A decent empty 4 bay TB3 enclosure is $350 to $400. An empty QNAP box with 4 drive bays that supports TB3 is $1.2K. There are, of course, much cheaper NAS solutions than that particular line of QNAP boxes, but an M1 mini + TB3 enclosure is surprisingly price competitive with the high end of the home NAS market.
Welp, I'm deffo not buying a 1st gen AS Mini. Sorry, Echo.
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
I could use some help.
I'm trying to get a controller to work on my wife's MacBook. I've tried both a PS4 and Xbox One controller and while both do connect via Bluetooth and do work in Steam's Big Picture Mode UI, they do not work in Steam games or, in the game I'm actually wanting to get working, Stardew Valley (through GOG).
Disabling SIP seems to fix this. Of course, that's a pretty security concern so I turned it back on after testing it. Am I missing something? It's really obnoxious to be so close to getting this to work.
Do you have the "Playstation (or XBox) Configuration Support" box checked in Controller Settings? Granted, I game on Windows but that seemed to solved my Dualshock 4 woes with Steam.
Mercade on
Switch: SW-1909-0466-9585
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
I do. It works in Steam itself, just not in any Steam games.
My grod, every single thing Bluetooth-related in Big Sur is just... weird and/or bad.
Now I've updated my job laptop (Macbook Pro 2018) to Big Sur as well. Commence the bluetooth problems here too.
Just now I did ye olde song and dance where I remove the touchpad from my Mac Mini so I can re-add it to the laptop, because not once has Apple considered that people have more than one Mac.
On first connect, it now cannot tap to click or do any gestures, including two-finger scrolling. Worked when I removed and re-added it.
edit: and now it just spontaneously vanished from the list of Bluetooth devices and I had to add it again.
My grod, every single thing Bluetooth-related in Big Sur is just... weird and/or bad.
Now I've updated my job laptop (Macbook Pro 2018) to Big Sur as well. Commence the bluetooth problems here too.
Just now I did ye olde song and dance where I remove the touchpad from my Mac Mini so I can re-add it to the laptop, because not once has Apple considered that people have more than one Mac.
On first connect, it now cannot tap to click or do any gestures, including two-finger scrolling. Worked when I removed and re-added it.
edit: and now it just spontaneously vanished from the list of Bluetooth devices and I had to add it again.
Do you not use a Lighting cable to establish the connection? I move a Magic Keyboard and Mouse between an MBP and a mini pretty frequently by hot-plugging them into Lightning. 85% of the time, that just works. Sometimes, I have to go into the BT settings and disconnect/remove the device from the machine I'm removing it from.
That being said, it'd be cool if the Magic input devices had an H1 chip like AirPods do, to make moving them between devices more seamless. The H1 makes the BlueTooth experience almost good.
Do you not use a Lighting cable to establish the connection? I move a Magic Keyboard and Mouse between an MBP and a mini pretty frequently by hot-plugging them into Lightning. 85% of the time, that just works. Sometimes, I have to go into the BT settings and disconnect/remove the device from the machine I'm removing it from.
That being said, it'd be cool if the Magic input devices had an H1 chip like AirPods do, to make moving them between devices more seamless. The H1 makes the BlueTooth experience almost good.
I have my Macs behind my second screen, mucking around with cables there takes as much time as just removing bluetooth devices in the software.
In Catalina I kept having problems where the touchpad every now and then would do a loop where it disconnects/reconnects 4-5 times in a row and is then usable again two minutes later. With Big Sur it just disconnects and doesn't automatically reconnect.
Here's a pic of the title bar of Visual Studio Community on macOS 11.
Pop quiz: where can you click on this to drag the window?
If you guessed basically anywhere, including the region inside the red box which is visually identical to everywhere else on the title bar, congratulations! You're wrong.
That region of the title bar just ignores clicks of any description. Splendid, and not at all infuriating.
Here's a pic of the title bar of Visual Studio Community on macOS 11.
Pop quiz: where can you click on this to drag the window?
If you guessed basically anywhere, including the region inside the red box which is visually identical to everywhere else on the title bar, congratulations! You're wrong.
That region of the title bar just ignores clicks of any description. Splendid, and not at all infuriating.
