Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Truly, I have no idea, am not a tech girl. I seem to remember when I got it I spent extra to max out what it was capable of, was a huge purchase for me at the time and has done fairly well given it's been 8 years. Would like to give it to someone who can diagnose what's up and hopefully make it run better.

I only mess with up to 2012 MacBook pros, but opening them up usually reveals lots of dust and fans that need cleaning out.

No shop recommendations. Sorry.

For an 8 year old laptop, I'd definitely get a quote and compare it to purchasing new.

Need Mini Key board

Probably a good idea to ask the nerds over at the Mechanical Keyboards thread 🙂

It’s a long time since you’ve been able to get useful upgrades for old MacBooks. You’d be wasting money you could be putting towards a new one.

Even an M1 MacBook Air will likely be night and day better.

If I make a ppt in ppt on W10, and then open it in Keynote on a mac, am I going to get any bullshit? Or will it just work?

Cheers.

Agreed. A £500 second-hand M1 Air will run rings around a 2015 MBP with the same amount spent on upgrades.

@ectoplasmosis @grams interesting, ok. dunno if helpful but this is what i'm on currently, presumably same assessment?

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Using the geekbench Benchmark browser, comparing single core performance
———
MacBook Pro (13-inch Retina Early 2015) – Intel Core i7-5557U @ 3.1 GHz (2 cores) – 979
———
MacBook Air (Late 2020) – Apple M1 @ 3.2 GHz (8 CPU cores, 8 GPU cores) – 2327
———

Might not be 100% relevant to your use case, but some small performance gains have occurred in the last 8 years.

Cheapest M1 MacBook Air on the refurb store right now is £850. If your 2015 is your main machine you will be astounded by the battery and performance differences that gets you.

thanks, am reading up, so much knowledge.

There’s no way to meaningfully upgrade this machine anyway. The RAM is soldered, the SSD is proprietary (and 500GB already). Nothing else is upgradeable.

Having said that, your 2015 retina MBP is still perfectly fine for basic tasks as-is; 16GB RAM, 500GB NVMe SSD, fantastic display.

I would back up your files, nuke the OS, reinstall everything from scratch (very easy) and see how it goes.

This

So basically clean out of the dust and maybe a thermal paste change? Or is that pointless?

missus has nabbed the hp 24in monitor I was using as a second monitor (she got it from work for me, as she's using the home office and I'm out on the dining table, and the 2nd hand apple cinema display she was using as a second screen has gone kaput intermittently - trying to fix but not holding out hope), so on the lookout for a replacement, 24in monitor, probably around £300, would like it to be usb-c or thunderbolt, with speakers, and with a decent stand.
If there are secondhand apple monitors I should be looking at let me know, though I think most of those ae 27" which is a bit big for my current adhoc set up.
Should also say I do some video editing for work - not finishing/online - but enough so any monitor which is suitable would be higher up the purchase list.

Been looking on wirecutter nyt and they recommend:
this asus
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08TX3F74X?ascsubtag=AwEAAAAAAAAAAlh3&linkCode=gs4&tag=thewire04-21

this dell
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-U2421E-UltraSharp-USB-C-1920x1200/dp/B08KP4GFXW/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3F9CAC4E5OK82&keywords=dell+u2421e&qid=1690374334&s=computers&sprefix=dell+u2421%2Ccomputers%2C69&sr=1-3

this hp (slightly out of price 2k resolution)
https://www.hp.com/gb-en/shop/product.aspx?id=4Q8N9E9&opt=ABU&sel=MTO

Any one got a version of h2testw to use on a Mac?

If there are secondhand apple monitors I should be looking at let me know

I can recommend the LG 23.7'' UltraFine™ 4K Monitor for Mac](https://www.lg.com/uk/monitors/lg-24MD4KL), it’s a great one cable solution, charges, has fantastic sound and the volume/brightness buttons on your mac work with it. It’s over your budget but comes up on eBay for reasonable amounts.. You could probably make an offer on this for instance…

Yeah after I posted, I did some Googling and that one came up. Will keep an eye out.
Thanks

Mini keyboard - thanks for the input, have ordered a MX mini and a basic Logitech mouse.

Any one got any spare 4gb or 8gb ddr3 chips for an old macbook pro 9.2 thanks

I may have, on holiday currently but will check when I get back..

Selling an iPhone 14 if anyone's in the market - https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/388887/

I’ve made myself a desktop environment by plugging my 2020 M1 MBA into a monitor and adding a keyboard and mouse. However, I’m getting the spinning wheel quite a lot when working on PowerPoint presentations which is annoying.

My MBA has 16gb of RAM but is otherwise stock IIRC. Would moving to the entry level Mac Mini banish the spinning wheel?

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I’m going to assume the answer is “it’ll be loads better” and will go and get one as the spinning wheel is super boring to stare at.

It’s now stopped spinning which I worry is presaging a total crash.

I’ve spent the last three weeks working solely in PowerPoint with a MacBook Air plugged into a studio display (so 5k) and beyond the inherent inefficiencies of PowerPoint have experienced no issue. Which helps you in no way at all.

How can an M1 from 2020 not run powerpoint well?

My 2018 Intel MBP is usually running Figma, Powerpoint, Safari with 16 gazillion tabs open, VS code with some ridiculously hungry web app running in dev mode, Zoom, Slack etc. It gets a little laggy sometimes but mostly it's unphased.

I'd suggest something is very wrong with Dammit's.