buy anything of theirs again about 10 years ago but a lot of people seem to have had the opposite experience to me.

I had a good experience recently. Touch Bar on my MacBook randomly died. Took it in and was told that it’s out of warranty. The guy said he would just note it down that I was having issues with the keyboard so it would be covered by the replacement programme for free. Would mean they replace out the entire bottom section pretty much. Saved me £600 or something like that.

I upgraded my 2012 Air to the M1 Air yesterday. It's incredible how good the new keyboard is. Weirdly the thing I appreciate the most

So I think I'm going to sell my MBP.

Purchased new in May 2020, it's a 13" MacBook Pro with 32GB RAM and 2TB of storage and 4 Thunderbolt ports, Big Sur installed.

It now works great... but frankly the experience of Big Sur bricking it, and the initial issues with Catalina and USB - well, I've reverted to a Windows machine for daily work and it's so stable and solid that I don't see myself touching the Mac again.

The only things I'll miss are Loopback and PDF Expert.

What's a fair price for this MBP? £3k new in May (that's the price still)... should I be thinking it's almost 1/3 depreciation? So £2.1k?

Problem is £2.1k is competing with the new M1 chip mbps. I know some would need intel, ports and ram for reasons but most would just get the M1. 16gb/1TB is 1899 and 2tb is 2299.

I'd get the M1 as I'd be worried the Intel's will be made redundant in 3 years or so.

Same for me for the MBP theatre lighting fault...

"We're going to have to replace the top half and bottom half of your laptop."

But then your laptop will work again...

Damn.

So I'd need to price at £1.5k to be competitive.

Starts to look like it's all sunk cost and I may as well just write off the cost and mothball it for emergency use (though when I'd choose the only Mac in the house over the many Linux Thinkpads - unlikely to happen).

This does make me think I'll never buy a Mac again... so much lost money and time with this one, never had so many issues with a computer (and it's nearly all down to the OS).

Yeah, I'm packing it back in the original box and mothballing it.

There may be a market for hight end intel 13" as they don't sell them anymore. Watch all the things on eBay.

Also the sunk cost is the initial cost - selling profit. Its a fast deprecating thing so if you don't want it sell it. Invest in a better backup at less cost and picket the rest. Otherwise you will find it in 7 years and realise it's worth £50.

My MBP arrived yesterday. Your experience doesn't exactly fill me with confidence...

You can't buy an M1 with 32GB or four ports. Essentially what you have there is the best 13" Intel laptop Apple will ever make. I reckon there's still a window for selling it at a decent price.

But yeah, maxed out options are never worth as much at resale as you pay upfront.

Otherwise you will find it in 7 years and realise it's worth £50.

I can live with that. Have already put it in it's box and confined it to the top of the wardrobe.

It's been an expensive exercise in trying Apple for the first time, and finding them to have quality issues in their software and realising the extent of that.

In the grand scheme of things a £3k lesson achieved in under 6 months isn't a bad one as it now stops me further investing in Apple.

Actually it was a £5k lesson as I also purchased an iPad Pro 12.9" that I gave away. The MBP I'll just mothball.

Anyhow... lesson learned. Both Windows and Linux offer far more stable and predictable experiences with more longevity and productivity than Apple. Apple's hardware is incredible, but ultimately it's the software that define the experience, and when I needed support it was absolutely terrible (the USB thing).

I ordered a 500 gig storage MBA with 16 gig of RAM- I’m hoping that this will last as long as my current MBP and will therefore cost me around £300 a year, which I think is ok.

So I'd need to price at £1.5k to be competitive.

Yeah this year it's like that, but you might find some Intel people that M1 just won't do for some reason or the other. That won't be the case when they develop further backwards compat with Intel though, with software updates and/or M2/etc. So you still have time to sell it provided you can find the ideal type of customer.

In other news, fed up with the bad thermal design and eventual thermal throttling (easy to hit 100C, can't comfortably multitask during video calls, etc - this is on an i7) in my MBA Early 2020 I tried to sell it, but I can only get 1/3rd of the original price now with the M1s out. So I went on to do the next best thing and (voiding the warranty which is no use anyway) re-did the thermal paste and a copper shim + thermal pad mod. So easy and rewarding, should've done it earlier. It now won't go up more than 90C and won't throttle. IDE lag during video calls is gone. Shame they knowingly failed to provide a decent thermal design on these, just to keep it from eating into MBP territory.

Sorry to hear about your experience with Apple. I think that once you're in the Apple ecosystem for a while you start to do things like avoiding x.01 releases but it sounds like you've had a horrible time.

Why don't you install Linux or Windows on it if you're happy with those OSs?

I think that once you're in the Apple ecosystem for a while you start to do things like avoiding x.01 releases

I was going to mention this, but didn't want to sound patronising. With apple software OSX and IOS, never be an early adopter! Haven't been the first to upgrade to anything for almost 15yrs now. Saves a whole lot of apple heartbreak and angst.
Give it 6mths and you can be fairly sure they've patched most of the bugs.
Probably why I don't buy new new apple stuff, and prefer to be a generation or two behind, as you know everything's been pretty well sorted, or at least documented by the time you do come to upgrade.

I have a mid 2009 17" MBP that I occasionally use to watch movies on. It's worked perfectly since 09 however this morning I tried to turn it on, and nothing. It's been sat unplugged for a while and in my cold house (building work for 2 weeks so no heating on). It's been plugged in since 8 this morning and the battery indicator on the side still only flashes on the first light which to me says it's not charging. Is it possible that it's too cold, or is it more likely that the battery has just finally given up?

Why don't you install Linux or Windows on it if you're happy with those OSs?

I already have 2 Windows machines in the house and both of those are the best in their class, a Dell XPS and a gaming PC.

I already have 3 Linux machines in the house, and all of those are the best iterations of those: ThinkPad X220, ThinkPad X1 Carbon gen5, ThinkPad X1 Carbon gen8.

I may as well keep the MBP as MacOS in the wardrobe just in case there is ever something that needs me to have a Mac (realising this is a 3-5 year clock now as I have an Intel one).

Yeah, I'm packing it back in the original box and mothballing it.

Wait for eBay £1 fees (think there's one this weekend), stick it up for 2.4k allowing offers, wait for lowballs, accept anything acceptable.

I'm considering doing the same on my mint condition 2020 MBA. Just haven't been using it.