Search the Community

I have a late 2012 mac mini. It's been running slow for awhile and I erased the system and restored from scratch the system. It went back to running as fast as it did when I bought it (probably not literally but for the sake of this convo., let's go with that). Once I re-synced my backup cloud drive to the computer it became slow again. So I am assuming that both or one of the drives are bad. It has one ssd and one hdd, each 500GB. Since I have everything backedup in the cloud I can easy swap drives and get everything back. Question is, should I upgrade both or just one, and if both, should I just get one 1TB ssd drive or two 500GB ssd drives?

Hi all Im not sure what to do I need access to OSX for my work and I don't want to pay the apple tax for a Mac mini or and I Mac, so I THIS VIDEO from LTT and was wondering if it would be worth doing this I currently have a Windows desktop with decent specs but would ideally like a separate system. I have the current system to build: Link to build I wouldn't really be using the Linux system (possibly use it for a Plex server or web dev server not sure yet) so I dont really need a decent graphics card so not sure what to do. Also is the CPU and ram overboard? Also is there a better way to do it or get access to OSX. Thanks in advance for any help/ comments

I recently watched an ltt video Link to video and I'm trying to build a system to boot osx through a Linux virtual machine. Iam looking to do a Ryzen system maybe a 2700x and was wondering what GPUs to pair with it if anyone had any suggestions. I'm a programmer and will only really be doing X code and swift sort of stuff possibly some web based stuff. Thanks in advance.

Hi all, Im looking for a new way to run osx on my pc I don't know weather it is best to build a new system and run Linux then virtually host osx on that machine like in This video or is there a better way to run it on windows. I have it hosted at the minute using virtual box but it's lagy and I can't get it to work on my ultra wide monitor. Thanks in advance for any help

I just got an old mac pro 3,1 from 2008 and had a spare gtx 750 ti, so I thought it would be a nice upgrade. *running osx 10.11.6 el capitan After installing the cuda and webdrivers I rebooted it and changed out the gc but got no display out. Anyone know what the issue could be?

I've just purchased a Kingston UV500 SSD. The replacement went very smoothly however I can't format the drive when trying to clone it. I've done a lot of research around the SSD - people seem to have had success on older macs. I'm using a MBP 10,2 with an adapter to convert mSATA to the proprietary connector. (The adapter has no circuitry and just changes the pin layout on the mSATA connector). However, most of what I've found says either the problem lies with a faulty SSD or faulty sata connection. I know that neither of these are the case as the drive works perfectly and can be read/written to (and formatted) booting ubuntu from usb. When I've booted into the OSX installer after replacing the internal drive, I open up disk utility which can see the disk. I've tried multiple times to erase the entire disk and format to GUID, HFS+, using both disk utility and the terminal commands. Each time the process gets stuck at a message such as 'waiting for partitions to activate', 'waiting for disks to reappear', or similar. I'm able to format as MBR, FAT32 using disk utility, which succeeds, however cannot mount the partition after being formatted. I've also had a hardware Input/output error shown in the terminal. I tried to format to GPT, JHFS+ using gparted, which worked perfectly, however when booting back into the OSX installer could again not mount the partition or see the drive available for install. I suspect that the issue is driver related within OSX, not containing drivers for the ssd's controller, which is a Marvell 88SS1074. The only information i've found on this is that it is the same controller as a crucial MX300 which has also worked in some older OSX systems, so I'm guessing this is possible. The final thing I tried was to use the OSX Yosemite installer, as I have found posts about the SSD's controller working with older hardware and software. I cloned the drive in linux and this time partitions showed up in disk utility, however I was still stuck unable to mount them, and trying an erase left me stuck back at the same point. If anyone knows about injecting drivers into OSX or has any other ideas any help would be appreciated as I am very stuck at this point and don't have a whole lot of knowledge in that area. My other option is to return the SSD and swap for a Samsung Evo however I would like to avoid this as it would cost an extra $50 or so and my money is tight at the moment! Thanks in advance, Tom

So I have a late 2015 iMac that will not turn on at all. No fans, backlight, charms, lights, clicks, just completely dead. This happened overnight. Could it be a bad power supply? The computer was in an office environment where the building looses power somewhat often. Any ideas? I've got it tore down with the screen off and now I just want to know if its fixable. Thanks

Can someone point me to a easy to understand hackenstosh build guide? Im basicly looking for someone to hold my hand and walk me thru. I currently do not have a mac, only PCs. Im looking for Software help. Thank you everyone. Slappy

