No. You are NOT Miss Independence!

[eyoungren]

Marlo Thomas had a show called That Girl in the 1960s. Her parents had a nickname for Marlo - Miss Independence. This nickname was reflected in the character she played in the show.

This thread is NOT about that!

Rather, it's about my work 2015 MBP that does it's damndest to act like Marlo Thomas!

Been meaning to write this for a while and am not looking for solutions, just letting off some semi-serious steam.

Does your Mac ignore you?

Does it choose which inputs it will respond to?

Does it choose HOW it will respond to the inputs it may choose to respond to?

Does it do something else that you DIDN'T ask it to do?

How about does it add stuff to what you told it to do, or miss steps in what you told it to do?

My work Mac does.

It does all of the above. I will tell it to do something and it decides whether it will do it or not, when and how. And if it doesn't like what I've told it to do or it's being petulant for the day it will just crash the app.

I am constantly yelling at it to either wake up or pay attention!

I have had to do that with a couple of other Macs, but not like this one.

Before this post I told it to quit Adobe Acrobat. So it did. Then it displayed the Acrobat crashed dialogue. Very helpful, thanks.

Ugh, this MBP!

 

[B S Magnet]

The theme opening is forever a mood and aesthetic I love.

I find that my 2013 iMac also has a real knack for ignoring when I plug something into a port (like a keyboard or a FireWire-to-Thunderbolt cable adapter). Sometimes it’ll think long and hard before, say, sleeping or waking the screen. Sometimes it takes a generously long time to boot. Sometimes it displays notifications even though I have all notifications shut off, permanently. Sometimes Finder will crash, I’ll try to launch it manually, and a dialogue box displays, “The application Finder is no longer open” (and will refuse to re-launch Finder without a reboot). Sometimes it gets really leisurely about rebooting in a timely manner (like up to five minutes).

And somehow, I tolerate all of this. I have no idea why.

 

[theMarble]

Does it choose which inputs it will respond to?

That sounds like my 2015 MBP too.

Whether it is USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire (through Thunderbolt), audio jacks, and especially Bluetooth it will either not detect it, take a full eon to realise that something was plugged in or make me think that all of the ports have simultaneously died.

Better yet, this MBP is only just over 3.5 years old, bought new from the Apple Store! Crazy how my older Macs that have had so much use for a decade plus are fine yet here's a 3.5 year old MacBook Pro and it doesn't work properly.

It only started when I upgraded to Catalina, then it stuck when I downgraded to Mojave, and upgrading to Big Sur didn't help.

 

[bobesch]

That sounds like my 2015 MBP too.

Whether it is USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire (through Thunderbolt), audio jacks, and especially Bluetooth it will either not detect it, take a full eon to realise that something was plugged in or make me think that all of the ports have simultaneously died.

Better yet, this MBP is only just over 3.5 years old, bought new from the Apple Store! Crazy how my older Macs that have had so much use for a decade plus are fine yet here's a 3.5 year old MacBook Pro and it doesn't work properly.

It only started when I upgraded to Catalina, then it stuck when I downgraded to Mojave, and upgrading to Big Sur didn't help.

Just Minions (or troll boogers ) having a fight beneath the butterfly-keyboard ... ?

 

[theMarble]

Just Minions (or troll boogers ) having a fight beneath the butterfly-keyboard ... ?

Haha no butterflies here! Probably dust bunnies having a good fight instead, they like to do that sometimes.

 

[eyoungren]

The theme opening is forever a mood and aesthetic I love.

I find that my 2013 iMac also has a real knack for ignoring when I plug something into a port (like a keyboard or a FireWire-to-Thunderbolt cable adapter). Sometimes it’ll think long and hard before, say, sleeping or waking the screen. Sometimes it takes a generously long time to boot. Sometimes it displays notifications even though I have all notifications shut off, permanently. Sometimes Finder will crash, I’ll try to launch it manually, and a dialogue box displays, “The application Finder is no longer open” (and will refuse to re-launch Finder without a reboot). Sometimes it gets really leisurely about rebooting in a timely manner (like up to five minutes).

And somehow, I tolerate all of this. I have no idea why.

I find it interesting that the Mary Tyler Moore show seems to have ripped off That Girl's intro. I don't know if it was intentional or not.

Take a look and spot the similarities:

Today was a new one with this Mac. Used QuarkXPress to make a PDF. Realized I had included pages that were not supposed to be there, so closed the PDF, reopened the XPress document and made another PDF.

At the end…'Unable to make PDF.' What The F?!!!!!! You just made the frickin' PDF a minute ago. NOTHING has changed!

Of course, it quite happily made a new PDF to my desktop. Apparently THAT is OK!

 

[B S Magnet]

I find it interesting that the Mary Tyler Moore show seems to have ripped off That Girl's intro. I don't know if it was intentional or not.

Take a look and spot the similarities:

It’s almost undoubtedly no coincidence, and the resemblance has never been lost on me. That Girl set a template of sorts.

