ok lol so i quizzed alba's guy on installing an SSD, here's the essence of his response: this macbook air already has an SSD, installed in such a way as to slow the processors and reduce the RAM so as to keep the price low: since RAM and processor are soldered on, it can barely be upgraded (a faster model of SSD is possible but cost greatly outweighs benefit)
which is gloomy news tho he has been very helpful in other ways so this is a good development
― mark s, Monday, 18 May 2020 11:47 (three years ago) link
not to doubt the dude but some OG Macbook Airs did come with woefully slow hard drives. If it's that old you have more problems than the drive, though
― stet, Monday, 18 May 2020 12:10 (three years ago) link
i mean this is basically what he says, i could trade up the drive but it makes much more sense to pay a bit more and trade up the whole thing -- esp.as i could also sell what i have secondhand to offset it
― mark s, Monday, 18 May 2020 12:59 (three years ago) link
How about an ilxu didn’t realize it was an air. They’ve only ever had SSDs. No question, by a new computer.
― dan selzer, Monday, 18 May 2020 13:55 (three years ago) link
Yeah, I didn't realise it was a MacBook Air. How old is yours (Apple – About this Mac)? Annoyingly, I'd be happy to sell you one for not much money if I was still living in the UK.
― Alba, Monday, 18 May 2020 14:16 (three years ago) link
If international shipping wasn't a complete bother right now, I'd be doing the same :/
― mh, Monday, 18 May 2020 14:25 (three years ago) link
it's a mid-2013 11-inch, i did carefully give this info once upon a time but it's now buried way upthread in the 8000 posts that only unfurl if you want them to (and who wants them to?) so fair enough no one remembering lol
― mark s, Monday, 18 May 2020 14:42 (three years ago) link
My wife had the same and tbh it's worked just fine, though she just replaced it with a new macbook pro 13".
― dan selzer, Monday, 18 May 2020 15:08 (three years ago) link
well the original issue here was that backblaze seemed to be using much more memory than it maybe should be
(also that i needed to replace the battery, but this has been sorted and seems to be fine; then that chrome had misinstalled in an upgrade, also now sorted)
― mark s, Monday, 18 May 2020 15:18 (three years ago) link
the randomly shutting off issue portends bad things imo particularly since you have a new battery. did Alba’s guy mention anything about that?
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, 18 May 2020 15:26 (three years ago) link
it hasn't done that since catalina last upgraded and i reinstalled chrome -- if it starts again i'll talk to him again (tho basically "buy a new one" sorts that too)
― mark s, Monday, 18 May 2020 15:29 (three years ago) link
ah okay that’s good
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, 18 May 2020 15:43 (three years ago) link
thinking of finally upgrading to 10.15. do we know anything now we didn't know when it came out?
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Saturday, 23 May 2020 23:22 (three years ago) link
The latest thing is that piece doing the rounds about the sheer amount of phoning home it does — even exec calls trigger sync networking to check the certs of the executables. I'm still trying to put off updating
― stet, Saturday, 23 May 2020 23:26 (three years ago) link
mine's been stable
― j., Saturday, 23 May 2020 23:27 (three years ago) link
I can tell you that running the 10.15.4 combo updater fixed all of the problems I was having and I'm thankful that trick still works.
― Elvis Telecom, Saturday, 23 May 2020 23:27 (three years ago) link
does 10.15 bring anything worth having? I'm annoyed that they deem my mbp too old to use sidecar.
― Joey Corona (Euler), Sunday, 24 May 2020 11:58 (three years ago) link
well they still haven't fixed the stupid library listing bugs in itunes/music : /
but offhand i can't recall a new feature or important fix that i rely on
― j., Sunday, 24 May 2020 12:09 (three years ago) link
thanks, I think I'll just continue to hold out then.
― Joey Corona (Euler), Sunday, 24 May 2020 12:15 (three years ago) link
We replaced our AppleTV recently and the new remote is driving us all crazy. It's crazy touch sensitive, easy to pick up and handle upside down without realizing it, and the menus are all shit. Non-intuitive and confusing.
