Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

I built mine couple of years back and it's still going strong. Only recently been having minor problems since I upgraded to high sierra which I haven't gotten around to fixing yet. I remember my initial install wasn't the smoothest experience, however I got there eventually. And once everything is setup, it's smooth sailing.

Saying this, if I was to be buying new again now, I'd be leaning more towards the new Mac mini and and eGPU, mainly for ease of use and reliability

Do it, as Chris says it should be super quick and easy, at least if you're installing a new system.

I'm not a fan of Tonymac either. In short the software's not great, it's not very transparent and if it works it's very easy but it often doesn't, then it's difficult to fix the mess. Hence all the frustrated people on their forum. I also know that their current installer has issues so I'd especially not recommend it right now.

I can also recommend Hackintosher because I personally used their method to make a Mojave install USB with preconfigured Mojave EFI folder and it worked well for me:
https://hackintosher.com/guides/how-to-make-a-macos-10-14-mojave-flash-drive-installer/

When I get round to it I'm going to configure it properly for me, but if you want something to get you going quickly it's good.

The biggest problem for you might be that you need a Mac to make the Mojave installer, but happy to help with that if you need it.

You could build a hackintosh mini if you'd like something smaller...

Cheers Pete. I’ll look into it further. I still have my MBA, it’s just old and slow. I have access to many a Mac at work too so all good on the installer front.

Ta for that link, I'm very tempted to try.

Have a fairly beastly desktop (8700k, 1080Ti) and just reinstalled Windows 10 onto a 1TB Samsung 970.
Windows Subsystem for Linux works pretty well well for most of my purposes so I could allocate the 'spare' 256GB M.2 NVMe exclusively to OSX and give a dual boot hack a go.

Whats your mobo? You will have to stick to High Sierra if using an Nvidia card...

Dell...
It's an Alienware Aurora R7. Quick Google (not home to check) suggests it'll be Intel Z370 chipset.

(I'd built my own machines for the last 20 years but this was too good a deal to pass up)

Ahhh.. proprietary Mobo, you won't be able to put macOS on that.

It's not unheard of
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/full-working-macos-high-sierra-10-13-x-for-dell-alienware-aurora-r7.260467/

Might give it a go. Given it's on a separate SSD then hopefully I'll avoid breaking anything else while testing

Apologies! I stand corrected...

The left internal speaker of my sister's MacBook is broken and I'd like to swap it out. Are the listings on eBay trustworthy as many of the speakers are "pre-owned" or "used"?
I'd rather buy these than brand new ones from China because the used ones might be genuine from broken MacBooks

Best non-apple (ie doesn’t break in a month) lightning to headphone adapter please?

Ideally flat/braided cable if there is such a thing as I think it’s the twisting that keeps breaking them. Anker is my usual go to but seems they don’t do one.

Anyone know where I can buy this bit of an apple power adaptor?

Apple store told me to buy an ipad charger and take the bit off -- at £19 that feels like a waste of money and plastic ...

Amazon has some asian ones but they have poor reviews ...

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I think a lot of those are just figure eight connectors so if you're not too worried about the looks you can pick something up for a couple of quid.

Do you want the plug or would the longer cable be ok? I think I still have the cable part from my 2 stolen macs somewhere. Can have a look if you want? Can’t promise anything but if I found it you could have for free.

They're called Duckheads and are about £4 on Amazon or from the myriad of phone shops in Petticoat lane market. The Amazon ones are perfectly fine IME.

I have a bunch for different countries so when I travel abroad I just grab the relevant one instead of a full UK-EU power adapter.

You in london? I think i have a tone of them, ill look when i get home

does anyone have any contacts with the people in charge or knows someone that is in charge of the companies' work phones that are returned after an upgrade?

My MacBook pro 15 Retina (think its 2013) has started squealing like a banshee and the sound dropping out every now and again (not ideal when using it as a DAW.

Anyway. Does anyone know an apple engineer i can trust to have a look and potentially fix? Don't think its worth getting apple to do it as the cost.

Cheers for any help.

LB

You in London?

Yep.

SE7

I got good service from Amsys. Think they have a few stores but I used the one in Soho.

Amsys charges the same as Apple so you might as well go to Apple. In fact, it doesn’t make a lot of difference as they have the same diagnostic tools and should have had the same training. Appel certified technicians can be a bit hit and miss as it’s really not that hard to become one.

Any visual issue when the sound happens? Make a video of the issues andaywh we can have a quick look to see if it’s an obvious problem.

If warranty isn’t any of your concern then a friend of mine might be interested in repairing it for you if needs be.

I have trusted him over the years with identiting problems with my Mac software and hardware and he’s always been spot on.

He is not Apple certified so obviously his work doesn’t come with the Apple 3 months repair warranty.

That said, it really depends on what the problem is, you might be able to fix it quick easily yourself.

ok

We have a mid-2010 imac with a 1TB SATA drive. Its desperately slow so I was thinking of swapping the drive for an SSD. Looking online it seems do-able but getting the temperature sensor to work is problematic. Also, I'm not entirely clear on how to copy everything over from SATA to SSD, so that I can replace the internal SATA (to boot from the SSD)

Three questions: first, is there anywhere recommended in London that would do this work (supply and fit an SSD to an imac) ?

Second, if i were to do it myself, from where would you recommend I get a compatable SSD bearing in mind issues with temp sensors. Crucial have this for example

Thanks!

Have a look at ifixit, find the model and see what they recommend.