Looking to buy Apple, suprised by slow speed

[9fingers]

I can't believe these apple times being quoted.
My old 1.2ghz laptop running win xp with spinny disc took 10 seconds to open a word doc from "cold"

Bob

 

[TrimTheKing]

Terry

I appreciate what you say you're seeing in the store, but you've 3 apple owners here telling you that this is not normal, so it MUST be something to do with the way they are hosting their apps, and I am leaning towards Andy's theory that they cloud host them so each machine can be flattened and imaged quickly.

My advice is, you will NOT be disappointed in the speed when you are using a Mac, and load it with as much RAM and the fastest HDD you can afford at the start and you will be a very happy customer.

If you have any doubts at all though then you need to go with your heart as it's a lot of money to spend if you're not going to be happy with it…

Cheers
Mark

 

[Wizard9999]

Mark

As per my point to Andy, I do not need more convincing whatever my disappointment it can't compare with my experience with Windows8 :lol: . The guy in the shop did use the word "imaging" and again, as per my post above he did highlight it as one of two reasons for the speed at which the shop machines were opening the programmes.

My inclination at the moment is to get extra RAM as I will be going for the smaller machine and it was really helpful that you pointed out that (unlike the bigger one) RAM can't easily be retro fitted later. I think I will stick to a standard hard drive though, so as not to bloat the budget too much,but would I be right in thinking this could be changed later if I was so inclined?

Terry.

 

[Rod]

I am not trying to sell the PC but you seem to be ignoring that Win 10 is a much different beast to Win 8 and gets a much better acceptance rating.
You will also get much a more powerful machine for a lot less bucks and which is much easier and cheaper to upgrade.
I do not know how computer savvy you are but the Mac's OS is a lot different to the PC's and can get a bit of getting used to especially if you've had lots of experience with PC's?
Would I buy another PC - yes because of all the software I have but the Mac is a much nicer machine. [emoji3]

Rod

 

[RogerS]

Rod...Whenever anyone says how much cheaper PCs are I am never convinced especially if you consider Total Cost of Ownership. And we haven't even mentioned the excellent free software included with the Mac.
Easier to upgrade at least compared to the more recent Macs I'll grant you.

Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

 

[TrimTheKing]

Hi Terry

Watch this video, the first video as you scroll down the page, for a very concise walkthrough of how to upgrade an HDD in the machine you're looking at.

Personally I would be happy to do that but you may not. If you are then great, if not then you might want to consider making the full investment immediately, considering the additional cost of an SSD, and the tools required, should you want to do it in the future.

One thing to note, it clearly states that "Remember that if an SSD was not installed in these models at the time of purchase, it will not have the needed connector to install one later." so that might make your mind up for you anyway...

Hope that helps

Thanks
Mark

 

[RogerS]

There's an article in this months MacFormat on making your own external 250GB SSD drive.

 

[TrimTheKing]

There's an article in this months MacFormat on making your own external 250GB SSD drive.

Interesting, but knowing no more than you've just said, I would say it's pointless! The idea of SSD is fast access storage on a fast connection cable. An external one would be USB connected I would guess, which would be many time slower than than the actual drive connector were it inside the machine, negating the benefits.

Would work fine as an external storage drive but not realistic in terms of large day to day speed gains. Happy to be proven wrong though, as I say, just basing that on the one sentence you wrote.

Cheers
Mark

 

[RogerS]

Usb 3 is pretty quick


Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

 

[TrimTheKing]

Usb 3 is pretty quick


Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

Yep but woefully under clocked vs its theoretical maximum (5Gbps) because most chipsets suck balls! SATA III (or eSATA) will do 6GBPS guaranteed because the controllers run at that speed. USB3 is max 5GBPS but from what I've read mostly runs closer to 3Gbps.

Still not slow, but as I said, not fast enough to realistically look to replace an OS drive used externally.

Cheers
Mark

 

[Wizard9999]

Hi Terry

Watch this video, the first video as you scroll down the page, for a very concise walkthrough of how to upgrade an HDD in the machine you're looking at.

Personally I would be happy to do that but you may not. If you are then great, if not then you might want to consider making the full investment immediately, considering the additional cost of an SSD, and the tools required, should you want to do it in the future.

One thing to note, it clearly states that "Remember that if an SSD was not installed in these models at the time of purchase, it will not have the needed connector to install one later." so that might make your mind up for you anyway...

