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technical => computers, technology and the internet => Topic started by: hongkongstuey on January 16, 2009, 04:57:54 am

Title: Mac Stuff
Post by: hongkongstuey on January 16, 2009, 04:57:54 am: Just got a rather nice bonus from works as a result of headhunting someone so gonna take the plunge and switch from my old knackered PC to a nice shiny new iMac

As a result I'm gonna need to resource a mountain of software (the usual Adobe Stuff and Dreamweaver being the main ones) so if anyone has hints on where to find cheap (i.e. free) stuff, please let me know.

Any other hints / advice for a Mac virgin will be much appreciated
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on January 16, 2009, 08:01:46 am: It ain't photoshop, but you can use The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) for photo editing (although you may well find it strange/lacking if your used to photoshop).
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: Falling Down on January 16, 2009, 08:17:00 am: I use open office on my mac for word processing, spreadsheets etc.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: Will Hunt on January 16, 2009, 10:51:48 am: Ive got iWork '08 but they just released iWork '09. Got the mac equivalent of Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

iWork '08 costs £50 for the full package. Just MS Word '07 costs something like £65.
:-\
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on January 16, 2009, 10:53:44 am: Quote from: Will Hunt on January 16, 2009, 10:51:48 am
Ive got iWork '08 but they just released iWork '09. Got the mac equivalent of Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

iWork '08 costs £50 for the full package. Just MS Word '07 costs something like £65.
:-\

And OpenOffice (http://go-oo.org) is free :lol:
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: Will Hunt on January 16, 2009, 11:02:03 am: Touche
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: vivahate on January 22, 2009, 11:29:42 am: Seems so hard to get Adobe stuff for free now due to needing telephonic confirmation of license codes. A good search of the web might find you somewhere but I haven't be able to get good mac stuff for a while. GIMP is good though
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on January 22, 2009, 11:36:14 am: Quote from: vivahate on January 22, 2009, 11:29:42 am
Seems so hard to get Adobe stuff for free now due to needing telephonic confirmation of license codes.

:lol: why should you get it for free, its proprietrary code and a product sold by a company? Do you walk into shops and grab whatever you fancy just because you don't want to pay for it?

Personally I made a conscious decision some time ago to stop stealing software and embraced (http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:4-MONjXkqBVxJM:http://icons.iconarchive.com/icons/umut-pulat/tulliana-2/tux-icon.jpg)
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:06:22 am: Thread Resurrection!!!!!!!!!!!

I just wanted some advice about Macs really. My super computer which I built for myself a long time ago for video editing is about to die. Basically the kids downloaded all sorts of games plus nasties, the main drive died and it's had to have an OS (XP) reinstall. I, being paranoid, have 3 x 750GB drives with two mirrored for data I need to keep so I didn't lose everything. This PC is now knackered, so we are looking at a replacement. My wife likes Macs, so I have had a little look. I'm currently a student (ha ha) so should be able to get a discount too.

If I were to go for an iMac (can't afford a Pro!!!) there are a couple of things I'd like to know:

Would the standard spec (3.4GHz quad core + 8GB RAM + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5) suffice for HD video editing?

Would you be happy with the single 1TB SATA hard drive, or (like me) would you think about some form of back up too?

Would my HV20 work properly via the DV - Thunderbolt interface?

Is Final Cut Pro X any good? I'm used to Premiere Pro.

Are Macs OK for running M$ Office on nowadays, as I'd still need to do work stuff.

I know about Flash etc, but I don't mind if the kids can't go on YouTube and games :devil-smiley:

Any other things I'd need to think about?
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on July 24, 2014, 11:19:08 am: I know nothing about Macs other than they are expensive for the hardware (but your guaranteed to get good components that complement each other) and that OSX is based on BSD.

However,

Quote from: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:06:22 am
Would you be happy with the single 1TB SATA hard drive, or (like me) would you think about some form of back up too?

No, always back up. If you can't expand the drives within the computer then consider a NAS/cloud storage/external USB.