Is it an Electron app? Electron apps do weird shit to the title bar.
Do you not use a Lighting cable to establish the connection? I move a Magic Keyboard and Mouse between an MBP and a mini pretty frequently by hot-plugging them into Lightning. 85% of the time, that just works. Sometimes, I have to go into the BT settings and disconnect/remove the device from the machine I'm removing it from.
That being said, it'd be cool if the Magic input devices had an H1 chip like AirPods do, to make moving them between devices more seamless. The H1 makes the BlueTooth experience almost good.
I have my Macs behind my second screen, mucking around with cables there takes as much time as just removing bluetooth devices in the software.
In Catalina I kept having problems where the touchpad every now and then would do a loop where it disconnects/reconnects 4-5 times in a row and is then usable again two minutes later. With Big Sur it just disconnects and doesn't automatically reconnect.
Yeah, that sucks. Have you tried (temporarily) putting your mini in front of your screen? Maybe you're suffering from range/interference issues.
I built a gaming PC with a motherboard that had coaxial antennae hookups that the manual described as being for wifi, but I never bothered hooking up the antennae that came with it because I kept it plugged into ethernet. It sits under my desk and for the first few months of its existence, I was convinced it had some sort of deep-seated BlueTooth issue because nothing BT-related worked with it for long. Then I happened to read somewhere that the wifi antennae were also the BT antennae. I hooked them up and the BT issues instantly went away.
TL;DR: BlueTooth range can be very short in an office environment.
htm on
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I am wondering a thing that perhaps someone would know the answer to.
I assume that it's fully possibly nowadays to have an external SSD that you install apps/games to and run them off there. I've always just used external drives for data storage, but presumably with USB 3 / thunderbolt whatever this is doable now?
PSN: Honkalot
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I am wondering a thing that perhaps someone would know the answer to.
I assume that it's fully possibly nowadays to have an external SSD that you install apps/games to and run them off there. I've always just used external drives for data storage, but presumably with USB 3 / thunderbolt whatever this is doable now?
yes, its just another volume. You can install stuff wherever you want on a mac and run it from there, no issue.
using a USB3 or thunderbolt 3 drive you will see little to no performance difference.
If you use a thunderbolt3 connected nvme drive its every single bit as good as an internal.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
This one goes faster, and it proved itself out in real world testing when I had it last year.
And, it has active cooling, which is kind of important for nvme if you intend to do anything taxing with it.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
+2
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Those are neat! I'm somehow glad that we're full circle back to external drive enclosures having fans.
PSN: Honkalot
+3
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
New day new question!
Anyone got recommendations for a USB hub to use for one of these new laptops?
I think in a maxed out connection situation I’d want charger, external monitor, keyboard, mouse, external drive plugged in. I’m not really sure if it’s possible to charge the laptop via a hub, or get the best data pass through of an external drive through a hub. Maybe either of those could be kept separate in the USB C port not occupied by the hub.
Seems like a complicated market!!
PSN: Honkalot
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Anyone got recommendations for a USB hub to use for one of these new laptops?
I think in a maxed out connection situation I’d want charger, external monitor, keyboard, mouse, external drive plugged in. I’m not really sure if it’s possible to charge the laptop via a hub, or get the best data pass through of an external drive through a hub. Maybe either of those could be kept separate in the USB C port not occupied by the hub.
This will, through one cable, give you all the ports you will need, and an abundance of passthrough power to charge the laptop.
And it is compatible with the apple silicon macs.
Yeah, it is pricier than the dreck on amazon, but this is guaranteed to work and zero hassle.
edit: and since it uses thunderbolt, the USB 3.1 ports and the passthrough thunderbolt ports will not be bottlenecked when it comes to transfer speeds for your external. No need to plug it directly to the mac; people connect RAID storage devices for video production to the passthrough port of this device.
syndalis on
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Anyone got recommendations for a USB hub to use for one of these new laptops?
I think in a maxed out connection situation I’d want charger, external monitor, keyboard, mouse, external drive plugged in. I’m not really sure if it’s possible to charge the laptop via a hub, or get the best data pass through of an external drive through a hub. Maybe either of those could be kept separate in the USB C port not occupied by the hub.
