Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Sounds perfect for a MacBook but a bit ott for a Mac mini?

Is that a Catalina specific bug btw? I won’t upgrade for a while as Adobe seems to take their time with tethering a canon camera to a Catalina mac

Fair assessment.

There's probably a rule of thumb of not spending more than 10% of the value of the computer on a USB hub.

And I don't know if it is Catalina specific... but all of the mentions did appear to be last 6 months which would imply it might be Catalina only.

caldigit ts3+ is also a staple on every youtube/instagram "clean mac setup" video, so you can join that club too.

Is apple dropping the ball a bit with Catalina? Heard quite a few people who aren’t happy with it

I think so.

I've heard so many horror stories about upgrades to it. So I held back on getting a Mac until they shipped with it and also had fixed the keyboard (lots of horror stories there too).

I thought the clean install on new hardware would mean I wouldn't encounter any issues. I was wrong.

This is the first Mac I've ever bought for myself... and I don't think what I've experienced is indicative of Mac reputation, but I've convinced myself this bug is real and the root cause is the OS not the hardware. That's not so bad, they can fix software easily.

What's the spec out of interest? and 13/16?

On the 16 I've noticed reports of people saying there are heating/fan issues if you're powering it from a port on the left hand side of the device. Came about in a few threads on Twitter from an editor asking about using it closed in a stand plugged into a monitor/keyboard. If the power source is in the left hand ports the fans go batshit and temps rocket. If power is plugged into the right it's far quieter/cooler.

That’s the kind of random shit you’re paying to avoid with Apple. It’s one thing on a cheap chrome book, but it’s not ok on a high spec MBP

What's the spec out of interest? and 13/16?

13-inch MacBook Pro 2020 - Space Grey
With the following configuration:

• 2.3GHz quad-core 10th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz
  
• 13-inch Retina display with True Tone
  
• Touch Bar and Touch ID
  
• Intel Iris Plus Graphics
  
• 32GB 3733MHz LPDDR4X memory
  
• 2TB SSD storage
  
• Four Thunderbolt 3 ports
  
• Backlit Magic Keyboard - British
  
• Accessory Kit
  
  

£2,999.00

I have no idea what the accessory kit is... I assume it's the power supply.

Is that a Catalina specific bug btw?

It's Catalina + 2020 Macs I think, because my older MBA (2013) plus Catalina worked fine before. Or maybe USB-C Macs + Catalina.

Sounds like the marketing department got involved if that’s the case

It's the colour-matched logo stickers.

Managed to reproduce the bug whilst an Apple "Capture Data.app" was running.

Can describe it perfectly too, and also prove the workaround exists.

Just uploading the data to Apple... they should be able to figure this out.

Hypothesis: USB 2.0 devices connected to USB-C hubs that provide a transparent proxy capability and present the USB 2.0 devices to the Mac as USB 2.0, are subject to a polling / refresh error within Catalina whereby all USB 2.0 devices connected via any USB-C hub at that time will become unresponsive though remain visible in About this Mac > System Report. However, if the USB2.0 devices are connected to USB-C hubs that provide terminating proxy capabilities and that then present those USB 2.0 devices as USB 3.0 devices to the Mac... then the problem will not occur.

The workaround is therefore to use a USB-C hub that terminates USB 2.0 connections and presents them as USB 3.0 connections.

The root cause may be how Catalina refreshes and polls USB 2.0 devices via the system bus. It is interesting that USB 2.0 devices connected to any hub all freeze, which is why this is a problem with the Mac and not the hubs. That it doesn't happen instantly suggests it isn't hardware but the software (the operating system).

I have a workaround (Caldigit TS3+ hub)... @disq has a workaround (the hub in his monitor)... but the issue plainly exists in Catalina, and perhaps it's Catalina + recent Mac hardware.