Quote from: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:06:22 am
I know about Flash etc, but I don't mind if the kids can't go on YouTube and games :devil-smiley:

Most video sites are moving towards HTML5 these days (certainly YouTube is already, I think Vimeo is too).
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:23:20 am: Cheers. As I say, I've always mirrored drives for backup- is there any Mac option, or is it just external backing up?

The less YouTube the family watch, the better.......
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on July 24, 2014, 11:35:09 am: Guess it will depend on the number of spare bays internally.

Generally with RAID arrays you need to have identical drives (or its best to at least, if you have a 1Tb and a 1.5Tb then you effectively lose 0.5Tb on the later).

This might be useful once you've sorted that side of things out Step-by-step to setting up RAID on Mac OS X (http://macperformanceguide.com/Storage-HowToSetupRAID.html)
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: cheque on July 24, 2014, 11:44:51 am: Quote from: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:06:22 am
If I were to go for an iMac (can't afford a Pro!!!) there are a couple of things I'd like to know:

Would the standard spec (3.4GHz quad core + 8GB RAM + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5) suffice for HD video editing?

That's what I have but I maxed out the RAM (myself- God knows who pay the Apple RAM prices on the one model they make where you don't have to!) and it works brilliantly- never tried it with less so can't comment on how well it would work with 8GB.

Quote from: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:06:22 am
Would you be happy with the single 1TB SATA hard drive, or (like me) would you think about some form of back up too?

I have the 1GB SATA (Never tried the optional solid state drive, I'm told it's amazing but I couldn't afford it) but have an external drive and another external backup drive, both USB. The backup software "Time Machine"is built into the OS and works fine with virtually zero effort into setting it up.

Quote from: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:06:22 am
Is Final Cut Pro X any good? I'm used to Premiere Pro.

I like it. I've never used Premiere pro though.

Quote from: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:06:22 am
Are Macs OK for running M$ Office on nowadays, as I'd still need to do work stuff.

I use the Apple versions "Pages", "Keynote" and "Numbers" (each is a £14 download)- seems fine and is Office compatible but I don't use them much to be honest. I had Office on my old Mac and it was fine.

Quote from: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:06:22 am
I know about Flash etc, but I don't mind if the kids can't go on YouTube and games :devil-smiley:

Flash works on Macs, it's iPads and iPhones it doesn't work on.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: Paul B on July 24, 2014, 12:17:02 pm: Quote from: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:23:20 am
Cheers. As I say, I've always mirrored drives for backup- is there any Mac option, or is it just external backing up?

If you've got the drives then NAS devices are pretty darn cheap. I also think it's not bad to have them separate from the computer in question. Also if you like to get your geek on (and you did build your own PC ;D) then there are lots of useful* things you can do.

This gives you a little more defense against viruses (although Crypto could detect network shares), and theft (if you put it somewhere less obvious. Mine sits on a bookshelf, fairly obsucred by guidebooks, the 7+8 guides are almost the perfect size).

Although I think I'd still weigh up online backup options in the future (my most important stuff resides in various Gdrives, Dropbox accounts etc before anyone points out the failings of my system) .

I actually ran out of space on my NAS and at the time I wasn't prepared to fork out for 2 x 2Tb drives. Instead I bought a couple of cheap caddys (<2FAs ea.) and set up a software RAID using Syncback. It works a treat, but it is slow.

*useful is a term used loosely (as you might tell from the Slack--bot type blurb above
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: a dense loner on July 24, 2014, 03:50:27 pm: Office is about £120, at £14 each for the apple versions you'll spend £42 and then buy office anyway
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: GCW on July 24, 2014, 04:29:47 pm: I've already got Office :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: Bazza on July 24, 2014, 04:48:19 pm: Recently bought a macbook pro, switched from windows. Mac Office is full of bugs, beware before you buy... Also, a lot of programmes are not compatible with retina screens so if for example you got an older version of final cut, you'll likely have issues.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: Jaspersharpe on July 24, 2014, 11:38:42 pm: I'm genuinely amazed about some of the things people pay money for. Ok, not everyone understands software but paying for hardware made by Apple and then paying for their software?

Or paying a third party for software that Apple allows you to use on the device you paid them for when if you weren't using an Apple device the software would be free?