This will, through one cable, give you all the ports you will need, and an abundance of passthrough power to charge the laptop.
And it is compatible with the apple silicon macs.
Yeah, it is pricier than the dreck on amazon, but this is guaranteed to work and zero hassle.
edit: and since it uses thunderbolt, the USB 3.1 ports and the passthrough thunderbolt ports will not be bottlenecked when it comes to transfer speeds for your external. No need to plug it directly to the mac; people connect RAID storage devices for video production to the passthrough port of this device.
Anyone got recommendations for a USB hub to use for one of these new laptops?
I think in a maxed out connection situation I’d want charger, external monitor, keyboard, mouse, external drive plugged in. I’m not really sure if it’s possible to charge the laptop via a hub, or get the best data pass through of an external drive through a hub. Maybe either of those could be kept separate in the USB C port not occupied by the hub.
This will, through one cable, give you all the ports you will need, and an abundance of passthrough power to charge the laptop.
And it is compatible with the apple silicon macs.
Yeah, it is pricier than the dreck on amazon, but this is guaranteed to work and zero hassle.
edit: and since it uses thunderbolt, the USB 3.1 ports and the passthrough thunderbolt ports will not be bottlenecked when it comes to transfer speeds for your external. No need to plug it directly to the mac; people connect RAID storage devices for video production to the passthrough port of this device.
I couldn't use that with my 16" MBP because it caps out at 60W passthrough charge. Also, it is missing a ton of ports in favor of having a bunch of TB/USB-C ports... which is a bold choice when you are likely using it to add additional ports to a device that has multiple TB/USB-C ports.
I dunno - the portability is nice and its very well made; I just think its the wrong philosophy for a dock; a dock should be giving me all the ports I need for all my stuff; multiple USB ports, displayport, audio connectors, ethernet ports, passthrough thunderbolt...
Also, a bit weird they are comparing it against USB-C docks and not thunderbolt 3 docks, where the speeds are more or less exactly the same (40Gb/s)
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I’m slightly afraid of the pricing for that (and most, really) thunderbolt docks. But while I contemplate that I can at least submit that I’ve finally ordered the Macbook Air, I went with the 8-core gpu model with 512GB SSD. I had the budget for either 7-core+16GB RAM or 8-core with 512GB SSD. In the end I figured a small disk size would piss me off more often than less RAM.
Gold finish
PSN: Honkalot
+1
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I’m slightly afraid of the pricing for that (and most, really) thunderbolt docks. But while I contemplate that I can at least submit that I’ve finally ordered the Macbook Air, I went with the 8-core gpu model with 512GB SSD. I had the budget for either 7-core+16GB RAM or 8-core with 512GB SSD. In the end I figured a small disk size would piss me off more often than less RAM.
Gold finish
The only observation I would give to the thunderbolt 3 dock, or any thunderbolt 4 now or in the future is that this piece of hardware will most likely survive the next 3+ laptops you buy.
TB4/USB4 is the exact same speed as thunderbolt 3, minus the pesky licensing fees, and everybody, literally everyone, is adopting it as quickly as possible.
This dock with the USB-C connector and 85W of power will be enough.
I am already 3 laptops in on this dock's TB3 predecessor, which I got in late 2016.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
If you're looking for something cheaper I was using this Anker dongle when I used to have to go into the office, doesn't do everything you're looking for but there are other versions with more ports.
Yeah, I just did a brew update on my 2018 job Macbook and saw a notice.
I was idly following their ticket on Apple Silicon support and it seems their biggest roadblock was getting CI set up for it.
Homebrew wasn't strictly required for development, but it's such a massively useful tool.
I'm a Go developer, and I'm running a beta version of Go compiled for Apple Silicon. Official support should be released this month.
I would lose my mind if I didn't have brew on my machine. It's basically the thing that brings a mac into full parity with linux for package/dependency management.
I'm the biggest apple stan who ever stanned, but I am still waiting on my tools to be fully stable and available on their silicon platform before I make the jump.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Yeah, in hindsight I could have waited a bit before I bought my M1 Mac Mini, because without Homebrew I just didn't want to litter the system with manually installed stuff everywhere.