― Cow_Art, Sunday, 24 May 2020 13:19 (three years ago) link
Top tip: you can train it to listen to a standard IR remote in Settings. We just use our TV remote with it now. (Not least because we lost the stupid tiny one)
― stet, Sunday, 24 May 2020 13:43 (three years ago) link
you can control it from yr iphone also
― a denim head and an aficionado of Japanese craftsmanship (bizarro gazzara), Sunday, 24 May 2020 13:56 (three years ago) link
Oh man, thanks!!!
― Cow_Art, Sunday, 24 May 2020 16:54 (three years ago) link
I don't think that people appreciate how different the voice to text experience on a Pixel is from an iPhone. So here is a little head to head example. The Pixel is so responsive it feels like it is reading my mind! pic.twitter.com/zmxTKxL3LB— James Cham ✍🏻 (@jamescham) May 27, 2020
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 27 May 2020 15:43 (three years ago) link
yeah, i don't get why Apple threw in the towel on this so long ago
― Nhex, Wednesday, 27 May 2020 16:47 (three years ago) link
siri also depends on understanding speech and it also blows so maybe there’s a connection. apple is years behind in both.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 27 May 2020 17:04 (three years ago) link
I've been surprised at how good the voice-to-text is on my iPhone, but I only use it in the Notes app. Guess it's way better on Android devices!
― avellano medio inglés (f. hazel), Wednesday, 27 May 2020 17:09 (three years ago) link
poor michael geer
― form of mouth device (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 28 May 2020 00:20 (three years ago) link
more questions about backblaze!
why would an overnight backblaze backup -- the type where you click "backup now" as you leave the laptop and go to bed -- cause the macOS utilities window to be open (and frozen) when you return to the laptop some hours later? (as it's frozen i have to restart to return to normal)
this has happened three or four times in the last few weeks (two of them last night)
one data-point: *one* of the times last night i know that wifi had gone down during the back-up (bcz i unthinkingly untethered the laptop from my phone) (it was tethered bcz talktalk was dicking around all of yesterday) -- would this cause this to happen? no other apps were open or operative, everything else is currently working fine
― mark s, Wednesday, 3 June 2020 09:01 (three years ago) link
I've got a £450 worth of bricked ipad that is only 6 months old. I took it to a repair business and this bloke spent two weeks with it and said it wasn't responding and he didn't seem to know what was wrong with it and he said the manufacturers warranty is gone because there is a slight, barely discernible bend in the middle of the case. I suspect he's either a second rate repair-meister or he just couldn't be arsed with a difficult repair. Was going to try a 2nd repair business which would have meant getting into a taxi and I thought fuck this and ordered a £150 Huawei Mediapad T5 as a replacement. It only gets used for youtubing and that'll do fine rather pissing more money onto something already disappointingly short lived and way too expensive.
― calzino, Wednesday, 3 June 2020 09:15 (three years ago) link
is there anyway to show only apple/free to stream shows on apple TV+ apps? I don’t want to see rentals
― ||||||||, Wednesday, 3 June 2020 15:39 (three years ago) link
The Watch Now screen does not really distinguish between content that you own and can watch, and just Apple’s general recommendations. Hopefully, the TV app interface will be revamped soon with better features and easier navigation.
But for the time being, the easiest way to get started with Apple TV+ is to open the TV app, go to the Watch Now tab, and then scroll down until you find the circular Apple TV+ channel icon. You may have to scroll down a lot, and the position of this icon on the page changes periodically.
However, once you locate it, tap that and you will be taken to the Apple TV+ channel page. This shows you all of the Apple TV+ shows and movies available to watch, separated by category like comedy, drama or family fun.
― ||||||||, Wednesday, 3 June 2020 15:41 (three years ago) link
I hate this policy. It's akin to your grocery shop resulting in a cupboard where stuff you've bought is mixed in with a whole load of empty packets.
Amazon is quite bad for it but Apple is ten times worse.