Anyone with an iPhone got Swype yet? It's only about five years old. Wanna buy a charger? I've got ten that work on every phone apart from yours. Amazing.

Backup wise it's much more sensible to use a cloud based system rather than relying on your own hardware. Also means you can access everything anywhere which is useful.

It's not even funny because it's so fucking stupid.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: a dense loner on July 25, 2014, 06:26:14 am: I resisted apple products for years. They're brilliant
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on July 25, 2014, 06:51:45 am: Waiting for an iPhone 5...for no reason (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMsLArefSOw#ws)

:lol:
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: tomtom on July 25, 2014, 08:04:35 am: To a large extent you get what you pay for in Laptop hardware...

The macbook pro retina (for example) rocks in at about a G, but has a retina display (which is now setting the trend for most other high end laptops), fairly large SSD, decent Haswell CPU's and (generally) very good hardware that lasts a long time and works well.. If you want a similar spec Windows machine it'll set you back a similar amount.

I love the hardware - but need to use Windows for most of my work - so have never seen the point of putting windows on it etc...

Otherwise - what Dense said...
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: GCW on July 25, 2014, 08:07:35 am: I was talking more about the desktop, tomtom, but the same applies.
Jasper, I know what you're saying but I work hard and I quite like nice looking things that function well :shrug: It's not like I'll upgrade over the next 5 years.
The discount seems to knock about £250 off anyway.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: tomtom on July 25, 2014, 08:14:08 am: Quote from: GCW on July 25, 2014, 08:07:35 am
I was talking more about the desktop, tomtom, but the same applies.
Jasper, I know what you're saying but I work hard and I quite like nice looking things that function well :shrug: It's not like I'll upgrade over the next 5 years.
The discount seems to knock about £250 off anyway.

Ah - OK. Keep an eye out on some of the iMacs - (the ones with all the shizzle in the screen) as they had a rep of running hot and burning out some components (HDD's notably)... I think it was restricted to a few models - but worth a forum check before purchase etc....
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: GCW on July 25, 2014, 08:19:08 am: Cheers, I'll check it out.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on July 25, 2014, 08:56:53 am: I really don't care if people want to splash cash on Apple products...if they can afford to, but the "cult" that surrounds it means you have people like the woman in the video who are in awe of the products with out knowing why they want them, probably can't afford them ("But what if its more than $200?" "Thats ok, I've got a credit card!") and almost certainly don't get any benefit from having them over anything else but end up tied into Apples services on top of that.

One could question whether that is exploitive business practise (http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,24503.0.html).

Also people laud Apple for being innovative, they're not, they're no different to any other hardware/software company and have shamelessly ripped off others ideas, sometimes just borrowing, sometimes improving on them, just like every other tech company. Jobs is on record saying so. Apple ripped off the Xerox PARC (https://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20111021/16380816459/steve-jobs-was-willing-to-rip-off-everyone-else-was-pissed-about-android-copying-iphone.shtml) yet when the tables were turned he wasn't so happy, famously saying he'd go "thermonuclear war" against Android. You can't have your cake and eat it Steve.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk#t=1037 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk#t=1037)

You could also make the case that Apple software isn't that great anyway, but that people are used to the crap of older M$-Windows incarnations, which leaves a lot to be desired, so when they go to Apple they think "Oh this is wonderful", but as with the original Macintosh building on Xerox PARC, again OSX is built on BSD....a Unix like operating system :blink: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X#History).

I guess more than one button can be confusing at times. :clown:
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: a dense loner on July 25, 2014, 09:06:35 am: That's just called good marketing slackers. No one needs anything. Nearly every single idea is built on something else.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on July 25, 2014, 09:16:08 am: Quote from: a dense loner on July 25, 2014, 09:06:35 am
Nearly every single idea is built on something else.

Yep, the old "Standing on the shoulders of giants". The "Everything is a Remix" video is all about that.

