What have you done with an early Intel recently?

[Amethyst1]

I've seen you comment repeatedly on this, and never knew what you were talking about until I got my hands on a 2011 21.5" iMac for my wife. The difference in the screens between that and my 2008 20" is quite noticeable.

I have a very strong opinion on IPS' superiority over TN and may be blunt in expressing it. I mean no harm, all that matters at the end is that it works for you. But IMO shipping a $1,200+ "premium" computer with a TN and its horrible viewing angles was just plain unacceptable.

 

[AL1630]

I have a very strong opinion on IPS' superiority over TN and may be blunt in expressing it. I mean no harm, all that matters at the end is that it works for you. But IMO shipping a $1,200+ "premium" computer with a TN and its horrible viewing angles was just plain unacceptable.

It's not like cheaping out on stuff is unusual for Apple. They were selling the $1300 USD base model iMac with a 5400RPM spinner as standard until 5 or 6 months ago. (According to everymac, the Core Duo iMac from 2006 came with a 7200)

 

[Raging Dufus]

I have a very strong opinion on IPS' superiority over TN and may be blunt in expressing it. I mean no harm, all that matters at the end is that it works for you. But IMO shipping a $1,200+ "premium" computer with a TN and its horrible viewing angles was just plain unacceptable.

I wasn't criticizing, and after seeing a comparison I agree with you. But lacking a comparison, my 2008 iMac's screen works well enough for me.

I would be interested in upgrading the panel though, if you have any suggestions in that regard. As easy as it is to access the iMac's display panel, I'd think replacing it with something better would be a simple affair -- Yes? No? Maybe?

EDIT: I've done a little searching to this effect, and haven't come upon any examples of someone replacing the iMac's TN panel with anything else. Given so many people had a problem with them, I thought I'd find...something.

 

[retta283]

I have a very strong opinion on IPS' superiority over TN and may be blunt in expressing it. I mean no harm, all that matters at the end is that it works for you. But IMO shipping a $1,200+ "premium" computer with a TN and its horrible viewing angles was just plain unacceptable.

The biggest outrage for me comes from the fact that they replaced the $1,500 tier iMac with the TN screen as well. Before the alu revision, $1,500 was the base 20" with IPS screen, pretty good overall. After the update though, that money actually got you a worse screen, albeit a better GPU to drive it...

I agree that TN is terrible. The fact that they sold the 2008 Unibody MacBook as being a premium machine with its junk panel is laughable to me to this day, it's one of the worst screens I've used on any device. I find the MBP TN panels to be generally acceptable for their size, they aren't gonna wow you but they're serviceable. But IPS is slowly becoming a requirement for me as I hate the top of the screen being darker than the rest during video/games. This is mostly a desktop issue but still there on laptops as well. However, I would prefer TN to image retention or horribly uneven screens.

 

[Amethyst1]

I wasn't criticizing,

I didn't take your comment as criticism. I was kinda apologising for bluntly calling the 20" Al's panel a POS.

I would be interested in upgrading the panel though,

That's a good idea - an IPS panel could come from e.g. a Cinema Display or, ironically, a white 20" iMac. However, I have no experience in doing this mod.

It's not like cheaping out on stuff is unusual for Apple.

*looks at 2014 1.4 GHz entry-level iMac*

 

[AL1630]

*looks at 2014 1.4 GHz entry-level iMac*

Ouch... I found an old benchmark test and a MacBook Air beat it. And it was 1100 dollars too.

I used a 2008 iMac in the past and like others said it's usable if you don't have anything to compare it to, but once I got a Cinema Display there was no going back. It would be cool to see a screen transplant. If someone has a white 20" with a dead logic board or something but working screen it might be fun.

 

[Amethyst1]

I found an old benchmark test and a MacBook Air beat it.

Well - that iMac is a MacBook Air logicboard paired with a hard drive. No wonder the MBA beats it.

 

[mdgm]

Another thing to consider is that the 2011/2012 mini's CPU, especially the Quadcore, absolutely runs circles around the 2010's. I'd not bother with a 2010 anymore.

Looking out for good deals on the 2012 quad but the prices I can find are still higher than I’d like to pay so I am hanging onto my 2009 Mac Minis for now.

 

[Amethyst1]

The fact that they sold the 2008 Unibody MacBook as being a premium machine with its junk panel is laughable to me to this day, it's one of the worst screens I've used on any device.

You should see the one on my Early 2008 MB. Horribly yellow, uneven backlight, several bright spots etc.

