Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

My Apple Pro M7803 keyboard has bit the dust. Looking for a replacement and want to avoid Apple's extortionate prices but also don't want ebay shite.

I seen this and the price is right plus its new rather than being used, possibly unreliable and probably filled with some wierdo basement dweller's keyboard crumbs but I'm not convinced it's genuine, what do you all reckon?

The key caps off my M7803 are fine so I could just pop the blanks off and replace them with mine.

Actually, Ill just buy it and if it seems dodgy I'll claim money back through Paypal.

Just get one of the new ones... its not the 90's anymore.... those things are hideous...

My Imac came with an aluminium one but I didn't really like it and a few keys shit the bed pretty quick too so I got the M7803 to replace it and liked it much better.

That blank one is 1/4 the price of a new aluminium one too.

Fair does if you dont like the aluminium ones... I love them, using one of those old ones feels like stepping back in time to a crap place to me...

Takes about 4 times as much effort to press a damn key though.

The aluminium ones just seem a bit soft to me. Using a cheap copy of the aluminium one that my gf had to type this and it's awful, can hardly tell if Ive hit the key or not.

went to the Apple Store today with my MBPr, and there was (is) indeed a critical failure with the SSD, we seem to have fixed it through doing software reinstall / firmware updates etc, but shall keep a close eye on it.

I also brought along my MBP 15inch 2011 model as the fans come on and stay on pretty constantly among other lilttle issues, they told me that this is becoming clear that the graphic cards on some on the 15 inch MBPs from that generation could be faulty... initial test suggested that mine is fine, but they are happy take it in anytime and test it overnight etc.

Also they said the whole company in EU has not adapted the 6 years consumer rights law without one having to ask / fight for it, this basically means we now have 6 years "warranty"... to a point!! WooHoo!!!

The aluminium ones just seem a bit soft to me. Using a cheap copy of the aluminium one that my gf had to type this and it's awful, can hardly tell if Ive hit the key or not.

I like them but you have to keep your nails short or you end up typing on the aluminium instead of the keys!

yosemite beta is out on pre-seed

Get a replacement glass front and rear from ebay, probably £10-15.

Front glass and display are glued together.
You can get a cheapish setup on eBay, but apparently the non-original displays are pretty shit.

Doesn't vsco do image hosting as well these days?

They only host images on their "Grid".
You can upload to this only via iPhone and (I think) iPad, via their app.
From there, you can share uploaded images to social media blah, or have to get the image URL from the source code of the site.
So not really "image hosting".
: /

Is there a 'preferred' SSD that will work with Apple (2008 macbook unibody) or just any? If i remember correctly Apple (used to?) give Crucial when bought SSD with them. Any experiences?

I put a Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD in my 2008 MacBook (not unibody). Was good value and got the best reviews when I was looking towards the end of last year. Really made a big difference too.

We found out the other day at work the other day there seems to be a known issue with Samsung evo ssds paired with Macs. Will check work email again for more details...

email from tech at work

Not sure if you are aware SATA ports negotiate link speeds between a macbook and a hard drive.. For Samsung ssd’s it should link at 6Gb’s but have noticed on at least one new macbook pro the negotiated speed is 1.5gb ¾ less than is should be, this will most likely cause a bottleneck and users will get the pinwheel a lot of the time (depending on how much data the user is processing ofcourse)..

Ive done a bit of digging on the net and found other users with the same issue, the only solution to this is to send the drives back to be swapped as faulty..

Pulled off the web:
I got free replacement unit of the same EVO model from vender. I made it a single partition (as someone suggested me, I think in this thread, that some SSD are known to have performance issue if multiple partition is made) and installed OSX Lion first (preferred to begin from scratch), and then upgraded to OSX Mountain Lion. I did not run any benchmark test (as I read somewhere that the benchmark test hurts SSD) until activating TRIM support). The computer was lightly used for a week. It worked fine. I did not detect any slowness issue like I did before. Then I upgraded to OSX Maverick. The computer is fast enough as expected. I then loaded some heavy program runs. It performed as expected. The xbench run gave a  score of 415, pretty much improved than before. The novabench run gave a score of 830, which is much higher than average score 696 for this model. Boot up time is around 24 sec.

Final note: The EVO SSD may have some sweetspots to work properly with Macbooks. The earlier EVO was paifully slow in my mac, but the same EVO was perfectly fine my windows pc. So, I kept thinking that the EVO is not defective and sent back to vender for replacement as a last resort in my troubleshooting effort. But now, after witnessing that another EVO has worked fine in the same machine, I am convinced that the earlier EVO was indeed a defective unit at least for the Macbook.

There is a possible fix, upgrade the firmware on the ssds but I would speak to the vendor before we try as they may want the drives returned as they are..

Anyone know if you still get free 3 years hardware warranty on macs bought through the HE store online/over the phone?

Yeah, still applies. I've got an email dated April 2014 to prove it, online purchase.

sweet, new mbpr coming my way soon...

I dont think you get it for free, do you? I had to pay £48 for it...

2009 20" iMac with maximum 4GB RAM CPU maxing out when running Logic 9. Worth upgrading to SSD (and losing optical drive)?

Or should I just save my pennies and save up for something newer?

NB I will not be performing the operation myself so need to factor in cost of getting it done.

Chrrrrs.

I dont think you get it for free, do you? I had to pay £48 for it...

£48 for the full applecare with phone support

free 3 year hardware warranty, although they kidna keep it on the DL to get people to pay hence why asking as its not on their site officially

who needs software support anyway?? Shit, the most expensive £48 I have spent... and the phone support is useless anyway...

2009 20" iMac with maximum 4GB RAM CPU maxing out when running Logic 9. Worth upgrading to SSD (and losing optical drive)?

Or should I just save my pennies and save up for something newer?

NB I will not be performing the operation myself so need to factor in cost of getting it done.

Chrrrrs.

Time to retire it.. half a decade old!
You can pick up non nicked iMacs for decent prices on Gumtree...

2009 20" iMac with maximum 4GB RAM CPU maxing out when running Logic 9. Worth upgrading to SSD (and losing optical drive)?

Or should I just save my pennies and save up for something newer?

NB I will not be performing the operation myself so need to factor in cost of getting it done.

Chrrrrs.

If it's the CPU maxing out then the SSD won't help Logic that much. HD meter maxing out? Maybe, yeah, if you can afford it and it's economical when compared to a newer machine.

Can't wait to replace the 2006 Mac Pros in our studio. Damn school budgets.

Chrrrrrrrrs ppl.

It's def CPU not HD maxing out so yeah I figured it wuld be marginal gains. I know which pluggins to avoid stacking up in order to prevent the stuttering but it is starting to become a limiting factor.

Anyone here got a suitable replacement for sells before I hit ebay etc?

Would be happy with iMac or MBP or even Air. Not worried about storage as I keep everything on external HDs anyway. Just need a fast enough processor and enough RAM to run multiple instances of software plugins in Logic Pro. Thunderbolt would be a huge plus too as it means I could use an external soundcard to run UA pluggins.