The OSX/Apple support thread

[NicD]

re the 5K
You guys have ordered the upgraded CPU and GPU. I probably will also, but have you anything concrete (apart from future proofing) to say its a really good way to spend the money?
I will def go with the trackpad as I love this on my MBP17

[All that jazz]

NicD said:

re the 5K
You guys have ordered the upgraded CPU and GPU. I probably will also, but have you anything concrete (apart from future proofing) to say its a really good way to spend the money?
I will def go with the trackpad as I love this on my MBP17

Well nothing "Apple" is a really good way to spend is it? 1/3 of what you pay is usually just the Apple tax. I'm a stickler for image quality, especially fonts as I do a lot of desktop work and Windows 7/8 font rendering and scaling is light years behind OSX. Even on the non-retina screens the font quality is visibly much better than Windows.

The reason I specced the top CPU and GPU is to have an equivalent spec to my Windows PC. That was new 6 months ago and cost £1k for an i7-4770k, GTX 760, 128SSD + 1TB, 16GB RAM. Then there was another £200 for a 24" 1920x1080 screen on top of that.

The i7-4790k in the iMac is slightly better than the i7-4770k but costs the same, the R9 M295X is roughly equivalent in performance to the GTX 760 (GTX marginally better) and the Fusion drive is basically a 128GB SSD and 1TB hard drive all in one, so that's the same. Spending £55 would bring the iMac's 8GB of memory up to 16GB. So spec vs spec there's not much difference price wise (I'm working on the non-retailed R9 M295X probably being a bit more expensive than the GTX 760 as it's 4GB) and the Apple spec coming to about £1050-1100, sans screen.

But then you've got the screen which is where all the money is. Cheapest 5K 27" screen is the Dell UP2715K which will rush you £1300. Stick that £1300 on the Apple for the 5K retina screen and you're at £2400, which coincidentally is how much the complete package costs.

I'm generally not a subscriber to paying "brand" tax for perceived superior quality just because, but in the case of the riMac 5K the figures don't stack up too badly from what I can see but I think much of that is because retail 5K screens are still very new tech hence the high prices.

[All that jazz]

ETA: I guess it comes down to whether you need the screen quality. If you never have any issues using Windows on a normal 24" 1920x1080 screen and don't really do any heavy Photoshop type stuff then the 5K screen is a complete waste as a lower resolution would adequately suffice and reduce the price tag by at least a grand on a Windows machine.

[NicD]

Don't consider it a 'tax', as I normally pay for premium versions. But the base 5k at £2k is already expensive and worked fine when I played at an Apple shop.
as i said, probably will spec the upgrades but would be nice to know I would see the difference.

[All that jazz]

NicD said:

Don't consider it a 'tax', as I normally pay for premium versions. But the base 5k at £2k is already expensive and worked fine when I played at an Apple shop.
as i said, probably will spec the upgrades but would be nice to know I would see the difference.

What do you use it for? What's the heaviest stress it will get? If the answer to that is the usual "bit of web browsing, watching films, facebook, word processing, mine-sweeper" then the basic spec will be more than sufficient for your needs.

[qube_TA]

All that jazz said:

What do you use it for? What's the heaviest stress it will get? If the answer to that is the usual "bit of web browsing, watching films, facebook, word processing, mine-sweeper" then the basic spec will be more than sufficient for your needs.

That's the same argument for buying a car with 100 horses instead of one with 400.

[All that jazz]

Am I missing something, but where do you put CD-ROMs/DVDs etc? Can't see a slot for them on the iMac.

[LordGrover]

You pop them into the additional optional plug in super-drive, if you have one.

[IanA2]

Better still , get the BluRay Drive I posted earlier.

[All that jazz]

Turns out I've got one already that I'd forgotten about. Should plug into one of the USB sockets and work okay.

Oh and my iMac has been dispatched for delivery.