:off: I really think the world would be a better place without ~~aggressive~~ advertising. I won't repost the Bill Hicks excerpt from Revelations where he encourages people who work in marketing to kill themselves as I have done many times but instead this from "Banksy"

(http://www.thedrum.com/uploads/drum_basic_article/110260/main_images/bansky-bottle_0.jpg)
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: GCW on July 25, 2014, 09:23:32 am: Quote from: slackline on July 25, 2014, 09:16:08 am
I really think the world would be a better place without ~~aggressive~~ advertising.

How would that work though? Word of mouth? :offtopic:
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on July 25, 2014, 09:33:07 am: :offtopic:

Ok, perhaps I shouldn't have used the strike-through there. But do away with all the bullshit, "this will make you sexy" / "this is amazing and you can't live without it" / "Because you're worth it" / "30% whiter than the leading competitor" / "[insert advertising campaign phrase]".

Just present facts. If people make a good product it should be able to stand on its own two feet against the competition. Review articles that compare products would (hopefully) be objective in their comparisons and people could then spend a little time researching what they are going to buy and make an informed choice. This would have a positive effect as the "market" would become more competitive as a company making inferior products wouldn't last long as they couldn't bullshit/trick people into buying their inferior products and instead the standard/quality of everything would improve.

:offtopic:
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: a dense loner on July 25, 2014, 09:38:25 am: Banksy? Never heard of him? Oh the guy that uses a different form of advertising? Got him now.
I know what you mean re advertising but we live in the real world unfortunately, and without it I'd have no idea who Dave Mason was.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on July 25, 2014, 09:57:23 am: Ah, but thats "art" so its "ok".

I'm not naive enough to think that advertising would actually ever disappear, just another of my hippy, ~~free~~ wishful thinking ideas. ;)
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: fatdoc on July 25, 2014, 10:15:52 am: Quote from: GCW on July 24, 2014, 11:06:22 am
Thread Resurrection!!!!!!!!!!!

I just wanted some advice about Macs really. My super computer which I built for myself a long time ago for video editing is about to die. Basically the kids downloaded all sorts of games plus nasties, the main drive died and it's had to have an OS (XP) reinstall. I, being paranoid, have 3 x 750GB drives with two mirrored for data I need to keep so I didn't lose everything. This PC is now knackered, so we are looking at a replacement. My wife likes Macs, so I have had a little look. I'm currently a student (ha ha) so should be able to get a discount too.

If I were to go for an iMac (can't afford a Pro!!!) there are a couple of things I'd like to know:

Would the standard spec (3.4GHz quad core + 8GB RAM + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5) suffice for HD video editing?

Would you be happy with the single 1TB SATA hard drive, or (like me) would you think about some form of back up too?

Would my HV20 work properly via the DV - Thunderbolt interface?

Is Final Cut Pro X any good? I'm used to Premiere Pro.

Are Macs OK for running M$ Office on nowadays, as I'd still need to do work stuff.

I know about Flash etc, but I don't mind if the kids can't go on YouTube and games :devil-smiley:

Any other things I'd need to think about?

I too am looking at replacing my 1st gen iMac. I think that says a lot... It's been a fine machine.

I intend to buy the smaller screen, but with video card model. I'm considering ordering it from apple, and getting the 2 TB HDD option.

I will use it near exclusively for video editing. I intend to use iMovie... It's always worked for me. The machine will be more than capable for HD video.. And yes, it's way better value than a pro these days
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: GCW on July 25, 2014, 11:18:48 am: Thanks FatDoc, I'll keep researching but sounding like a done deal :read:
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: slackline on July 25, 2014, 11:51:57 am: For video editing would you not benefit from having SSD's? Would also be useful if you end up exceeding RAM and using swap (works nicely here).

You could, depending on space for drives, have a secondary (and/or tertiary if you wanted to set up RAID) drive to place things once they are done with editing.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: GCW on July 25, 2014, 12:16:05 pm: I've got paired drives anyway, so a RAID1 would be easy to sort. SSDs would be nice, but I'm not going to pay Apple for a Flash drive. Anyone use the Fusion drive? Any good?
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: GCW on October 03, 2014, 10:54:04 pm: Right, the super Kray PC died last weekend and was completely unsalvageable (don't let your kids randomly download stuff). I now have an iMac. Luckily I managed to remove the old paired drives and bung them into enclosures. i have just finished transferring files to the iMac, and I don't think I've lost anything important.