I've always disliked macs. I've always seen them as expensive for the hardware you actually get and limiting as to the amount of control you have over the system. I usually use windows, with a server running various linux installs and a laptop that dual boots kali. However, I've been thinking more recently of making the switch to Mac. I program quite a bit, and I'm much more comfortable with bash than with command prompt. Now that I have the server, I can do heavier processing remotely if I get a GPU for it. I originally contemplated switching completely to linux; however, I also enjoy music production, and my software, ableton, does not support linux. I'm also trying to figure out what my setup should be. Another dilemma I have is whether to switch my desktop to linux. I want to be able to remotely access my gpu for neural nets, but I also want to be able to game. I could get a gpu that's more for the purpose of neural nets and parallel computing that will live in the server, but that's quite a bit of money. Thoughts on the switch? If so, what model mac? And if you think I should get a GPU for the server, which do you recommend? Thanks for all the advice!

Over the last couple of weeks I've been setting up a LOT of new iMacs for my work. One thing I've noticed among all of them is that the firewall is off by default and has to be turned on. Then I was tweaking my own settings on my laptop and noticed that my firewall was off despite having turned it on years ago with a "set it and forget it" type mentality, knowing that it'd be on unless something turned it off or I purposefully did that. Is this just a fluke? Sure if your network is protected at least you have some manner of security but it just seems silly to have to turn something on when even Windows has theirs on automatically. (And even screams at you when it's off) The question for me remains, why would Apple have a key security feature on their hardware, off, right out of the box?

Hey all, I'm entering university for computer science and have the opportunity to get a laptop before getting started. I'm able to afford either a Macbook Pro or high end Windows laptop. I've seen a lot online about people using mostly Mac laptops for programming and software development because the Mac terminal runs on unix. I've been a Windows guy in the past, and could easily get a really nice Windows laptop with better hardware than a Macbook Pro for less money, but if the industry standard is MacOS it might be better to go that route. I'm hoping to get a lot of milage out of my purchase since the cost is high. What are your thoughts? If you had the choice of either, would you go with Mac or Windows 10 getting into university for computer science? Cheers.

I tried to change my username of my user and I accidentally clicked cancel instead of confirm, so i only have guest and standard users. Now I'm trying to give admin privileges back to my standard user and I need the password to the "superuser/root" user. Directory Utility and Terminal shows the password as a single character, shown as a *, and Directory Utility shows * with a data value of "2a".

So I recently made the decision to get an external gpu. Setup is as follows, MBP late 2015 (i7 2.2GHZ, 16GB DDR3 1600MHZ, 256GB SSD, Intels terrible integrated graphics.) Akitio Node thunderbolt 3 EGPU enclosure AMD RX Vega 64 Gigabyte Thunder bolt 2 to 3 adapter. So on High Sierra 10.13.6 Apple decided that they were not going to support the use of EGPU on devices with thunderbolt 1 & 2, I assume this was due to the lack of bandwidth making it nearly impossible to see a reasonable internal display improvement, however regardless of which version of thunderbolt you have you would only expect a 20% bottle neck when using an external display. So I went ahead and disabled the internal system integrity protection, then after ran the PurgeWrangler 4.1.2 script. And just like that it was working as if my 2015 MBP had thunderbolt 3 ports. On the other hand there we're still many issues, I got about a 9 fps score on openGL using Cinebench R15, I mean a Vega 64 at 9 fps.... something seemed off. After some research I found out that mirroring the displays is a big no no, after fixing this I saw about 40 fps in Cinebench R15 (OpenGL). More research later and turns out using clam shell mode will bring my openGL fps score up to 80fps. Still seams very low for me, so I decided why the hell not try out my old RX480 in the system, so I run Cinebench R15 (OpenGL) and get a score of 80fps... ummm what??? How is the Vega64 and RX480 getting the same results??? Could someone please assist? Also on a side note, the Vega does not fit nor does the Akitio node have enough power, rather buy a different enclosure for this setup (It was the only enclosure available in South Africa at a reasonable price so I figured I would buy it with the intention of putting a 600W Atx power supply and making the case a little bigger. Also the Vega gets extremely hot, I mean I can cook an egg on the thing before the fans even decide to turn on? Any idea as how to control the fans in OSX would be appreciated.

I repaired my 2015 MacBook Air and when I got it I found out it had OSX Yosemetie 10.10 the original OS it came with. I upgraded to High Sierra 10.13. Problem is when I updated it the Wi-Fi would not connect. When I revert to 10.10 using a recovery image it works fine. Basically the Wi-Fi only works when its running the older Yosemetie 10.10. I even did a clean install to make sure there were no driver issues. So what is the problem?