Edited by All that jazz on Tuesday 3rd February 20:50

[IanA2]

All that jazz said:

Turns out I've got one already that I'd forgotten about. Should plug into one of the USB sockets and work okay.

Oh and my iMac has been dispatched for delivery.

Edited by All that jazz on Tuesday 3rd February 20:50

New toy arrived..?

[All that jazz]

IanA2 said:

All that jazz said:

Turns out I've got one already that I'd forgotten about. Should plug into one of the USB sockets and work okay.

Oh and my iMac has been dispatched for delivery.

Edited by All that jazz on Tuesday 3rd February 20:50

New toy arrived..?

Yes and no . I was out all today getting a bodykit fitted and delivery was attempted when I was out. Delivery could not be rescheduled without contacting Apple so will have to go pick it up from the depot tomorrow. The ironic part of it is that the UPS depot is NEXT DOOR to the place I was having the work done on my car! Flamin' typical.

[All that jazz]

It's now arrived! I will be firing it up in the morning. Does anyone know if there's a way to obtain Office for Mac cheaper than £109.99 please? PMs welcome.

[blueST]

All that jazz said:

It's now arrived! I will be firing it up in the morning. Does anyone know if there's a way to obtain Office for Mac cheaper than £109.99 please? PMs welcome.

If you work for a company that uses Office you might be able to get it cheaper through the Home User Program. I got Office for Mac for £10 I think about 18 months ago.

[NDA]

Anyone else having problems running a second screen off a Macbook? Keep having 'interference' and flickering off and on. Searching the web shows this to be a fairly common issue....

[jmorgan]

blueST said:

All that jazz said:

It's now arrived! I will be firing it up in the morning. Does anyone know if there's a way to obtain Office for Mac cheaper than £109.99 please? PMs welcome.

If you work for a company that uses Office you might be able to get it cheaper through the Home User Program. I got Office for Mac for £10 I think about 18 months ago.

Same here. It really is sweet on the mac. Pages etc is OK for home use, nor sure about spreading it around office users and the other way around. Just tried a bog standard Excel sheet in Numbers and it opens OK. Cannot vouch for the rest but here is a something that may be of use.

https://www.apple.com/uk/mac/pages/compatibility/

Open Office as well, not used that myself.

[marshalla]

jmorgan said:

Same here. It really is sweet on the mac. Pages etc is OK for home use, nor sure about spreading it around office users and the other way around. Just tried a bog standard Excel sheet in Numbers and it opens OK. Cannot vouch for the rest but here is a something that may be of use.

https://www.apple.com/uk/mac/pages/compatibility/

Open Office as well, not used that myself.

LibreOffice is better (same core as OpenOffice, but better development) and 99.9% compatible with MS-Office.

[IanA2]

All that jazz said:

It's now arrived! I will be firing it up in the morning. Does anyone know if there's a way to obtain Office for Mac cheaper than £109.99 please? PMs welcome.

Happy days. Try Pages, good and cheap and available for all Mac's on your system.

[neenaw]

Does anyone have any issues with Safari freezing up and taking an age to start responding after their Macbook has been in sleep mode?

Whenever mine's been in the annoying sleep mode overnight it takes a while to wake up and start working again. Whenever I open up Safari it freezes and I get the spinning beach ball thing and it'll take 2-3 minutes minimum before I can open any web pages. Often it'll freeze completely and I have to open Activity Monitor to force quit Safari then try opening it again.

Anyone have this problem or know how to fix it?

[IanA2]

jmorgan said:

Same here. It really is sweet on the mac. Pages etc is OK for home use, nor sure about spreading it around office users and the other way around. Just tried a bog standard Excel sheet in Numbers and it opens OK. Cannot vouch for the rest but here is a something that may be of use.

https://www.apple.com/uk/mac/pages/compatibility/

Open Office as well, not used that myself.

As a matter of interest what are your reservations about Pages. Since MS stopped support Office 2008 I use both Word and Pages. More and more I use Pages. Cracking for the price, (less than £15 iirc), I think.