 

[Applicator]

I totally agree on the iMac display, and the aluminium MacBooks, but the A1181 displays are alright.
Yes, no IPS inside, no LED-backlight, but back in the days, when they were new, they would stand out from all those HP and ACER machines and they still look fine today. For a 999$ price point, there is nothing to complain about in retrospective. I have owned like 13 or 14 of them and I have never seen crazy yellowing, red frames or serious lighting issues. I know, there are always a few bad apples in the basket, and displays degrade over time and use, but in general they are good quality.
I think the 23" ACDs were way worse. I've owned 3 so far, and every panel had this red frame.

Spoiler

Here's two pictures of my current 4 A1181: '06, '08, '08, '09.
You can barely notice the light uneven backlight in real life.

 

[AL1630]

I totally agree on the iMac display, and the aluminium MacBooks, but the A1181 displays are alright.
Yes, no IPS inside, no LED-backlight, but back in the days, when they were new, they would stand out from all those HP and ACER machines and they still look fine today. For a 999$ price point, there is nothing to complain about in retrospective. I have owned like 13 or 14 of them and I have never seen crazy yellowing, red frames or serious lighting issues. I know, there are always a few bad apples in the basket, and displays degrade over time and use, but in general they are good quality.
I think the 23" ACDs were way worse. I've owned 3 so far, and every panel had this red frame.

Spoiler

Here's two pictures of my current 4 A1181: '06, '08, '08, '09.
You can barely notice the light uneven backlight in real life.
View attachment 1735562 View attachment 1735563

My A1181 has a decent screen, though the uneven backlight is noticeable sometimes. Definitely better than a lot of PC laptops I've used. At least it was marketed as the cheap model so it's not a surprise they used lower end parts.

 

[wicknix]

Last night i compiled bitlbee and bitlbee-discord plugin on Lion. Using LimeChat for the irc client gives me a more native Discord feel as LimeChat has the option to show images from posted links.

 

[bobesch]

Today I was happy to succeed to install the BootCamp system-settings and menubar-icon on the early-2009 24" iMacs with Windows 10.
After I failed with BootCamp4&5 I found some information about trying BootCamp3 from the SnowLeopard-DVD.
I copied the whole BootCamp-Folder from DVD to the iMac, went for BootCamp64.msi in the ...\Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple folder, changed it's compatibility to "previous/older Windows versions" and ran that file with administrator-provileges. Voila!

 

[Tekguy0]

I find the A1181 screen tolerable. It is a bit dim by today's standards. I would use Macs Post Factor to upgrade mine past Lion but the GPU performance is bad enough as it is. The CD/DVD combo drive in mine recently decided to start working again, which is nice.

My upgraded 2010 Mini is great as an HTPC, and runs High Sierra OK. I find it very useful for installing 10.13 onto various other drives for other macs.

 

[Jack Neill]

I decided to wipe my MB 2,1 and start fresh on a clean Tiger install. I was feeling nostalgic for Intel Tiger lately as I think back to my first experiences with OS X were with Hackintoshing. I bought my MB 2,1 on eBay for 300 in the Spring of 2011 and I always ran Snow Leopard and later Lion on it at the time. I eventually tried out the Mountain Lion hackerwayne stuff and I moved on from it and it got a Windows install. Its been sitting collecting dust and I decided to make it a 2006/Tiger only machine. I installed 10.4.11 and iWork 06/iLife 06. I was thinking of keeping it only 2006 software but I did install some updates like iTunes 7.7.1 and brought iWork 06 up to date. This things flies with Tiger. Current specs are 4GB ram and 120 SSD. Other than the usual plastic cracking this thing has held up well long term. It does need a new battery, the Amazon cheapo in it isn't really the best. This machine will live out its days running the OS it shipped with and is a great piece of my personal Apple journey.

 

[bobesch]

