Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

:-P

@_rp have got my wacom up and running, Intuos BT M, haven't used it for anything more stressful than surfing the web, but it's being seen by my laptop and the few apps I've used so far.
I'm running Big Sur 11.1

Hmm yeah, it's now started crashing without Wacom connected so must be something else. Apple suggesting full reinstall but can't face that at the moment...

@kboy or anyone else thinking of buying some Ifixit things, found the manta bit kit I brought slightly cheaper on this site, which also does shipping for less, than the ifixit site, which for some reason is £7, no matter how much you buy.
https://www.accu.co.uk/en/ifixit-drive-bit-sets/499130-EU145392

Just got an iPhone 12 Mini to replace an ancient 1st-gen SE & did a quick Speedtest on 5G... indoors in a Leyton suburb...

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At that speed it's hardly worth having a home broadband connection, and just hot-spotting if your contract permits and you've unlimited data.

My BT fibre doesn’t even get 10 percent of that download speed 🥵

Wahey, it's all good and my MacBook Pro 15" (circa 2010) is online!
Thanks all for the encouragement/help.

Bristol, Three 5G

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Has anyone actually used their 5G phone as their main connection? I just called Virgin Mobile and the guy I spoke to said their unlimited data packages are truly unlimited and I'd be able to tether multiple devices and use it like a normal connection.

The studio space I rent has a slow connection (12mb download / 0.6mb upload!) that costs me £25 a month and I can't get a fibre connection installed as it's a unit within a building and no company wants to get tangled up in the logisitics of that. It's in the centre of Bristol though so if I can get Virgin's cheapest 5G phone for £26 month with unlimited data then I can just stick it in the window and forget about it.

so have new laptop, what's the current thinking behind how to make the most of your battery, is it leave macbook constantly charging/plugged in, let it discharge every so often, only plug in over night, I'd like to keep this laptop running for a while, so want to make sure I don't fuck it

I had this thought when I bought a B&O speaker with a battery and their customer service said it doesn't matter for a modern battery, it's all managed by software.

hmmmm. that would make my life a whole load easier.

There's a feature in recent Macs that keeps the battery just below fully charged, which makes it survive longer.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211094

Similar on iPhones. I plug mine in at night and it charges quickly up to about 80% then pauses for a while, then slowly charges up to about 95% to finish just before it knows I get up.

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It's worth checking the 5g signal first in the place if your phone can do it or borrow a mates but it would probably be worth getting a 5g wifi hub so you don't need to have a phone running as a hotspot all day. On Three you can get an unlimited data sim on a 1 month rolling contract for £26 a month although 5g wifi routers aren't exactly cheap so could be better to get a 12 month contract with a free one instead.

Thanks. Didn't even know 5G routers were a thing. None of the providers can get close to £26 a month for unlimited data though. 100gb a month might be ok, but EE want £75 a month for that, Vodafone want £30 plus £100 up front. I might just order the cheapest phone through Virgin and give it a go for the 14 day cooling off period and see how the experience is.

Madness.

I spent a while using a spare phone as my main internet connection. I had the phone tethered to a mini router (this kind of thing https://smile.amazon.co.uk/s?k=travel+router&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 ) and used that for the network at home.

That meant that I could use a proper router and wi-fi setup rather than relying on the phone hotspot.

yeah saw my battery was charged to 95% yesterday and didn't get past that until I unplugged and then plugged back in, thought it was an issue but the same happens on my iphone, hadn't connected the two.
Have the battery management switched on, so will just keep doing what I'm doing and let the computer figure it out...

Thanks for the info

also have a 5.25gb zip file that I downloaded from work before I left, contains old work projects and some big video files, archive expander won't open it, when I try and see it in terminal it won't open it, and stuffit expander doesn't open it either, or tries to and just hangs.
Anyone have any idea how I can open this file?
thanks

Thanks, looks like a solution that would work for me

Ive tried everything over the years and it seems to not make much difference, you eventually have to change the battery if you have it for years.

No I just leave it in charge if im using it most of the time and when I need to go mobile use it off the battery and let it drain to empty then.

Have you tried winzip?

Is there a Mac version of winzip? Will check and give it a go.