I HATE APPLE

I basically only use my laptop screen when I’m travelling. And when I’m travelling it’s more important that it’s small and light than I have a lot of screen. When I’m not travelling I don’t care how big the screen is because I’m using a monitor. So I’ve always had 13” machines for as long as they’ve made them. I’m intrigued by the 15” MBA but apparently it’s not selling very well which is surprising to me.

Yeah

I basically only use my laptop screen when I’m travelling. And when I’m travelling it’s more important that it’s small and light than I have a lot of screen. When I’m not travelling I don’t care how big the screen is because I’m using a monitor. So I’ve always had 13” machines for as long as they’ve made them. I’m intrigued by the 15” MBA but apparently it’s not selling very well which is surprising to me.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, February 21, 2024 3:54 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^same

The 16" came from work (what a fight it was to requisition instead of a flaky Dell turd) but for flights I cracked and bought a used iPad Pro 11 and "magic" keyboard case. A pretty workable setup - but I would guess, possibly heavier than a MBA 13!

I bought a 4th gen iPad Air + Logitech Folio Touch off eBay last summer (post-GCSEs gift for the kid) and that's pretty much exactly the same weight as an MBA 13.

With the 15->13 switch, it's not really been photo or video editing (or even watching films) where I've felt any lack, but the default (fractional) window/text scaling seems a bit fatiguing. And if I step up to the integer scaling, I do feel like I've been directed towards the Large Print aisle in the bookstore (even though that's probably what the old 15 looks like). It's fine really.
(Using a cheap 24" 1920x1080 narrow-colour-gamut monitor for work, in a back bedroom with poor ambient lighting, for four years has likely been the source of more eye strain than shrinking the MacBook display).

Yah, after some time paging through what gets posted to /r/macsetups/ I realized that my office lighting is straight-up terrible. The ghost of Steve Jobs is sneering contemptuously at me for the aesthetically adverse conditions

I’ve had the 13/14 and 16 over the last 5 years and my wife has the 15… my personal preference is that I found the 16 a little too large for day-to-day but sometime the extra size was handy. The issue wuth both the 15 and 13 is that the screen is not as good as the Mini-LED, and the power is a bit less than I needed for work, but would be fine for light stuff - but they are nice and portable.

So, that leaves the 14 which I am very happy with.

For another £170ish I could've got a refurb late-2021 M1Pro MBP 14" (16/512), which doesn't seem like much for an obviously better machine with lots of extra ports but going fan-less was a key requirement. Though from what I've heard, the fans barely kick in on the M-series Pros even under substantial load.

Fans are my bête noire.

Oof, seems Apple are now doing 25% off some of the refurb 2021 M1 Pro machines (nothing currently in stock in UK, mind), which pretty much wipes out that price difference above (8/10/16/512 M1P MBP14 vs 8/8/16/512 M2 MBA13). Oh well: fans and an extra 400g, right?

I’ve only ever had the fans kick off on my

(oops)

…14 inch when something stupid like a few node processes will running lots of dev tasks have got stuck in an inifinite loop or something, otherwise the fans never spin up.

Kick Out the Fans

lol

Now I am having a weird thing about the Apple ID server wanting me to enter password in order to connect to iCloud except it doesn't work.

An unknown error occurred.

Systems settings is actually hanging.

maybe some wifi issue

Other things seem to be using my Apple ID fine.

Definitely a wifi thing, reset and now it's fine.

D'oh!

Don't think I have ever heard the fans on my 16 M1 Pro - maybe doing something emulated once?
For desk comfort I strongly recommend a cheaper Dell 27" 4K display - the clarity and desktop room are fantastic. The 4K is essential I think, it all looks razor sharp. I run mine in portrait orientation because I'm the kind of psycho who used a monochrome Portrait Display with a Mac IIsi back in the early 90s.

The battery life for the M series depends sooooo much on screen brightness. And I choose to blame Apple for that.

Re Dell, if you can afford it spend a little extra and get the Ultrasharp model. That’s their higher quality line.

Absolutely, but I am reading this on their "standard" IPS 4K model, having used Ultrasharps for many years, and with just a few tweaks I have no issues with image quality at all.

there is this bjango link that gets passed around a lot: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/

according to that a 27" 4k is in the 'bad zone'

i used to use a 32" 4k display with my mac, it was bad. the studio display is much better.

samsung currently sells a 5k 27" display at an "all time low" of $850: https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/monitors/5k/27-viewfinity-s9-5k-monitor-with-thunderbolt-4-matte-display-and-smart-features-ls27c900panxza/

there is also the dell 6k XDR competitor, i haven't heard much about it since it first came out.

still hoping one day they'll bring back an updated 27" iMac but maybe they weren't profitable anymore judging how much all these 5K monitors cost

I have a 27” 4K. It’s fine. I’m old btw.

i know I always boast that I shelled out for an Eizo. It's 4k but the benefits outweigh any negatives, especially having hardware calibration and the ability to switch calibrations on the fly. If you're a photographer, printer or print designer, you can't get any better. BenQ has similar models that a bit cheaper but not quite as good.

