Favorite (Mac OS X) software

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Muirium
µ

18 Jun 2014, 19:49

Yup, OS X isn't exactly chock full of features for, um, "physical context switching". Why are you using a MacBook as a desktop, anyway? Shuttling between two different locations, and a spot of light mobile use? Or just the lack of a nice headless desktop from Apple besides the ever overlooked Mac mini?

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Grond

18 Jun 2014, 19:56

Lack of money, mainly. :D

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Muirium
µ

18 Jun 2014, 20:24

That's what's got me pining for a (yet to be released) retina cinema display. My MacBook Pro is powerful enough to be my desktop, too, so why not? My current one looks like this after all!

Image

Note I said "pining".

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Hypersphere

18 Jun 2014, 20:31

Muirium wrote:Yup, OS X isn't exactly chock full of features for, um, "physical context switching". Why are you using a MacBook as a desktop, anyway? Shuttling between two different locations, and a spot of light mobile use? Or just the lack of a nice headless desktop from Apple besides the ever overlooked Mac mini?
It would be nice if Apple would introduce another desktop with capabilities between those of the present mini and the Mac Pro. Now that the Pro has been miniturized, perhaps they could simply introduce a scaled-back Pro. I was using a 2010 mini as my main desktop in my home office, but I was fortunate enough to get a grant to buy a new Pro, which has become my new main desktop machine. I have another 2010 mini that serves as my Windows machine. I would not consider an iMac, because I prefer to have separate monitors. As for Macbooks, I use an Air when I need to be mobile, but most of the time I prefer to do computing at a desk with a real keyboard, mouse, and monitors.

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Muirium
µ

18 Jun 2014, 20:42

Ah, the "xMac", Apple's missing midrange desktop. A long old saga:

http://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/

Suffice to say, I wouldn't hold my breath to see them ever make one now. Everyone was delighted to see the replacement for the Mac Pro wasn't just the middle finger! Desktops are an ever shrinking share of Apple's ever proportionately smaller sideline of Macs. Sure, they delight in surprising us all every once in a while, but the state of the Mac mini speaks volumes more. They're a fine enough compact computer, so long as you buy it in the first year of the model. Not the third!

As for laptops, I like them large and small. My first Mac was the 12" PowerBook when it first came out, in 2003. The littlest of the Airs would work well for me just the same way. But I do a different kind of computing on a larger display. And anything less than 15" is too small to pop a TKL on top of…

(Not that I do that much. But I'm surely looking forward to a retina desktop, the bigger the better.)

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Grond

18 Jun 2014, 21:56

Here's my desk - except I finally put a bookend on that shelf. :D

Image

Actually using the Macbook as my desk computer is fine most all the time, it even has a remote. I could use its screen as a second monitor - Mavericks finally has a good support for that - but actually I find distracting to have more than one monitor. My only issues are:
- I can't really hide the wires, as they are on the side of the macbook;
- Only two USB ports, I have to use a hub;
- Attaching and removing the cables every time I move the macbook is a minor hassle;
- I need to open the lid when I use the webcam, which happens rarely actually. Or I'd need to buy an external one, i.e. one more cable in sight.

I could sure use a fancier monitor, though I expect Retina displays to be quite expensive when they come out at last.

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Muirium
µ

18 Jun 2014, 22:04

Yeah, they will. All the better to get saving. I put off getting a new monitor when the first retina Macs came out. A non retina display will be about as useful as a Power Mac G5 Quad, soon enough. Yosemite looks sharp on retina, but will surely be as crummy as iOS 7 on an iPad 2, run on a quarter res display.

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scottc

18 Jun 2014, 22:06

Muirium wrote:Ah, the "xMac", Apple's missing midrange desktop. A long old saga:

http://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/

Suffice to say, I wouldn't hold my breath to see them ever make one now. Everyone was delighted to see the replacement for the Mac Pro wasn't just the middle finger! Desktops are an ever shrinking share of Apple's ever proportionately smaller sideline of Macs. Sure, they delight in surprising us all every once in a while, but the state of the Mac mini speaks volumes more. They're a fine enough compact computer, so long as you buy it in the first year of the model. Not the third!

