Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Thanks, I'll have a closer look at that. 🙏

Do you need a laptop?
What about a Mac mini m2 or a Mac Studio? If you’re going to get a new monitor/keyboard, just get a new box to plug them into. Mac mini would be magnitudes cheaper than the MacBook Pro and could do what you require with relative ease. Mac Studio would be future proofing yourself if you needed more processing power later on..
I think you’d be happy with an m2 MacBook Pro if you’re definitely in for a laptop, as I’m not sure how much of an improvement the m3 is over it. And the m2 will be a massive jump in performance over what you’ve currently got anyway..
Save the money on not buying the latest gen and upgrade peripherals I’d say..

After a quick look at the Apple website I think the M3 Max might be a little more than I need, the M3 Pro probably sits about right.

I definitely won't be buying an M2 tho', I don't see any point in buying an older gen machine. I'm probably going to upgrade my computer more regularly now (because tax write off ⛳) so I need to think about resale value as well as initial cost, etc and come up with some kind of plan. Tax stuff is so boring, it's such a fucking scam.

Tax stuff is so boring, it's such a fucking scam.

Yeah, hospitals and schools and roads and stuff aren't real.

Read it again.

Tax write-offs are a scam, knobhead.

Tax write-offs are a scam,

So don't do them. There are a bunch of things I haven't claimed as a tax write off because I'd rather go out riding my bike than filling in forms.

Fascinating.

As I mentioned before, doing quick googles there doesn’t seem to be much difference in performance between m2 and m3, so I’d go m2 as it’d be cheaper, more money to spend on either upgrade (larger ssd, faster processor) or peripherals. But if you can afford it m3 away.

Apple Watch Health App- used it today to record bike park laps, it very usefully recorded the first one, then stopped recording anything when I took the second gondola up to the park again. It didn’t stop the activity- so that ran for the 3 or so hours I was riding, and when I stopped the activity it uploaded the single run.

How can I fix this behaviour as it makes the watch useless for recording bike park riding?

“ I definitely won't be buying an M2 tho', I don't see any point in buying an older gen machine”

But they can make perfect sense as the M processors were such a big leap forward that the differences between M1/2/3 are moot.
I now have an M1 Sudio and 16in MBP, they are not really stressed by any video editing/grading or photoshop work on big 20-35GB files with multiple adjustment layers, the MacBook feel’s slightly slower on some tasks but I saved a fair bit by buying an M1 refurb for half the price of a maxed out latest model as all the heavy lifting is done on the Studio, the MBP is just for tethering a camera to on shoots.
Both machines are faster and more efficient with no fan/heat hissy fits than the intel based macs.
Another few £k on M2/M3 would make no difference to productivity, my usual upgrade cycle of 3 years will likely move to 5 now.

M3 Max is a big step up from M2 Max, and a giant leap from M1 Max.

We own multiple machines of all three types, and for our purposes an M3 Max Mac Studio gives basically 2x the performance of an M1 Max equivalent, especially with GPU-bound workflows, allowing us to run far more complex shows on a single machine. It’s a huge real-world difference.

Depends on the individual use. I checked the DgLloyd PS benchmarks and while quicker in some tasks there were no significant gains to had apart from doing batch processing which is something I don’t do in huge volume's, for me a batch process is 10-20 images so we are talking 15-20 seconds on something I do once at the beginning of a job.
There isn’t anything I do that means going back to the ‘go make a cup of tea’ days or a delay on small tasks that I do multiple times per hour be it saving or brush/filter lag or the shitty refine edge performance that annoyed the hell out of me, it’s these small multiple delays that add up to a significant amount of time and costing me time/money/productivity.
The only thing that still really sucks is smart sharpen but that’s an Adobe/Apple thing not a processor performance thing.
If I was doing raw video/complex editing jobs then there might be a case for an M3.
The 300 layer 8k timelapse animations in PS (from raw stills not video) were just about possible on my 15in intel MBP but each adjustment/change was fraught with danger of crashing/out of scratch/memory/spinning beachball of death. simply not an issue moving to M1, the differences between M1-M3 are not as significant as intel to M.

Has anyone had any luck with removing iCloud activation lock on iPads? I've got a couple of old iPads that have the activation lock on, and I don't have a hope of getting the previous (not contactable) owner to remove them.

I've bene trying checkra1n but get an error 31, which might be to do with my lightning cable which isn't official.

PM me if you have any info please

So i have a sorta mac related question.

I use WD 4TB HDD for backup, I have usually 1 mirror backup of the other one.

I bought some new WD 5TB drives, yesterday on a job I was dropping footage onto it. 4TB is full and im on the last 1.

The footage took about 5 hours, and it was only like 400gb and I think it should have took like an hour at most. Has anyone had issues with drives going super slow when they are getting full? Ive never had an issue before like this.

Get the WorkOutDoors app for recording any activities on apple watch. The built in apple fitness app is borderline useless.