Anyone got recommendations for a USB hub to use for one of these new laptops?
I think in a maxed out connection situation I’d want charger, external monitor, keyboard, mouse, external drive plugged in. I’m not really sure if it’s possible to charge the laptop via a hub, or get the best data pass through of an external drive through a hub. Maybe either of those could be kept separate in the USB C port not occupied by the hub.
This will, through one cable, give you all the ports you will need, and an abundance of passthrough power to charge the laptop.
And it is compatible with the apple silicon macs.
Yeah, it is pricier than the dreck on amazon, but this is guaranteed to work and zero hassle.
edit: and since it uses thunderbolt, the USB 3.1 ports and the passthrough thunderbolt ports will not be bottlenecked when it comes to transfer speeds for your external. No need to plug it directly to the mac; people connect RAID storage devices for video production to the passthrough port of this device.
I couldn't use that with my 16" MBP because it caps out at 60W passthrough charge. Also, it is missing a ton of ports in favor of having a bunch of TB/USB-C ports... which is a bold choice when you are likely using it to add additional ports to a device that has multiple TB/USB-C ports.
I dunno - the portability is nice and its very well made; I just think its the wrong philosophy for a dock; a dock should be giving me all the ports I need for all my stuff; multiple USB ports, displayport, audio connectors, ethernet ports, passthrough thunderbolt...
Also, a bit weird they are comparing it against USB-C docks and not thunderbolt 3 docks, where the speeds are more or less exactly the same (40Gb/s)
Yeah, it's more of a hub than a dock: it provides more ports, not different ports. Now that I think about it, it seems like it's aimed squarely at iOS developers. The standard medium-end developer desktop arrangement is some sort of MacBook hooked up to a LG 5K (which provides power to the Mac over TB3), plus a gnarly tangle of USB->Lightning cables for hooking up iOS devices to debug.
The hub is perfect for that. It lets you give the LG its own port and then gives you four USB-A ports for iOS devices and four more TB3 ports that could also be used for devices or attached TB doohickeys.
Not as elegant as a dock, maybe, but more flexible.
Yeah, in hindsight I could have waited a bit before I bought my M1 Mac Mini, because without Homebrew I just didn't want to litter the system with manually installed stuff everywhere.
Didn't Homebrew just go native on M1?
Edit: oops, missed the same thing from syndalis above.
Anyone got recommendations for a USB hub to use for one of these new laptops?
I think in a maxed out connection situation I’d want charger, external monitor, keyboard, mouse, external drive plugged in. I’m not really sure if it’s possible to charge the laptop via a hub, or get the best data pass through of an external drive through a hub. Maybe either of those could be kept separate in the USB C port not occupied by the hub.
This will, through one cable, give you all the ports you will need, and an abundance of passthrough power to charge the laptop.
And it is compatible with the apple silicon macs.
Yeah, it is pricier than the dreck on amazon, but this is guaranteed to work and zero hassle.
edit: and since it uses thunderbolt, the USB 3.1 ports and the passthrough thunderbolt ports will not be bottlenecked when it comes to transfer speeds for your external. No need to plug it directly to the mac; people connect RAID storage devices for video production to the passthrough port of this device.
I couldn't use that with my 16" MBP because it caps out at 60W passthrough charge. Also, it is missing a ton of ports in favor of having a bunch of TB/USB-C ports... which is a bold choice when you are likely using it to add additional ports to a device that has multiple TB/USB-C ports.
I dunno - the portability is nice and its very well made; I just think its the wrong philosophy for a dock; a dock should be giving me all the ports I need for all my stuff; multiple USB ports, displayport, audio connectors, ethernet ports, passthrough thunderbolt...
Also, a bit weird they are comparing it against USB-C docks and not thunderbolt 3 docks, where the speeds are more or less exactly the same (40Gb/s)
Yeah, it's more of a hub than a dock: it provides more ports, not different ports. Now that I think about it, it seems like it's aimed squarely at iOS developers. The standard medium-end developer desktop arrangement is some sort of MacBook hooked up to a LG 5K (which provides power to the Mac over TB3), plus a gnarly tangle of USB->Lightning cables for hooking up iOS devices to debug.