Hi Guys, 1st post here so appreciate any help you can give. Recently bought an xps 9560, undervolted and about to upgrade ram to 32gb and repaste while I’m there. I only have 256gb of nvme ssd under the hood. So what I plan on doing is having 2 seperate external ssd for games and macOS. Does anyone have a link or could explain the steps involved in setting up a VM via an external ssd which can be mounted and dismounted when needed? For example, Would I just install VMware onto the ssd along with the setup files for OSX or does VMware install onto windows and then directed to the drive that macOS is installed on? I also presume i need to set a static drive letter for the ssd like the games drive. One last question, would there be any significant performance boost for the VM using a thunderbolt ssd over a usb3.0 ssd? Thanks ladies and gents

im usualy mac ignorant in general but someone brought up a great idea of subdividing the new Imac 10 core they didn't understand you cant just add a monitor keyboard and mouse and go but I started thinking and came here to find out if you can run virtual machines on a mac and have more than one user using the machine at the same time?

Hey guys, I'm trying to write a script to install multiple DMGs, and PKGs from a specific folder in OSX. Does anyone have experience with this? Here's what I have so far: Sudo cp -R /desktop/#installers/Firefox.app /applications && Sudo cp -R /desktop/#installers/Google Chrome.app /applications && Sudo installer -pkg /desktop/#installers/Install Smart Learning Suite 17.0.pkg -target /applications && Sudo installer -pkg /desktop/#installers/Microsoft_Office_2016_15.37.17081500_Volume_Installer.pkg -target /applications && Sudo softwareupdate --install 'macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Update- ' && Sudo softwareupdate --install 'iTunesX (12.8)' && Sudo shutdown -r now Whenever the script is run, I recieve this error: No such File or Directory

hello everyone, do any of you know what is the best way to back up my clients hdd for a format in the fastest way possible ? i mean is there another way than the traditional copy and paste - god zilla - total commander etc... i mean are there any specific hardware that backup an hdd data very fast in a secure way ? any and all opinions are more than appreciated. thank you all

1. Windows nightmare I’m 40 and I’ve been using a version of Windows my entire adult life. Half of that time I’ve hated it for some reason. DLL hell, the blue screen of death, the freezing, the crashing, Millenium, Vista, the boring UI, the annoying UI, the alien UI (8), the lack of support, the drop of support, the viruses, the updates in general but the compulsory ones in particular, the inclusion of ads, the broadcasting of my data without my permission... you name it. If you are a windows user you know this list is by no means complete. 2. Linux & OSX bliss So naturally, escaping from Windows, I have used Linux and OSX. Both beautiful and solid. Fell in love with each immediately. Even with the early Corel Linux, Debian or Red Hat. When I first saw Ubuntu it was gorgeous and very easy to use. Recently, I have settled for a Gnome Fedora. OSX is breathtaking and fun. I still have a Power PC iBook that can run Call of Duty and Quake 3 despite its 32 MB video card. I use Tiger (10.4) on that Mac in 2018 and not just for fun. Word for Mac 2008 is far more advanced than Word 2016 for Windows when it comes to the aesthetics of the resulting documents. 3. Unspoken drawbacks But there is something that no one will tell you about Apple Operating Systems: They are all incompatible with each other. You can run some apps for OS9 in a built in emulator but a lot of apps will not run unless you actually buy an older Mac with that particular OS. It certainly feels odd to a Windows user to hit that wall. Having software for a previous OS on a Mac is like having an .exe or an .rpm. It just belongs to a different universe but with the same logo. Sure, there are emulators and virtual machines. On the Linux side, I kept breaking Ubuntu just by trying to install programs for basic desktop publishing and general office tasks. After a few weeks I'd always do something fatal to Ubuntu so I settled for Fedora because it is more robust. But running some essential apps on a fresh install of a 3 year old release may prove a challenge. Just yesterday I installed Fedora 22 (2015) on an old Core Duo because I remembered that it ran great on that machine. 3 years later, all the tweaks that made it great for me are no longer supported which translates into a lot of digging, downloading, and struggling to install. Some essential apps such as Chrome will refuse to install. What is the last stable version of Chrome that ran in Fedora 22 and where can I download it? I do not know. Netflix does not work, Calibre installs but does not open. I must format and go for Fedora 28 which solves all my problems. 4. The one who runs it all But then I find myself thinking about that Windows 7 32 Bit I have on the same Core Duo. It runs everything by double clicking on it. It runs all programs made for windows today, it runs stuff made for XP in 2001, for windows 98, 95 and even programs and games made for DOS. Sure, there are hiccups. Sometimes you have to use compatibility mode. Here and there you may encounter a program that will just not work no matter what you try. But that, if find, is the exception. Microsoft -the old Microsoft- does not get enough credit, I think, for its compatibility extravaganza that meant you did not need to buy the same program or game every time there was a new version of windows. Office 2003 works fine on Windows 7. I still find myself trying to escape Windows. I go to other desktops looking for novel commands, different attributes and nicer shortcuts; but I always end up going back to that boring, familiar place. Usually because there is something I need to do and there is a software that will do it for me on Windows. And It will run after a mere double click.