I think you have to pay a circa £5 one off app purchase fee but i have been using it for a year now on apple watch ultra for all activities and it has worked flawlessly. The mapping on it is also really good of you get bit lost and are not using a garmin etc. It also seems to be much more accurate with all metrics compared to apple fitness app, and the auto start/stop function actually works.

It sends all data to apple health in the same way the apple fitness app does.

Ypu can also upload routs from komoot/mapmyride/strava etc to it and use it for navigation if needed. I use the navigation on it unknown hiking routes with the dogs pretty regularly.

Also, you can’t really expect any app to automatically know that you have stopped riding and are sitting on a gondola. I’m not sure how you imagine a watch would be able to figure that out unless it has very detailed maps installed that recognise sections that are gondolas. If you are riding your bike and get off to push it up a steep hill, an app won’t automatically assume you’re walking and not riding, you are still moving, so the activity is not paused.

This seems like a very Dammit kind of assumption.

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Love the in-app purchases

1. Very Generous Tip $4.99
   
2. Generous Tip $1.99
   
3. Massive Tip $9.99
   
4. Tip $0.99
   
5. Fanatical Tip $19.99
   

Just landed in Charlotte. Just after take off I go to the toilet and get changed into classic loungewear. Starting eating lunch and realise I’ve left my AirPods in the bathroom. Go and check. Not there. Ask staff if it’s been handed in. No dice. So I connect to the internet and walk around the plane with find my iPhone on. Like a budget Idris Elba I end up next to this guy, ping them and it rings. So I ask him if I can have my AirPods back and he just hands them over. Got to say that feature is seriously good. This is the most fun example of it helping but have used it countless times. Also addition of better speaker in the AirPods case much improves it

Sweet revenge. I had a similar experience watching Australia play cricket in Taunton when I was about 18, before I could afford test match tickets. We got into the ground about ten and my mate finds a nice jumper on a seat and not only decides it’s his now, he actually puts in on to boot. I must have told him 5 times to take it off and put it back but he insisted it must have been left from the day before. We sit there all day and when the last ball is bowled the guy who’s been sat next to my light-fingered mate casually asks for his jumper back. I couldn’t stop laughing at how red my mate’s face went

Just after take off I go to the toilet and get changed into classic loungewear.

lol

I’m trying to reinstall Sierra on a redundant 2016 MBP so i can use my A3 canon printer and the stash of ink carts for it, it’s the last supported OS that has working drivers that can print borderless, getting this laptop running is cheaper than buying a new printer and inks.
the machine has a dodgy screen cable and lines across the screen but it will be usable purely as a printing mac with an old copy of photoshop 6.
Have run into a problem trying to internet recover to it’s original OS (Sierra) which fails at the last step, tried the disk erase/repair but it’s the same failure every time. I want to try a bootable usb stick but as i don’t have a running sierra mac only M1 macs it’s impossible to make an external boot drive.

anyone SE with an older mac tech savvy and comfortable doing some terminal commands? If i give you a USB stick? can pay in beer/wine/hugs. or does anyone have a old mac mini or 2016 era mac for sale? something with a fucked screen or very low 256gb /8gb ram?

I want to try a bootable usb stick but as i don’t have a running sierra mac only M1 macs it’s impossible to make an external boot drive

Not true, you just need to codesign the createinstallmedia binary, like this:

codesign -s - -f createinstallmedia

This command has to be run inside the Contents/Resources folder in the Install macOS Sierra app, so you need to pop this into terminal first:

cd /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/

You'd need to install XCode command line tools first (so basically do these backwards once you've downloaded Sierra)

xcode-select --install

If you don't want to use terminal, Install Disc Creator might work, but I don't know if it will run on an M1 mac:
https://macdaddy.io/install-disk-creator/

Sierra download link, open it in Safari if you have any issues:
http://updates-http.cdn-apple.com/2019/cert/061-39476-20191023-48f365f4-0015-4c41-9f44-39d3d2aca067/InstallOS.dmg

Use a decent quality/more modern USB or things can fuck up.

Hello Macheads

I have a Macbook air from 2014 that's being forced into obsolescence.

I'm stuck on OS X Yosemite version 10.10.5 which means that I'm using an outdated version of chrome which doesn't support a lot of websites, and I can't download any new programs. It won't let me update to the newest OS even though I cleared the mac and made space for it.

It's a shame as the laptop has had light use, battery is solid and it would perfectly fit my needs of browsing the internet, and using it for meetings at work etc.

Is it really the end? or can something be done to save it?

I think @amey or @Fox were using some kind of workaround to get a more up to date OSX on older stuff.

OpenCore Legacy Patcher:
https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

I used it recently to put Sonoma on a 2012 Mac Mini and it makes it super easy, there's wizards for everything. And OpenCore is legit. I'm saying that as someone who must have been hackintoshing for about ~15years now, at least (embarrassing).

Noice 👌