Edit: Follow-up from 2020-05-22, Apple think I am the first person to have reported this and have not found anything in the logs provided. They have said that they'll keep looking, but frankly it feels like they're suggesting the problem is between keyboard and chair. I'm going to give them the full text of the issue via email so it can be in their helpdesk software and if people report a similar thing it may be found. However... I now know how to work around this... so meh, I am happy but I feel for others who aren't going to figure it out.

hopefully the rest of your mac experience is smooth @Velocio!

I'm on my second MacBook Pro, maybe about to buy a third. but the first lasted me from Feb 2007-Aug 2012 and the current one is from Aug 2012 and so far so good..!!

which is more than I can say for any windows machine I've ever owned.

Now I'm using the CalDigit hub... the experience has been the one I expected from Apple... it's flawless.

Finally bought and installed all of the software I wanted too:

• Little Snitch
  
• Stubby (via brew) with nextdns.io
  
• Rectangle (via brew)
  
• Boom 3D
  
• Reaper
  
• DxO PL
  
• Chrome
  
• Firefox
  
• VSCode
  
• iTerm
  
• Syncthing
  
  

So I think that's everything :)

Anything people think should be an essential thing to add?

I did a factory reset recently to clean it up as much as possible.
Immediate installs were:

Logi Options (because MX master is the best thing ever)
Karabiner Elements (key mapping)
NightOwl (dark mode switcher)
ByteController (menu bar media controls for when just clicking about)
CleanMyMac X
Anaconda
VLC
and of course Dropbox/DriveOffice/Teams/Zoom etc!

Dropshare for easy file sharing

Alfred for app switching

Magnet to organise windows

Having a problem with my MacBook, so its ancient and near the end of it life but I cant afford to replace it yet.

The wifi isn't joining in my house yet I can contact to my hotspot on my phone. Its a BT hub5 so I'm thinking it could be that potentially although my phone is connecting to the hub.

Tried deleting them all and re joining but hub is also saying password is incorrect when I do that too?

BetterTouchTool

We just had our bt box upgraded and the reception is far better than the old 5 we had.

I'll need to call them then, it's only recently started doing it but tbh i should have changed ages ago as I'm paying a fortune and the reception in my house is brutal.

• Witch: Customizable app switching. I'm using an older version (I'm refusing to pay again for the upgrade) but still works fine.
  
• iStat Menus: Replacing the regular menu bar with cpu/mem/network graphs and stuff. Click on the clock pops up a mini-calendar plus other timezones I'm interested in.
  
• DejaLu: I use this mail client. It's a little bit buggy but I like it anyway. Sparrow-like, which was another email client that was bought out and shut down by Google. Yep, same author.
  
• Charles Proxy: I sometimes use this to debug app traffic on my phone. I still can't capture Thrift (HTTP transport) packets with it for some unknown reason, but works fine for regular REST.
  
• Zwift :D
  
• Sublime Text as daily text editor (VSCode works just as well I suppose. I use JetBrains products -mainly Goland, that's what I have a license for- for coding)
  
• Tunnelblick is a nice VPN client (OpenVPN wrapper I should say) capable of multiple VPN's at the same time etc.
  
• Transmit (by Panic software) is a nice generic file transfer tool, if you ever need something that has a UI.
  
  

I used Little Snich for a long time but I'm not using anything for that stuff any more. The popup gets tedious after a while since I don't like to set up blanket rules except for few apps/domains.

I used Little Snich for a long time but I'm not using anything for that stuff any more. The popup gets tedious after a while since I don't like to set up blanket rules except for few apps/domains.

Same here. Installed it the other week for the first time in ages and the barrage of popups turned me off. I know that's the whole point but when there's a popup every 10 seconds for a good half our I give up

also all on my second macbook since 2009. got this one september 2014, reckon it’ll last at least another year or two

Add:

Docker - self explanatory
handbrake - video format conversion
Keka - lightweight zip / tar GUI
Omni Graffle - Visio-like design tool (£)
Omni Plan - if you love making gantt charts (£)
Plexamp / Plex
Pock - customise your touchbar
Virtualbox - VMs