Ohai so iv just bought this older late 2011 macbook pro. I switched the old drive for an ssd and all. and I got the os back on it. its High Sierra. but I want bootcamp to run windows too. so I can dual boot (and later triple boot with linux Manjaro) But it won't take my iso. and I don't get why. ik its not compatible with windows 10, so I tried windows 8.1 but it just doesn't detect the iso on the usb. weather I created a drive to install or just dropped the iso on it. it doesn't work. pls help ! Thanks !

I am the proud owner of a dual-boot MacOS and Windows system, and I recently got a new monitor. It's a Lenovo Y27G, and even though it has been panned as having horrible value, I bought it because the price dropped to half MSRP. Anyway, it's got all the bells and whistles. Among them is a 3-port USB 3.0 hub. Sick, right? Never had one on a monitor, so I was excited. I plugged my mouse, keyboard, and webcam into it and was ready to rock n' roll. I said, "Let's gooooo!" and fired her up, only to crash 20 seconds after boot. Boo. I think I saw something about MacOS having a hard cap of USB ports, but FR? a crash? If there's any way I can fix this, I'd love to be able to do so. It works just fine in Windows, so it's software, and it's MacOS's fault. EDIT: I forgot to attach the crash report. It's attached now. Also, the hub crashed my system only when it's plugged in during startup, with or without devices connected to it. MacOS USB Hub Crash Report.rtf EDIT 2: Apparently it was the USB port it was plugged into. MacOS must have beef with USB 3.1. The 3.0 port works fine. Case closed, ig. lol I have no idea why though. Perhaps someone could shed some light...

hello everyone, i have an iMac 2007 24 inch laying around and i would like to upgrade it to its ultimate. what i would like to upgrade is: CPU RAM HDD to SSD now what is the best most powerful CPU ? is it: X9000 X7900 T9300 T9500 summoning all apple fan thank you all

Hey everyone, so I thought that this would help some of the SysAdmins, Project Managers, and general helpdesk staff on the forum who have to deal with the awfulness that is the Mac Environment for imaging. At my current job we're going through the realm of ~50 2012 MacBook Pros & ~150 2015 MacBook Airs, and getting them ready for new staff, and I wanted to at least share my process for interns to go through to get them ready. If you want to add, please add any tips or better practices that you may have found in your time, as this is more likely than not the actual best practice seeing that we've wrecked our internet connection in to the building a few times. Anyways, here's my current process Do a OSX System Restore (Cmd + Alt + R, or on older firmwares just Cmd + R) Set up the account, and download OSX High Sierra (Newest OSX at the moment) Run the High Sierra Installer Install Microsoft Office off of a .iso file from a local server Mark it as done and put it in a pile

After completing my first ever Hackintosh for one of my closest friends I was still unable to see why so many people would prefer OSX over Windows 10. One thing in particular that I do find annoying is the constant "you don't have to constantly update" argument. This argument is just silly as it means you are left with fewer patches and improvements to the software you get and even when you do get those patches Apple decides whether you can even install the next iteration of OSX or not. This lack or constant driver support at least from what I have seen results in performance up to 20% worse in most games and benchmarks compared to when ran in Windows 10. Essentially what I'm trying to ask is why people prefer Mac OSX over Windows or Linux despite its shortcomings. P.S don't say malware because 99% of the time it's your fault for getting it in the first place. Also if you don't believe me on the whole performance thing while it might take me a while I can get my friend to send me screenshots on OSX compared to Windows 10.

Hello fellow techies, so here's what I'm working with; The computer I use is a mid-2015 macbook pro w/ 2.5GHz Intel Core i7 16 GB of DDR3 RAM @ 1600MHz AMD Radeon R9 M370x 2GB (2048 MB) Here's my dilemma, I am getting into the "tech industry" by going back to school online for a BS in networking, I know a lot of the field is primarily using Windows as the "primary" operating system. So I am considering bootcamping my MBP because it has 500 GB in SSD, is it worth it? If so, what runs better, Windows 7, 8, or 10? And my final question, how do I make a usb stick into a bootable drive to install windows (whatever version) onto my computer in an OS X environment? Pls help, I have used windows pretty much forever before I got this computer (in mid 2015) and I am finding that the gaming performance isn't the best in OS X anyways compares to "similar" (I use quotes because my testing/observations are on similarly spec'd by "the numbers").