I'm seldom going to run everything in native/unscaled resolution so it's kind of a crapshoot about whether I'm getting the nicest display quality. I mostly do stuff that involves text editing and a web browser so I'm also at the whims of whatever rendering tricks they're doing.

Just switched my work MBP 16" to it's native resolution (1728x1117 w/pixel doubling) and that's just not a bunch of real estate, so I either swap the Display scaling or crank the font size up and down in every app individually. idk.

My 140 song master iTunes playlist of dope music was reduced to 4 songs today. Wff?

Rights holder crackdown?

all local files

itunes is a dying star

according to that a 27" 4k is in the 'bad zone'

which one is that? resolution-wise, I mean

it's weird, they used to hide the actual resolution behind holding down a key while selecting the scaling and now you can just click "Advanced" and boom, you get a list of about a dozen different resolution options

looks like in the simplified view, 3360x1890 is the second from the right for me (4k, 27")

the crazy thing is that in the extended list, 1920x1080 is default. which is their preferred pixel doubling res, but it's just ridiculous

So I just bought a third-party-refurbished iPhone 12 mini in "excellent" condition from this outfit, whose stated definition of "excellent condition" is 85% or higher battery health. But the iPhone that was delivered shows "Unknown Part" under Battery Health and refuses to show its condition - it could be 70% or 50% as far as I know. (Display is shown as "unknown part" as well). As a result the phone constantly flags "Important Battery Messsage" as an error under the Settings menu and the Settings app on the home screen always is badged with "2" for the battery and screen situation.

Looking online I see Apple adopted these warnings a few years back on their newer phones, flagging anything installed by a non-Apple-authorized repair person - only official Apple people have the right codes to punch in. Even if you pull a genuine Apple battery from another phone, you'll get this message if you install it yourself. Apparently the badges and warnings go away by themselves after 15 days, but my phone still won't ever tell me how healthy the battery is.

My question: is this so normal now that I shouldn't complain about it to the eBay vendor? Also, is there a workaround? Some commenters said a factory reset will restore the battery health meter. I would have thought the vendor had already done that, but i'm not sure - in one screen where it showed all the names I gave previous iPhones I owned years ago, it also showed phones the previous owner used that had unfamiliar names to me.

Sorry to say but you’re going to have a hard time with the battery life overall, the 12 mini was shit in that regard even factory fresh a few years ago

Then again maybe you’re coming from an phone 5, in which case it will be an improvement

Dunno whether it's "normal" or worth complaining about. The most reliable workaround is probably get the battery replaced in an Apple Store, which is $89. I'm not 100% sure they'll do it if it's been serviced with grey market parts though.

minis do have relatively poor battery life, but I have a 13 mini (i.e. a 2 year old battery) and I get through the day fine fwiw.

I'm coming from an archaic iPhone 8 which also had a "service"-condition battery, so even the mini's battery will be better than what i'm used to, to say nothing of the rest of the phone. The 12 mini recharges quickly if you use a wired 18W+ charger or a magsafe stick-on, one of which I usually have access to during the day if the battery's getting low. I like the small phones for their light weight; the 13 mini was somewhat more expensive and didn't have any crucial improvements.

Send it back - undisclosed major factor in the condition. Don’t adapt yourself to deal with it, to the seller’s benefit.
You will find most sellers snap to attention when you open a return request. Take a couple pictures of the “unknown screen” and “important battery notice” and attach to the request. They won’t have a case and you will.

in one screen where it showed all the names I gave previous iPhones I owned years ago, it also showed phones the previous owner used that had unfamiliar names to me

What screen/setting is that?I don't think I've ever seen that. The closest I can think of is the "device info" list in iCloud - but that shouldn't include the previous owner's devices?

Yeah you should not be seeing his old devices . You should sign out of iCloud and sign into your own account asap.

Better home find my is not active. You can’t sign out of iCloud without a password if so.

apple should release a new ipod

release an ipod cowards

and an iphone 15 mini while they’re at it

I’m afraid I can’t do that, |||||||

What screen/setting is that?I don't think I've ever seen that. The closest I can think of is the "device info" list in iCloud - but that shouldn't include the previous owner's devices?

― Dr Drudge (Bob Six), Saturday, March 16, 2024 6:05 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

May have been that (Settings-->your name-->(scroll down)), or something that looked similar. Had an unfamiliar name show up with three of their devices. I simply deleted them.

What little marked there was for an iPod touch was better served by a used iPhone that cost the same or less; it's no wonder they stopped selling. By the time the 13 mini is no longer supported, my ever-blurrying vision will require a bigger screen anyway.