The hub is perfect for that. It lets you give the LG its own port and then gives you four USB-A ports for iOS devices and four more TB3 ports that could also be used for devices or attached TB doohickeys.
Not as elegant as a dock, maybe, but more flexible.
If it actually supports a data connection on all those ports, and not just power (most of the dongles have limited numbers of data-capable ports) then whoo boy I know some people who would do some things for a widget like that for their tottering stack of handsets.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I haven't really had time to test more than everyday light use on the Air yet but it's rock solid for those kinds of things, surprising nobody. I charged it to full back on Monday when I picked it up and never since, I've been using it a lot and it's still more than half full. I was aware of this stat of course but it's kind of a new thing to me, the utility is somewhere what I would have used an iPad for otherwise - it's around and is probably charged and I can just pick it up and sit for a few hours doing stuff. And it doesn't have to boot, always on.
So that's neat.
Today I'm going to install Premiere and do color grading because it turns out that this is probably now the best gamut screen I own. And I'm also going to try some gaming in the shape of Geforce Now and Disco Elysium which I doubt it will have much trouble with honestly.
Anyone got recommendations for a USB hub to use for one of these new laptops?
I think in a maxed out connection situation I’d want charger, external monitor, keyboard, mouse, external drive plugged in. I’m not really sure if it’s possible to charge the laptop via a hub, or get the best data pass through of an external drive through a hub. Maybe either of those could be kept separate in the USB C port not occupied by the hub.
This will, through one cable, give you all the ports you will need, and an abundance of passthrough power to charge the laptop.
And it is compatible with the apple silicon macs.
Yeah, it is pricier than the dreck on amazon, but this is guaranteed to work and zero hassle.
edit: and since it uses thunderbolt, the USB 3.1 ports and the passthrough thunderbolt ports will not be bottlenecked when it comes to transfer speeds for your external. No need to plug it directly to the mac; people connect RAID storage devices for video production to the passthrough port of this device.
I couldn't use that with my 16" MBP because it caps out at 60W passthrough charge. Also, it is missing a ton of ports in favor of having a bunch of TB/USB-C ports... which is a bold choice when you are likely using it to add additional ports to a device that has multiple TB/USB-C ports.
I dunno - the portability is nice and its very well made; I just think its the wrong philosophy for a dock; a dock should be giving me all the ports I need for all my stuff; multiple USB ports, displayport, audio connectors, ethernet ports, passthrough thunderbolt...
Also, a bit weird they are comparing it against USB-C docks and not thunderbolt 3 docks, where the speeds are more or less exactly the same (40Gb/s)
Yeah, it's more of a hub than a dock: it provides more ports, not different ports. Now that I think about it, it seems like it's aimed squarely at iOS developers. The standard medium-end developer desktop arrangement is some sort of MacBook hooked up to a LG 5K (which provides power to the Mac over TB3), plus a gnarly tangle of USB->Lightning cables for hooking up iOS devices to debug.
The hub is perfect for that. It lets you give the LG its own port and then gives you four USB-A ports for iOS devices and four more TB3 ports that could also be used for devices or attached TB doohickeys.
Not as elegant as a dock, maybe, but more flexible.
If it actually supports a data connection on all those ports, and not just power (most of the dongles have limited numbers of data-capable ports) then whoo boy I know some people who would do some things for a widget like that for their tottering stack of handsets.
Yeah, it's full data to all its ports. The USB-A ports are 10Gb/s and the USB-C ports are up to 40Gb/s. The only bandwidth cap is the 40Gb/s connection to the Mac.
I haven't really had time to test more than everyday light use on the Air yet but it's rock solid for those kinds of things, surprising nobody. I charged it to full back on Monday when I picked it up and never since, I've been using it a lot and it's still more than half full. I was aware of this stat of course but it's kind of a new thing to me, the utility is somewhere what I would have used an iPad for otherwise - it's around and is probably charged and I can just pick it up and sit for a few hours doing stuff. And it doesn't have to boot, always on.
So that's neat.
Today I'm going to install Premiere and do color grading because it turns out that this is probably now the best gamut screen I own. And I'm also going to try some gaming in the shape of Geforce Now and Disco Elysium which I doubt it will have much trouble with honestly.