The MTM Show always felt like a more grown-up take on That Girl — a kind of That Girl 2.0 — except that she finally found her groove doing TV journalism… in Minneapolis. Ann Marie, unlike Mary Richards, resonates as someone who has ADHD. While the show’s comedy centred heavily on the plot of Ann’s pratfalls and escapades with her many jobs, it parses as classic ADHD — right down to the opening credits when she’s distracted suddenly by the window display. By contrast, Mary was always a lot more focussed, including when she tosses her tam near the old Dayton’s on Nicollet Mall. Both had the same spunk, which we know Lou hated.

Today was a new one with this Mac. Used QuarkXPress to make a PDF. Realized I had included pages that were not supposed to be there, so closed the PDF, reopened the XPress document and made another PDF.

At the end…'Unable to make PDF.' What The F?!!!!!! You just made the frickin' PDF a minute ago. NOTHING has changed!

The OS base seems to now be forever as an incomplete work-in-statis.

Of course, it quite happily made a new PDF to my desktop. Apparently THAT is OK!

macOS: a perma-beta of Mac OS X. Best of all, it’s free*!

 

[Amethyst1]

I am constantly yelling at it to either wake up or pay attention!

You need to turn on Siri for it to listen though

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Oh this reminds me of This classic.

 

[eyoungren]

Sigh.

I am now firmly of the opinion that the 2015 MacBook Pros are just garbage.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Man, I’d ask for a replacement work laptop. Even if it’s older, if it’s not doing all the squirrelly BS, it’s a win for your work flow & most importantly; your sanity.

That crap would drive me bonkers. It’s as bad as a sluggish network crashing your apps.

 

[eyoungren]

Man, I’d ask for a replacement work laptop. Even if it’s older, if it’s not doing all the squirrelly BS, it’s a win for your work flow & most importantly; your sanity.

That crap would drive me bonkers. It’s as bad as a sluggish network crashing your apps.

LOL!

I'd ask. But guess what? The company went to all MBPs a year or so before I was hired. And ALL of them are 2015 MBPs.

I would put the blame on my keyboard/operator error if my MacPro acted the same way, but it doesn't (the keyboard is swapped between my MP and MBP). In any case, there is no spare and the only replacement would be another 2015 MBP.

Given that the 2012 MBPs (as I understand it) can drive three displays I'd love to get a 2012 replacement. Sooner or later though, management will have to make a decision. We can't stay on Filemaker 14 forever and that's what's stopping us from upgrading beyond High Sierra.

I am however, not the only one to criticize. The other designer has made the comment about the Macs getting old and slow. The ones we are using (us designers) have only 16GB ram and a 256GB SSD. My MacPro, which is six years younger has 32GB ram and a 1TB SSD.

 

[Amethyst1]

Given that the 2012 MBPs (as I understand it) can drive three displays I'd love to get a 2012 replacement.

The 2012 retinas can; the non-retinas can’t because they don’t have enough outputs.

The ones we are using (us designers) have only 16GB ram and a 256GB SSD.

Only 2018 and later 15“/16“ MBPs can have more than 16 GB. Maybe you all need a big fat Mac Pro instead.

 

[eyoungren]

Only 2018 and later 15“/16“ MBPs can have more than 16 GB. Maybe you all need a big fat Mac Pro instead.

My understanding is that at one time the office was using towers. In fact, the Prepress Manager has both a MP and a MBP.

The business has a long Mac history and the warehouse (where we store stuff) has evidence of that (there's an acrylic ACD out there with an A1006, a couple of Minis and a handful of G5s and G4s).

The idea behind the MBPs was to allow employees to work outside the office if they needed to. Going back to MPs means calling everyone back. Three of the three designers employed by the company have stated they have no intention to return to the office.

 

[Amethyst1]

Do the designers also need to run High Sierra? In that case, business should just send them 10-core iMac Pros - fully loaded with 512 GB RAM. ?

 

[eyoungren]

Do the designers also need to run High Sierra? In that case, business should just send them 10-core iMac Pros - fully loaded with 512 GB RAM. ?

LOL!!!

We designers are all using the same MBPs. Let's just say they aren't going to give us anything other than laptops and leave it at that.

PS. The company keeps everything in Filemaker. Right now that's FM 14. Mojave breaks FM14 so there is no one in the company running anything higher than High Sierra - because we all need access to FM.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Well, working from home in ones underwear is nice assuming connectivity is not laggy (hate that - drives me absolutely bonkers having to twiddle my thumbs waiting for a aneurism inducing slow network to catch up). Do the other designers have the same issues in software?

I wonder if your work would be amenable if you yourself bought the mac that best suited your needs instead of being stuck with one of their squirrelly Shirley laptops. I might do that if they were into the idea. I think it is in the same vein as remote workers paying for the appropriate bandwidth to connect us to work servers/networks in a remote environment. Heck it could even be a tax write off I bet. Anyhoo - just a thought.