― Alba, Wednesday, 3 June 2020 16:06 (three years ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/60EqpGe.jpg
― calstars, Friday, 5 June 2020 03:11 (three years ago) link
stoked for the madness
Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers. Every year nothing changes. pic.twitter.com/NoFcjwW1tC— 🆆il 🆂hipley (@wilshipley) June 11, 2020
I experience Apple solely as a sort of tyrannical landlord who *could* crush my business outright but will settle for making my job harder and the software I write more restricted and less useful. The WWDC to me is a yearly check-in of "how bad is it going to be, this time?" pic.twitter.com/9mCvlXFrGU— mcc 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈 (@mcclure111) June 12, 2020
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, 12 June 2020 04:09 (three years ago) link
Have a chance to get the 16” y/n
― calstars, Friday, 12 June 2020 04:30 (three years ago) link
I was forced to get one by work. Still getting used to it but basically it sucks ergonomically (Keyboard, trackpad, touchback, sharp corners, etc.) and you should get the new MacBook Air, which is also bad but costs less.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, 12 June 2020 04:50 (three years ago) link
I got one but now I'm wondering if it will be the last of the Intel Macs.
― DJI, Friday, 12 June 2020 05:48 (three years ago) link
lol backblaze again:
is there any good reason why backblaze shd take four days to not complete the back up of two files, size 379MB, one of them named "live.0.indexPostings"
is there anything i can do to gee it up or let it skip this file or whatever?
(ps i think i solved the 3 june backblaze issue: if backblaze is backing up but you are using lots of bandwidth e.g. to listen to a podcast, or the bandwidth collapses completely if yr wifi goes down -- which it's been doing quite a lot recently -- then the laptop flips you to the macOS utilities window, and if it's open here for a long time it freezes up)
― mark s, Friday, 12 June 2020 10:54 (three years ago) link
no chance you can use a wired connection?
― Joey Corona (Euler), Friday, 12 June 2020 10:56 (three years ago) link
Cancel backblaze and stick to local backup or get a new computer.
― dan selzer, Friday, 12 June 2020 10:57 (three years ago) link
^
― stet, Friday, 12 June 2020 12:16 (three years ago) link
ilx so sick of my bullshit lol
― mark s, Friday, 12 June 2020 12:17 (three years ago) link
There is nothing normal about what is going on with your computer. I have over a TERRABYTE of data backed up via backblaze and I never noticed it so much as slow down my computer 1 bit. You laptop flips you to the macOS utilities window? That's not supposed to happen. If that windows open for a long time and it freezes? That's not normal. Reinstall everything from scratch or get a new computer. And/or just don't use backblaze. Try it's online competitors or just use a hard-drive...or use dropbox or box. What are you backing up again?
― dan selzer, Friday, 12 June 2020 12:39 (three years ago) link
> using lots of bandwidth e.g. to listen to a podcast
1MB a minute for podcasts, typically, possibly less - they are speech and don't require a lot.
(unless you run the bbc and your weekly podcasts are accompanied with a live video stream just so that you can display live subtitles)
― koogs, Friday, 12 June 2020 13:52 (three years ago) link
only 2013 so you'd think it would still run OK (I have a 2011 MBP that just about still runs) - although it is an 11" so was presumably a little underpowered at launch. might be time for a new rig : /
― ||||||||, Friday, 12 June 2020 13:55 (three years ago) link
(putting an SSD in that 2011 MBP would give it another year or two definitely)
― ||||||||, Friday, 12 June 2020 13:56 (three years ago) link
dan if your truculence hadn’t put mark off your advice already you then rubbed salt in the wound by saying “it’s” as the possessive of “it” in a reply to a professional subeditor. gonna be a long way back from this one dawg
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 12 June 2020 13:57 (three years ago) link
― calstars, Friday, 12 June 2020 14:09 (three years ago) link
lmao Tracer <3
― Le Bateau Ivre, Friday, 12 June 2020 14:16 (three years ago) link