It's a good laptop!
Yeah, my Air has replaced my iPad as my lounge chair computer.
Anyone got recommendations for a USB hub to use for one of these new laptops?
I think in a maxed out connection situation I’d want charger, external monitor, keyboard, mouse, external drive plugged in. I’m not really sure if it’s possible to charge the laptop via a hub, or get the best data pass through of an external drive through a hub. Maybe either of those could be kept separate in the USB C port not occupied by the hub.
This will, through one cable, give you all the ports you will need, and an abundance of passthrough power to charge the laptop.
And it is compatible with the apple silicon macs.
Yeah, it is pricier than the dreck on amazon, but this is guaranteed to work and zero hassle.
edit: and since it uses thunderbolt, the USB 3.1 ports and the passthrough thunderbolt ports will not be bottlenecked when it comes to transfer speeds for your external. No need to plug it directly to the mac; people connect RAID storage devices for video production to the passthrough port of this device.
I couldn't use that with my 16" MBP because it caps out at 60W passthrough charge. Also, it is missing a ton of ports in favor of having a bunch of TB/USB-C ports... which is a bold choice when you are likely using it to add additional ports to a device that has multiple TB/USB-C ports.
I dunno - the portability is nice and its very well made; I just think its the wrong philosophy for a dock; a dock should be giving me all the ports I need for all my stuff; multiple USB ports, displayport, audio connectors, ethernet ports, passthrough thunderbolt...
Also, a bit weird they are comparing it against USB-C docks and not thunderbolt 3 docks, where the speeds are more or less exactly the same (40Gb/s)
Yeah, it's more of a hub than a dock: it provides more ports, not different ports. Now that I think about it, it seems like it's aimed squarely at iOS developers. The standard medium-end developer desktop arrangement is some sort of MacBook hooked up to a LG 5K (which provides power to the Mac over TB3), plus a gnarly tangle of USB->Lightning cables for hooking up iOS devices to debug.
The hub is perfect for that. It lets you give the LG its own port and then gives you four USB-A ports for iOS devices and four more TB3 ports that could also be used for devices or attached TB doohickeys.
Not as elegant as a dock, maybe, but more flexible.
If it actually supports a data connection on all those ports, and not just power (most of the dongles have limited numbers of data-capable ports) then whoo boy I know some people who would do some things for a widget like that for their tottering stack of handsets.
Yeah, it's full data to all its ports. The USB-A ports are 10Gb/s and the USB-C ports are up to 40Gb/s. The only bandwidth cap is the 40Gb/s connection to the Mac.
Oh yeah, then that is total "grabby hands at the shiny" time. Mobile development is a PITA if you want to maintain/keep a bunch of devices around/handy. That thing would be awesome.
+1
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
edited February 2021
The battery does not appreciate running video games over rosetta I notice. Creative apps have worked well for me so far, but in running Disco Elysium I received a battery warning after about 3.5 hours.
That was the steam version and unfortunately it seems like you can't close steam in the background, that probably contributed. Steam doesn't perform great.
I'm sure this will get better - anyway the performance was rock solid so might just need to plug it in for gaming rosetta games right now.
Geforce Now is native now so I expect that'll be a lot better, but I haven't tried that yet.
Edit: So update is that Geforce Now works fine as expected. I've also installed Maya and just loaded up some old files to play around in and it's very smooth, though there's not really anything going on here except static high poly models. But that's the majority of what I do in there anyway so.
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A decent empty 4 bay TB3 enclosure is $350 to $400. An empty QNAP box with 4 drive bays that supports TB3 is $1.2K. There are, of course, much cheaper NAS solutions than that particular line of QNAP boxes, but an M1 mini + TB3 enclosure is surprisingly price competitive with the high end of the home NAS market.
I'm trying to get a controller to work on my wife's MacBook. I've tried both a PS4 and Xbox One controller and while both do connect via Bluetooth and do work in Steam's Big Picture Mode UI, they do not work in Steam games or, in the game I'm actually wanting to get working, Stardew Valley (through GOG).
Disabling SIP seems to fix this. Of course, that's a pretty security concern so I turned it back on after testing it. Am I missing something? It's really obnoxious to be so close to getting this to work.