About Win10 on Early Intels: pitfalls and workarounds ...
During the last 4 weeks I was forced to update my office-machines from Win7 to Win10, since with the next quarterly update my bread&butter software will stop to support Win7 and WinServer2008.
I was happy, that I could "convert" 4 early-intel c2duo iMacs and an early-intel 2009 15" MBP into Win10pro machines at nearly no extra-costs (except from new SSD's).
There were Win7/9 licences from old PC-workstations, that were retired about 4-5y ago, when iMacs replaced them.
Now I'm on the way back from a TerminalClient-Server network (with Macs/RDP as ThinClients) back to a Win10Pro-FileServer with connected Win10pro workstations.
The learning-curve back to Win10 had been pretty steep for an old chap like me, but now I feel quite save to cope with the new challenge.
Unfortunately Windows10 is not OSX/macOS, when it comes to simply swapping system-drives between two machines as a quick solution, if hardware should ever fail or if it is because of just out of a mood.
Installing Win10 is kind of a marriage, a bond for life - at least, if you've started installation with an OEM-version and took the free Win10-update-path.
"Therefore, examine whoever binds forever, Whether the heart finds its way to the heart. The madness is short, the regret is long" (Schiller).
So for any case of major changes in hardware it's advisable to have your Win10-installation/Mac combined/registered with an Outlook/MS-account, which should preserve your digital licence.
I took this serious - except for one "other" machine: a mid2012 15" MBP with two drives (one as a replacement for the defective optical drive. Caddy came for less than 10 bucks) - one for Mojave, the other for Win10Pro.
Went through the whole Win7=>Win10Update process. BootCamp-Driver installation. Updates. Installation of all essential software. The whole (really awkward) configuration-settings, etc. But I forgot to match the MacBook with my Outlook-account.
And then I was uncautious and tried to boot the "BootCamp"-Win10 within macOS/VMwareFusion ... "Dang!" Major changes in hardware-configuration detected. Licence expired! Even after I went back and booted directly into Win10 there's was no chance to revive the licence with the credentials, I got from ShowKeyPlus-App. Telephone-support just told me, there's no support for Win7/8-OEM-versions that are updated to Win10 beyond the hardware, it had been initially installed on.
Only suggestion from telephone support: to buy a Win10Pro reg-code from MS (but I wasn't in the mood for it...)
So I repeated installation Win7/8=>10, which fortunately proofed to be working.
Now all Win10-Macs are registered with my Outlook-account and I have a bootable clone-copy of that specific Win10-drive (made with a bootable version of PartitionWizard9Free).
But I don't know, what happens, if I move the Win10-drive into another Mac or what happens, if I try VMware on the Win10-partition again.

Win10 is amazingly slick and fast on old SSD-attached C2Duo Mac-hardware!
Configuration is really laborious. Licence-management is a hassle.

Guess, which one has better performance and workflow: the early2008-c2duo MBP or the mid2011-i5 ASUS book?

 

[Applicator]

Created a thumb drive with El Capitan for my 20“ iMac on my MacBook 1,1.
I restored this one recently to its original specs. It’s a 512mb/60gb/1,83ghz Core Duo in nice condition (It‘ll be a Tiger + Snow Leopard system )
Still looking for a matching box.

i just don’t get why Apple made the newer DiskUtil so useless and complicated

 

[Amethyst1]

i just don’t get why Apple made the newer DiskUtil so useless and complicated

Because they could.

 

[Project Alice]

i just don’t get why Apple made the newer DiskUtil so useless and complicated

I've booted up a PowerBook so many times just for this purpose.
Also Windows...you know they effed up when using DISKPART and Disk Management on Windows yields more successful results...

 

[RogerWilco6502]

I've booted up a PowerBook so many times just for this purpose.
Also Windows...you know they effed up when using DISKPART and Disk Management on Windows yields more successful results...

Truer words have not been spoken.

I will say the diskutil command that can be invoked from the terminal is fine still. It's a little bit of a learning process if you're used to UNIX tools like parted, but it's not as hard to use as the Disk Utility application.

 

[Project Alice]

Truer words have not been spoken.

I will say the diskutil command that can be invoked from the terminal is fine still. It's a little bit of a learning process if you're used to UNIX tools like parted, but it's not as hard to use as the Disk Utility application.

That’s true. I should probably use it more. I use it all the time to force unmount disks that tell me something is using it when there’s not. Lol.
I’ve been trying to learn FreeBSD quite a bit lately which macOS is basically forked from so it probably couldn’t hurt.

 

[RogerWilco6502]

That’s true. I should probably use it more. I use it all the time to force unmount disks that tell me something is using it when there’s not. Lol.
I’ve been trying to learn FreeBSD quite a bit lately which macOS is basically forked from so it probably couldn’t hurt.

I've used FreeBSD a bit. It's nice, I actually prefer the BSD environment to the Linux environment truth be told. I have yet to learn the nuances, but I figure that will come with time and experience.

 

[MultiFinder17]

I recently dug out my iMate so that I could use an old ADB keyboard on my school machine; got it set up with my favorite little keyboard for long typing sessions! I know it's missing a couple of keys, but man is it still satisfying to type on. I need to retrobrite it at some point though.

 

[uller6]

Created a thumb drive with El Capitan for my 20“ iMac on my MacBook 1,1.
I restored this one recently to its original specs. It’s a 512mb/60gb/1,83ghz Core Duo in nice condition (It‘ll be a Tiger + Snow Leopard system )
Still looking for a matching box.

i just don’t get why Apple made the newer DiskUtil so useless and complicated
View attachment 1741538

What are those little USB hubs coming from under your monitors? They look useful!

 

[eyoungren]

Today I cloned my drive to my new 1TB Zheino SSD. Installed, fixed a prohibitory sign on boot and then got everything squared away. My backup spinner is now back outside the Mac and my boot drive is again SSD.

Amazing how fast I got used to an SSD. This Zheino is faster than the old one and the Newertech full size adapter works really well too.