I'll report back on the Mac once I've used it a bit. So far, pretty happy. :great:
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: Jaspersharpe on October 04, 2014, 12:27:34 am: Sorry GCW I completely missed your reply to me earlier in the thread.

I too work hard (well, sort of) and like shiny good looking things that work well. Money isn't my major priority when I choose which phone/PC/car/jacket etc to buy, I've just always done a load of research to find something that fits my needs. I don't own any Apple stuff.

I suppose the thing that frustrates is the continuing idea amongst millions of people that just because something is more expensive or is marketed well it has to be better.

E.g. If the latest iPhone was universally acknowledged as being miles better than anything else I would consider buying one. However a tiny amount of research has made it apparent that the iPhone hasn't been the best phone available for years and year on year falls further behind the top phones on the market.

Yet the morons still queue. And probably always will.

Anyway, I hope your Mac is great and you enjoy using it more than grimer did when he got one.

;)
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: GCW on October 04, 2014, 07:41:56 am: So far so good. Having all my vids and mp3s is a plus point. So far....
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: a dense loner on October 24, 2014, 04:48:03 pm: What do people do with their pics on apple stuff? Ive got about 800 pics across the various devices but are they using up speed or cluttering the place? Should i just keep my pics on iCloud, and back up on hard drive, and wipe them off the devices or just leave them? Plus if I've got albums on my phone they don't automatically back up to the same albums on my mac, should they even do this?
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: Johnny Brown on October 24, 2014, 08:05:49 pm: I had this question last this week when I couldn't take a photo on my phone it was so full. There doesn't seem be a simple way to deal with them. Make sure any you want are on the laptop, then delete them all off the phone. Don't blame me if you lose any.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: a dense loner on October 24, 2014, 10:01:37 pm: Yeh was thinking along them lines. They're all on cloud as well so gonna delete off everything except laptop. The photos are pretty crap to understand if you're not hot with them. I expected the pics to download in their albums across everything no matter what device you took them on.
As an aside if you have pics on a few devices check them all and all derivations of stuff before someone else looks at them. I wouldn't like to have been blamed for some of the stuff Doylo sends to me :o
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: Doylo on October 25, 2014, 02:15:07 am: Wholesome content.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: Monolith on October 25, 2014, 09:05:53 am: Quote from: a dense loner on October 24, 2014, 10:01:37 pm
I wouldn't like to have been blamed for some of the stuff Doylo sends to me :o

Seconded!
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: account_inactive on October 25, 2014, 09:45:45 am: We've had this same issue with photos on cards/phones/drives. I've a NAS in the front room and then another 1TB external hard drive that I mirror to. On my Macbook Air (small hard drive) I've bought a 128Gb Jetlight storage card and dumped the photos/films/pr0n onto that and use it as a extra drive on the desktop. Works well for an fairly cheap price.

As far as taking photos off your iphone, unless you want to use Iphoto (which Idon't), I use http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/ (http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/) that allows you to view your iphone like any other normal phone when you plug it in
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: dave on October 25, 2014, 10:22:55 am: If you've got shit set up right then everything that goes onto your photostream (you can set all devices to dump all photos into this) will sync into individual monthly folders within iPhoto/Aperture, which are hence offline and subject to whatever local backups you run. So that means you can delete old photos off your devices camera roll safely as soon as it syncs, in practice assuming your mac is in regular use and you don't shoot thousands of photos to fill up your stream limits before it syncs then you can delete old photos from devices safely.

You can of course set individual devices to back up to your mac/iCloud as desired.
Title: Re: Mac Stuff
Post by: a dense loner on October 25, 2014, 02:34:59 pm: Right Dave I've got for the sake of argument, a Mac iPad and phone, I want to do all stuff like albums etc on mac, went through the tedious faces thing yesterday. If I do this on mac will these albums be available on phone or pad? Or do I just get every individual pic over iCloud? As in photo stream just showing individual pics? Could I take all pics off phone and pad and just have access to them when wifi available?