Thanks!
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
I don't have a "native" Mac game to test.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Now I've updated my job laptop (Macbook Pro 2018) to Big Sur as well. Commence the bluetooth problems here too.
Just now I did ye olde song and dance where I remove the touchpad from my Mac Mini so I can re-add it to the laptop, because not once has Apple considered that people have more than one Mac.
On first connect, it now cannot tap to click or do any gestures, including two-finger scrolling. Worked when I removed and re-added it.
edit: and now it just spontaneously vanished from the list of Bluetooth devices and I had to add it again.
Do you not use a Lighting cable to establish the connection? I move a Magic Keyboard and Mouse between an MBP and a mini pretty frequently by hot-plugging them into Lightning. 85% of the time, that just works. Sometimes, I have to go into the BT settings and disconnect/remove the device from the machine I'm removing it from.
That being said, it'd be cool if the Magic input devices had an H1 chip like AirPods do, to make moving them between devices more seamless. The H1 makes the BlueTooth experience almost good.
I have my Macs behind my second screen, mucking around with cables there takes as much time as just removing bluetooth devices in the software.
In Catalina I kept having problems where the touchpad every now and then would do a loop where it disconnects/reconnects 4-5 times in a row and is then usable again two minutes later. With Big Sur it just disconnects and doesn't automatically reconnect.
I've done the SMC reset a couple of times to no avail.
Pop quiz: where can you click on this to drag the window?
If you guessed basically anywhere, including the region inside the red box which is visually identical to everywhere else on the title bar, congratulations! You're wrong.
That region of the title bar just ignores clicks of any description. Splendid, and not at all infuriating.
Is it an Electron app? Electron apps do weird shit to the title bar.
Yeah, that sucks. Have you tried (temporarily) putting your mini in front of your screen? Maybe you're suffering from range/interference issues.
I built a gaming PC with a motherboard that had coaxial antennae hookups that the manual described as being for wifi, but I never bothered hooking up the antennae that came with it because I kept it plugged into ethernet. It sits under my desk and for the first few months of its existence, I was convinced it had some sort of deep-seated BlueTooth issue because nothing BT-related worked with it for long. Then I happened to read somewhere that the wifi antennae were also the BT antennae. I hooked them up and the BT issues instantly went away.
TL;DR: BlueTooth range can be very short in an office environment.
I assume that it's fully possibly nowadays to have an external SSD that you install apps/games to and run them off there. I've always just used external drives for data storage, but presumably with USB 3 / thunderbolt whatever this is doable now?
yes, its just another volume. You can install stuff wherever you want on a mac and run it from there, no issue.
using a USB3 or thunderbolt 3 drive you will see little to no performance difference.
If you use a thunderbolt3 connected nvme drive its every single bit as good as an internal.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/envoy-express/thunderbolt-3
https://www.amazon.com/Shell-Thunder-Enclosure-Only-Fledging/dp/B07QY9V2KM
This one goes faster, and it proved itself out in real world testing when I had it last year.
And, it has active cooling, which is kind of important for nvme if you intend to do anything taxing with it.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Anyone got recommendations for a USB hub to use for one of these new laptops?
I think in a maxed out connection situation I’d want charger, external monitor, keyboard, mouse, external drive plugged in. I’m not really sure if it’s possible to charge the laptop via a hub, or get the best data pass through of an external drive through a hub. Maybe either of those could be kept separate in the USB C port not occupied by the hub.
Seems like a complicated market!!
thunderbolt docks are what you are looking for.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/docks/owc-thunderbolt-3-dock
This will, through one cable, give you all the ports you will need, and an abundance of passthrough power to charge the laptop.
And it is compatible with the apple silicon macs.
Yeah, it is pricier than the dreck on amazon, but this is guaranteed to work and zero hassle.
edit: and since it uses thunderbolt, the USB 3.1 ports and the passthrough thunderbolt ports will not be bottlenecked when it comes to transfer speeds for your external. No need to plug it directly to the mac; people connect RAID storage devices for video production to the passthrough port of this device.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
There's finally a fulll bandwidth TB3/USB-4 hub that's about to go on the market, too. If I didn't already own a TB3 hub, that's probably what I'd buy.
