Tag Archives: mac

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It doesn’t quite work :) , a little bit, but not really.

Often if the specifications of computers match with other Macs you can install an older OS X on it then what came pre-installed on the Mac. Like in this situation I discovered that the Macbook Pro Early 2011 (MacBookPro8,1) has a lot of specifications in common with the Mac Mini Mid 2011 (MacMini5,1)

Same CPU, GPU and ram type. Both have Thunderbolt, bluetooth, wifi, Sata 2 clocked at higher speeds etc.

The Macbook comes with Snow Leopard 10.6.6 and the Mac mini with Lion 10.7. In the old days that would mean that the Mac mini could also run 10.6.6 or newer (10.6.8). Because all drivers are available. Thus if Lion or Mountain Lion doesn’t work for you, you could downgrade to Snow Leopard.

I’ve tried this many times before with G5 macs, earlier Intel models and all kinds of hardware really.

But in this case it seems Apple used a different I/O chip in the Mac mini. Also the I/O for the thunderbolt seems different. Because of these tiny hardware differences it doesn’t work. Very sneaky.

I successfully installed Snow Leopard on the Mac Mini but quickly discovered that the Sata Bus had a throughput of maybe 10/20 kilobytes while using the system. Instead of the advertised 3 Gigabit. This basically means the Sata Bus functions in a sort of fallback mode called PIO. And this is something of the 80′s and with that is super slow. Copying data and writing to the disk will literally take hours.

Another thing that seems to happen is that when you use the Thunderbolt port on the Mac Mini and Snow Leopard loads, the screen goes black. This suggests the firmware or the thunderbolt chip has a slight difference with the Macbook version of it. The Thunderbolt port does, however, keep showing as connected in System information. But it has no output.

However, and this is the weird part. Sata and Thunderbolt worked fine throughout the installation of the setup. This suggests this can be resolved with a driver or modification in Snow Leopard somewhere but I couldn’t find anything constructive for this. I guess no-one has tried this before. Since such things are notoriously hard to find for OS X I didn’t go into that much further and simply upgraded to Mountain Lion.

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In my experience, a computer is as good as it is put together. In other words. A mishmash of parts put together to form a pc if done wrong is a horrible pc. Even if you got the best quality parts. If they don’t play nice with each other it’s just shit and misery.

A mate of me keeps telling me to get a pc. Even though he never even tried a mac, he seems fixated on the idea that PC’s are infinitely better because they’re “upgradeable” and are “not limited”. In his words:

Its an extremely limited and expensive pc!

Perhaps. There is not much to upgrade to the hardware. Where-as a PC you supposedly can upgrade all you want.

But then my point of view. By the time you *need* to upgrade something in your PC. All you can really do is expand the ram and perhaps add a new video card. If you want a new CPU, you’re often stuck on some outdated socket. Which is not desirable, if at all still available. So you need a new mainboard as wel. But then you probably run into a slot issue with your ram, so you need new ram, too. Making it a much more expensive upgrade. Not to mention lots of issues with your Windows license in terms of validating and re-activating. So really, is a PC a better upgradable computer? I think it’s not.

By the time your mac *really* needs upgrading it will probably either be 3 to 4 years old. And you will buy a new one. Migrate your software and done. Easy peasy. Whereas for a PC you need to check if your new parts are compatible, put it together, hope it works. It probably will. Then mess with more drivers and updates than you can shake a stick at. In that process it’s very likely that you run into issues with conflicting or crappy drivers for days before it works a 100%. Not to mention trying to keep windows alive during that mess.

And that’s just my experience with upgrading PC’s over the past 10 or so years. Every time i wanted something new i had to buy a new PC, except when it was just the videocard or harddisk. I’m sure with Windows 7 it got a lot easier. I use Windows 7 and can tell it made big advances in hardware management. Still, it remains windows… And comparing my windows ease of use on a mac compared to a PC. The mac side of the story is much prettier.

So, seriously, how upgradable and unlimited is a PC? And do you need it? Really?

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Why is a Mac better? Is it? Really…? In a way i think they’re better, but not better quality per se.
From a hardware point of view a Mac is just a computer. Like any PC.

The big difference here is how the parts are put together, where a PC follows a certain de-facto standard for parts. Most Macs do not. My type of videocard is readily available at most stores. It’s a mere ATI Radeon HD 4670. The Wifi network card in my laptop? Made by Broadcom, Broadcom is also big in PC’s. My Ram? Samsung and LifeTime. Also brands that work in a PC. The CPU? Intel. Sound, Cirrus Logic and Realtek. Harddisk, Fujitsu and Western Digital. Most, if not all, brands that Apple uses are also found in PC’s.

So you could say a Mac and PC are not all that different. There are some fundamental differences between them ofcourse. But the parts mostly come from the same or similar suppliers.

Often i come across people who firmly believe a Mac cannot and will not ever break. Imagine their surprise that a Mac repair shop is a booming business. Even more when they end up there for a repair.

How can my hard drive break? I never mistreated it…

Why is my video card broken? It’s 3 months old!

Heatsink needs replacing? How can that break…

Questions often heard. And easily answered: Every computer breaks. Simply because we use them and they’re just that, computers.

Hard disks spin around, they wear out. Get bumped around if in a laptop, and therefor eventually break.
Video cards can overheat. Sensors can fail. DVD drives won’t eject discs.
How does this happen? Sometimes it’s simply because of age. Other times misuse by the user. In a rare case a design flaw. This is not different with any computer.

So how is a Mac better than a PC?
I think the way a Mac is put together is much better. Not just because they look pretty… But the way it feels when you pick them up. Or how it looks when you open them up or just look at them.

Lift up any PC laptop and hear the plastic croak. Feel the bottom compartments slightly shift under its own weight. Then lift up a MacBook Pro or MacBook. It’s a solid thing, maybe it slightly bends but it makes no weird noises and feels sturdy.
Look at your PC, slots and doors everywhere. Silly ‘smart’ design on the front resembling a face or something futuristic by the way air vents and buttons are placed. And look at a Mac Pro, with it’s perforated front.

Where a PC Case seems built around its mainboard, which is always square with a Power supply above it, harddisk and DVD on the right. A mac’s Logicboard (mainboard) is fitted to the case. Ever seen one from an iMac? It has a crazy shape to fit in the case.

There certainly is a difference. But in the end Mac and PC are just computers that break sometimes.

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I’m tempted to finally buy Coda from Panic Software. But it’s a tad bit expensive. However, for that amount ($99) i’m getting FTP, SVN, editor, books/manuals on scripting languages and much more neat features that the free Smultron and Cyberduck don’t have. So yea. It is worth it? I could also keep on using Smultron, Cyberduck and buy Versions instead for SVN… But Smultron is no longer actively in development. and 39 euros for “just” an SVN client is a bit over the top i think. Even though Versions is a very nice app. Still it’s too expensive.
Coda is also expensive… But it does so much more. Hell, it even suggests code or tells me if PHP functions are real and how they use while i type them. Which is really neat. Syntax highlighting is actually fast and works properly and overall it feels like a proper app.