As for laptops, I like them large and small. My first Mac was the 12" PowerBook when it first came out, in 2003. The littlest of the Airs would work well for me just the same way. But I do a different kind of computing on a larger display. And anything less than 15" is too small to pop a TKL on top of…

(Not that I do that much. But I'm surely looking forward to a retina desktop, the bigger the better.)
Mid-range Apple desktops, you say?
http://kakewalk.se/


(a "little" outdated, but there are other options for this sort of thing too)

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Muirium
µ

18 Jun 2014, 22:11

Christ, the hours I wasted trying to make a hand-me-down i7 into a Hackintosh! It was nice spec, too, with 16 gigs of ram, as it had been a server until its owners were acquired. I gave it away to a gamer friend, once I finally cursed it from my home! If I'd run a paper round instead, I might have made enough to buy a Mac instead.

Wait, we still have newspapers, right?

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Hypersphere

18 Jun 2014, 22:26

Muirium wrote:Christ, the hours I wasted trying to make a hand-me-down i7 into a Hackintosh! It was nice spec, too, with 16 gigs of ram, as it had been a server until its owners were acquired. I gave it away to a gamer friend, once I finally cursed it from my home! If I'd run a paper round instead, I might have made enough to buy a Mac instead.

Wait, we still have newspapers, right?
Nope, no newspapers left in my neighborhood. You'll have to peddle online news. :(

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scottc

18 Jun 2014, 22:30

Muirium wrote:Christ, the hours I wasted trying to make a hand-me-down i7 into a Hackintosh! It was nice spec, too, with 16 gigs of ram, as it had been a server until its owners were acquired. I gave it away to a gamer friend, once I finally cursed it from my home! If I'd run a paper round instead, I might have made enough to buy a Mac instead.

Wait, we still have newspapers, right?
You have to buy the right motherboard!

(I've never found the right motherboard...)

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Muirium
µ

19 Jun 2014, 00:09

There was a driver pack for mine (Assus P8P-60 or some dumb sequence of characters I've since forgotten) but the whole Hackintosh experience is like herding cats. The slightest thing, and you're unbootable. And I never did figure out the art of cloning a Hackintosh drive so that the bloody thing would boot from a backup. Disk Utility and Carbon Copy Cloner wouldn't do it.

Plus: don't use a Radeon. 7800 in my case. Never effing worked once. Gah! Anyone interested in it? Gathering dust since my gamer friend already had some outrageous top of the line monstrosity good to go. He sinks all his upgrade budget into graphics, so the rest of the system was a solid boost for him.

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scottc

19 Jun 2014, 00:44

I think it's become a bit less hairy recently, but I never got it working too well. To be honest, I'm more comfortable using Linux... when using OS X I tend to stick with SSH and Firefox, and that's basically it.

A Radeon 7800, you say? Interesting. Do you mean 7850 or 7870? If so, I think it's faster than my yellowing nVidia graphics card... (That said, I got it second-hand two years ago for €85 and it plays anything I want on okay settings). I may be interested then!

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Muirium
µ

19 Jun 2014, 02:53

Sapphire 7850. Two big fans that make it thankfully quiet. I put it through its paces with a few games, in Windows, where that machine was always happiest. But I wasn't!

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scottc

19 Jun 2014, 10:51

Muirium wrote:There was a driver pack for mine (Assus P8P-60 or some dumb sequence of characters I've since forgotten) but the whole Hackintosh experience is like herding cats. The slightest thing, and you're unbootable. And I never did figure out the art of cloning a Hackintosh drive so that the bloody thing would boot from a backup. Disk Utility and Carbon Copy Cloner wouldn't do it.

Plus: don't use a Radeon. 7800 in my case. Never effing worked once. Gah! Anyone interested in it? Gathering dust since my gamer friend already had some outrageous top of the line monstrosity good to go. He sinks all his upgrade budget into graphics, so the rest of the system was a solid boost for him.
Do you still want to get rid of that graphics card? I've been thinking of making a little media player/pseudo-games console to connect to my family's TV and this card might fit!

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Muirium
µ

19 Jun 2014, 10:54

I'll entertain offers, although this thread is off the rails enough! Drop me a line.

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