Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Zoom isn’t a dealbreaker, i can use the laptop for that as i don’t have to do them that often.
there is a Beoplay A2 for about £100 which looks o.k. so will investigate that. the A1 is £220 which is a bit strong. especially as i’m not after battery or portability.

What 6pt said
There is no lag and you can play across the house with no lag between rooms.

I have 6 across 5 rooms and it means radio can be played at a gentle level in each room without the need for one loud sound source to reach the whole house.

For podcasts/music, yeah, totally lag free. Banging.
I got tired of the thin sound and now have a giant 70s B&O setup punishingly close to my head in my studio, but the HomePod mini did me fine for a year of casual listening until I got around to tidying things up.

Well it’s a contender then on size and price.

Generous returns policy too if it's not for you.

the MacBook audio was very good considering it’s size but the mac studio is not as good

what, really?
that’s disappointing for sure.

i have a white / beige vifa bluetooth speaker that looks and sounds really good, might wanna take a look at those?

"what, really?
that’s disappointing for sure.”

I don’t think so. the speakers in a mac mini/mac pro/mac studio are not really expected to be like a laptop. iMac or apple studio display (with it’s six speaker spatial audio)
it’s just there for a bing/bong/chime.

Ive got a anker mini speaker thats decent for the money

Printer recommendations
I'm tired of scrolling up and down in browsers and documents as I try and figure out how the scripts I'm writing flow from one to the other. Despite the environmental impact, I much prefer having pieces of paper in front of me that I can annotate, and scrawl across.
So I'm looking to get a printer that doesn't cost the earth to run, will primarily be producing black and white text and imagery, isn't too large and I can print to wirelessly.

Any suggestions, recommendations, or ones to stay away from, gratefully received.

We have an HP Laserjet M15w if you really want to go cheap and minimalist. Being laser it won’t dry out in between jobs but also won’t do as well with illustrations as an ink jet would. Does the job for us.

I had the exact same need a few years ago. Checked wirecutter and went with their recommendation.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-laser-printer/

They still recommend the same printer and I can’t say much bad about it. Stings to replace toners but that goes for most printers

Wife prints everything so similar need to you. I bought the cheapest bog standard hp laser I could find. It’s been running for about 15 years of daily use including endless copies of her doctoral research, book manuscripts and articles (she both writes and reviews).

You should be able to pick up a basic hp laser for about £100. Compatible inks are way cheaper than hp official inks making them incredibly cheap to run.

I have an A2, and another B&O which I forget it’s name, it’s kinda hexagon shaped or something, both are way too base heavy IMO and the A2 broke after a few years (think some plastic snapped) making the base even worse (vibrations etc) rendering it unusable. I love B&O stuff but really can’t recommend it.

Echoing the other comments. I got a HP Laser 107 Wireless for about £80 and, once you're past the slightly painful setup, it's great. Really small, very quick printing and works fine after not being used for a few months (unlike all the fucking inkjet printers I went through).

It's probably a matter of finding out what's in stock but I'd be looking at a HP or Brother laser.

+n for a cheap laserjet

Brother or HP

I gave away a more expensive colour inkjet because the nozzles dry up unless you use it all the time.
Got a Brother L2350DW for about £120 a few years ago. 10mins to set up wirelessly, been perfect since. Pretty sure my Dad has the same HP Laserjet he bought 25yrs ago

Brother L2350DW

Totally agree, similarly cheap for me recently, super fast- and I'm printing papers to read almost constantly.

CartridgePeople.com for replacement Brother toners reduces the cost…there’s also a hack that gets you a few more hundred sheets even when it says it’s empty for most models.

These are the instructions for the model we’ve got: https://markcerv.com/2019/01/brother-hl3140cw-printer-reset-out-of-toner-message/

Listen to you lot with your fancy pants wireless stuff.
That’s how old mine is, from back in the day when printers used wires and we had to carry our laptops upstairs to print off our emails to read.
You might also be able to get a good condition second hand one as they do last years.

I'd stay clear of unbranded toners, has ruined quite two printers for me. I might've just been unlucky, but I've had to write off both printers as they got clogged with toner. The "100% fit guarantee" I got only meant I got a free replacement cartridge....

Yeah this has happened to me too.

Mac studio update:
so there is lots of online angst about noise. there is a background fan noise and a very feint power supply whine but only when saving a big file. the computer is about 18in from my head, if it bothered me that much i would move it but compared to iMac’s, MacBooks under load and old G5 towers it’s quiet. very cool to touch and the air out the back is cold, i don’t think i have managed to get the fans up to speed despite processing a lot of files and doing some heavy lifting processor wise.

issues: some filters in photoshop like smart sharpen are not fast, it’s something to do with open CL which is evidently redundant now but still used for a few things. this is not a computer issue but software.
sometimes a brush lag with very long strokes in PS where it has to catch up, not bad enough to annoy as for most of what i do it’s not noticeable but be nice if it was snappy/real time.

there is an issue with using external USB dacs. i have Tidal/audio quest dragonfly red and it has background clicking unless you use one of the thunderbolt ports on the rear (with a USB adapter)
i wonder if this has any impact on music/audio people who use USB interfaces?
no idea if thats hardware or software causing that.

apart from that it’s all good and smart sharpen aside it’s fast, still get a beachball but thats for a second or 2 when doing saves or transforms or zooming in/out on big files (12000x10000 pixels 16bit 5-10GB)

Saving you the time go warrant it?

I feel a bit underwhelmed by all computer upgrades. Obviously I'm doing more intensive things than I used to and it's happening faster but it never feels completely 'live' unless I've got footage playback set to a lower res than native. Which can't help but seem like a shame/an upgrade path.

presume you meant ‘to warrant it’
yes, because i’m not pausing before a ‘big move’ and having to think if i should save or close other software before doing it, or go make a cup of tea.

i have moved between capture1/helicon focus/PS with them all open, something i would not have contemplated before especially with only 16gb ram, i would have liked to have 128 but 64 is a big improvement and makes a huge difference to PS as it will use as much as it can.

i haven’t done any of my time lapse’s yet but the MacBook struggled with saving those and i would have to purge all cache’s and histories before i could do that, it also took nearly an hour to process the sequence tiffs in C1.

but it’s the same with every upgrade, the computer gets better, the files get bigger, the computer slows down, you buy a new faster computer...

Thanks for the printer recommendations, and @kboy for that link to wirecutter which someone (maybe you) has linked to in the past.

I'm now on the lookout for good, long lasting, well designed cable ties as I'm tied of my cables being all over the place. Any that stick out as being better than what you usually get pre packed with cables appreciated.

https://www.thomann.de/gb/cable_ties.html