That has to be the most frustrating thing to deal with day in and day out.

 

[eyoungren]

Well, working from home in ones underwear is nice assuming connectivity is not laggy (hate that - drives me absolutely bonkers having to twiddle my thumbs waiting for a aneurism inducing slow network to catch up). Do the other designers have the same issues in software?

Not trying to spend your money but I wonder if your work would be amenable if you yourself bought the mac that best suited your needs instead of being stuck with one of their squirrelly Shirley laptops. I might do that if they were into the idea I think it is in the same vein as remote workers paying for the appropriate bandwidth to connect us to work in a remote environment. Heck it could even be a tax write off I bet.

I pay my ISP for a Gigabit connection with unlimited data. I did that before I got this job, but the job also helps justify it. Paying for that though makes no sense if you don't have a gigabit network so all the equipment got upgraded in 2018 - particularly the router. Receently, we just dropped money on a Netgear Nighthawk CM2000 cable modem as well (to save $10 a month rental fees, which were free before but not now). I use a work VPN to access the company servers. The company has the same ISP (Cox) but I have no idea what speed tier they pay for. In any case, I routinely use about 1TB+ of data each month.

And as much as working in my underwear might be tempting, the set up is in the front room. My kids and my wife (when here) will probably object.

Yes, the designers are limited in the same way I am. All work details are in Filemaker Pro. You access that to get everything you need. It won't work in Mojave so everyone is stuck on High Sierra. Which means no Adobe CC2021 and at some point we're going to be stuck on a lower version of QuarkXPress.

And that's the rub. While the owners might appreciate me using my own equipment there is the licensing involved. Since they own the MBP they can control that. Now there was a small amount of time where I was using my own apps on my own MP, but that time has passed and I still had to use the MBP (via screen sharing) to access Filemaker.

The problem isn't really one I have any motivation to solve. I'm basically just whining about the MBP, not really seeking solutions. Eventually they'll fork over to update Filemaker Pro and that'll cause updates/upgrades with everything else. But the FM database they have was started when the company was started (some time in the late 90s I think) so they are very careful with that.

 

[B S Magnet]

I am however, not the only one to criticize. The other designer has made the comment about the Macs getting old and slow. The ones we are using (us designers) have only 16GB ram and a 256GB SSD. My MacPro, which is six years younger has 32GB ram and a 1TB SSD.

“Seven-and-eight… again! One-and-two-and… feeeeeeel the software bloat! …aaand six-and-seven…”

 

[eyoungren]

Not really related, but I LOVE how your Mac will tell you that you can't eject 'X' server because 'X' app is using it or some other dumb reason for not doing what you told it to do. Then when you switch off WiFi or disconnect from the VPN, all of a sudden the Mac decides to disconnect from the server - exactly what you told it to do, but not what it wanted to do!

Awwwww! I guess you were wrong and app 'X' really DOESN'T need that server, now does it you stupid head?!!!!!

 

[eyoungren]

It would seem there is an ultimate end to this story. Had a meeting at work yesterday and it was announced that the company will be upgrading to new Macs and software in January 2022.

Now, I'm not going to assume that means the latest M1 Macs, but it will mean something newer than 2015. Here's hoping it is M1s though.

 

[rampancy]

My beloved and well-worn MacBook 5,2 has developed an allergy to Microsoft Office...

I honestly can't explain it. It first started when I repeatedtly tried to open a large .docx file, synced with iCloud with Track Changes enabled. Word 2011 and 2008 both hanged with a beachball. I did a force quit and deleted a preference file to at least stop Word 2011 from trying to open the same documents on launch, so it wouldn't at least be locked into trying to open the same file over and over again. Both versions seemed to work fine afterward.

However, recently, much to my dismay, starting up both Word 2008 and 2011 (without trying to open any file) would result in a beachball hang, and the root process "frameworksupport" taking up ~175% of my CPU. Oddly, this would only happen with Microsoft apps; even the Remove Office utility included with Office 2008 did that. When I tried a reinstall, Installer.app would hang at "Running Package Scripts", with "framworksupport" once again taking up ~175% of my CPU.

After some testing and tinkering I've found that this doesn't happen to any of my other apps at all. Only MS Office. It really feels like my Mac has just refused to have anything to do with MS Office now.

 

[mortlocli]

Wonder wot happens if you try a non Microsoft office word processor to open a docx file?

 

[rampancy]

Just tried the same iCloud synced .docx file in Pages (the last version for El Capitain), LibreOffice (7.2.4.1) and Mellel 5. Everything worked perfectly.

Apparently, there's some kind of issue with Office 2011 where it can choke on large .docx files with Track Changes enabled, but I would expect it to have issues with just opening that one file -- not to completely stop working entirely.

I suppose I could just do a reformat and reinstall, but do I really want to do that just for Microsoft Office?

 

[eyoungren]

MBP stands for PoS!