I couldn't use that with my 16" MBP because it caps out at 60W passthrough charge. Also, it is missing a ton of ports in favor of having a bunch of TB/USB-C ports... which is a bold choice when you are likely using it to add additional ports to a device that has multiple TB/USB-C ports.
I dunno - the portability is nice and its very well made; I just think its the wrong philosophy for a dock; a dock should be giving me all the ports I need for all my stuff; multiple USB ports, displayport, audio connectors, ethernet ports, passthrough thunderbolt...
Also, a bit weird they are comparing it against USB-C docks and not thunderbolt 3 docks, where the speeds are more or less exactly the same (40Gb/s)
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Gold finish
The only observation I would give to the thunderbolt 3 dock, or any thunderbolt 4 now or in the future is that this piece of hardware will most likely survive the next 3+ laptops you buy.
TB4/USB4 is the exact same speed as thunderbolt 3, minus the pesky licensing fees, and everybody, literally everyone, is adopting it as quickly as possible.
This dock with the USB-C connector and 85W of power will be enough.
I am already 3 laptops in on this dock's TB3 predecessor, which I got in late 2016.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/05/homebrew-apple-silicon-support/
Homebrew is now native on silicon macs. Took a little longer than I thought but its there.
My guess is that around the time a larger macbook pro comes out, the Mx platform will be very dev-friendly.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I was idly following their ticket on Apple Silicon support and it seems their biggest roadblock was getting CI set up for it.
Homebrew wasn't strictly required for development, but it's such a massively useful tool.
I'm a Go developer, and I'm running a beta version of Go compiled for Apple Silicon. Official support should be released this month.
I would lose my mind if I didn't have brew on my machine. It's basically the thing that brings a mac into full parity with linux for package/dependency management.
I'm the biggest apple stan who ever stanned, but I am still waiting on my tools to be fully stable and available on their silicon platform before I make the jump.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Yeah, it's more of a hub than a dock: it provides more ports, not different ports. Now that I think about it, it seems like it's aimed squarely at iOS developers. The standard medium-end developer desktop arrangement is some sort of MacBook hooked up to a LG 5K (which provides power to the Mac over TB3), plus a gnarly tangle of USB->Lightning cables for hooking up iOS devices to debug.
The hub is perfect for that. It lets you give the LG its own port and then gives you four USB-A ports for iOS devices and four more TB3 ports that could also be used for devices or attached TB doohickeys.
Not as elegant as a dock, maybe, but more flexible.
Didn't Homebrew just go native on M1?
Edit: oops, missed the same thing from syndalis above.
If it actually supports a data connection on all those ports, and not just power (most of the dongles have limited numbers of data-capable ports) then whoo boy I know some people who would do some things for a widget like that for their tottering stack of handsets.
So that's neat.
Today I'm going to install Premiere and do color grading because it turns out that this is probably now the best gamut screen I own. And I'm also going to try some gaming in the shape of Geforce Now and Disco Elysium which I doubt it will have much trouble with honestly.
It's a good laptop!
Yeah, it's full data to all its ports. The USB-A ports are 10Gb/s and the USB-C ports are up to 40Gb/s. The only bandwidth cap is the 40Gb/s connection to the Mac.
Yeah, my Air has replaced my iPad as my lounge chair computer.
Worked 8 hours, then was air playing to tv while playing FTL for about 4 hours and still had about 40% left.
The Moonlight nvidia streaming client got a beta release for M1 and it runs amazing.
Oh yeah, then that is total "grabby hands at the shiny" time. Mobile development is a PITA if you want to maintain/keep a bunch of devices around/handy. That thing would be awesome.
That was the steam version and unfortunately it seems like you can't close steam in the background, that probably contributed. Steam doesn't perform great.
I'm sure this will get better - anyway the performance was rock solid so might just need to plug it in for gaming rosetta games right now.
Geforce Now is native now so I expect that'll be a lot better, but I haven't tried that yet.
Edit: So update is that Geforce Now works fine as expected. I've also installed Maya and just loaded up some old files to play around in and it's very smooth, though there's not really anything going on here except static high poly models. But that's the majority of what I do in there anyway so.