Hope that helps

Thanks
Mark

Almost stopped watching when it said it was 5 star advanced, but to be honest when I did watch it taking the glass off looked the scariest bit. Ultimately the bigger challenge for me would be what wasn't shown, ie getting all the programmes etc. onto the new hard drive. I think in reality I would end up getting somebody else to do it for me.

Re the point on connections, am I reading you correctly when I say that if an SSD is an option for the machine at the time I buy it whether I have an SSD or not it will ave the necessary connections for a future upgrade?

Terry.

 

[TrimTheKing]

Hi Terry

Getting the apps back on is the EASIEST part of the whole thing, but yes if you're not au fait then probably easiest to get help.

No, totally the opposite, what it's saying is that if you don't specify an SSD when you have it built then you're f*cked as it will not have the necessary connections inside it to add one later. So in summary, buy an SSD at the start (small one if cost is the limiting factor) or accept that you won't be able to put one in down the line…

Cheers
Mark

 

[AndyP]

As I am probably the least geekie of all the Apple users here I am reluctant to say too much but all this talk of SSD drives makes me wonder if a "normal" user really needs one. Is a 1tb HDD really noticeably slower than my half full 500gb ?

I don't wish to muddy the waters but I do so wish I was close enough for Terry to see a iMac in the real world.

If I had to replace mine today I would buy the extra RAM to get it to 16GB and stick with the 1TB HDD

It is actually cheaper than the first Mac I bought in 2006!

 

[9fingers]

The advantage of SSD is more about reliability really and I'd have thought unless Apple are marking them up significantly, the incremental cost of SSD over HDD should be dwarfed by the higher purchase cost of the Mac itself.
I would not fit a huge drive in the computer itself but instead keep all those older ( big) docs on a network drive safely backed up.

 

[RogerS]

..... Is a 1tb HDD really noticeably slower than my half full 500gb ?

....

Not sure I follow you, Andy. The answer to what you have written is that they are both nominally as fast as each other (assuming similar drive technology).

Or do you mean a Fusion drive? In which case the answer is a most definite Yes...at least for me.

 

[Wizard9999]

..... Is a 1tb HDD really noticeably slower than my half full 500gb ?

....

Not sure I follow you, Andy. The answer to what you have written is that they are both nominally as fast as each other (assuming similar drive technology).

Or do you mean a Fusion drive? In which case the answer is a most definite Yes...at least for me.

So the Fusion drive is slower than a normal hard drive? Now I am getting confused.

Terry.

 

[Wizard9999]

...the incremental cost of SSD over HDD should be dwarfed by the higher purchase cost of the Mac itself.

It is similar to my thoughts on woodwork tools, absolute price is not a limiting factor, but you just have to draw a line somewhere.

I would not fit a huge drive in the computer itself but instead keep all those older ( big) docs on a network drive safely backed up.

Sounds sensible Bob, except Mark has recently made a recent case for cloud back-up which means I don't need an external back-up disk :? .

Terry.

 

[Wizard9999]

No, totally the opposite, what it's saying is that if you don't specify an SSD when you have it built then you're f*cked as it will not have the necessary connections inside it to add one later. So in summary, buy an SSD at the start (small one if cost is the limiting factor) or accept that you won't be able to put one in down the line…

So no need to worry about changing the hard drive then, as if I want an SSD I have to get one to start with or it is not an option. Well at least that simplifies the decision in terms of permutations.

Terry.

 

[RogerS]

No terry. Fusion drives are faster.

Backing up an iMac to the cloud is just plain daft IMO. As I pointed out in another post, to restore my iMac will take a week! You will also hammer your ISP download bandwidth and may even get capped. And, of course, over 5GB you have to pay a monthly rental for more storage.

And iCloud won't back up your entire iMac as far as I can see. Certainly not the Apps unless that option is missing from my iCloud options.

Backup to an external drive - they are cheap as chips.

Neither do I rate Time Machine. Use something like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner

 

[RogerS]

Terry, just to embellish a little on backing up a Mac.

You can just backup your data, of course. Documents and letters. Photos. Music (stored in iTunes) etc and all three options mentioned above will work -

iCloud (given the caveats about cost of storage, speed of upload and download when restoring etc. I'd also flag up the fact that on the Apple communities there are quite a few people who have had and continue to have trouble using iCloud)

backing up to an external hard drive using either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner - for an easier user interface I prefer SuperDuper. The advantage of these types of programs is that you can set up a schedule to backup overnight. They can also be set to just back up new data files and/or any data files that have been changed. What is called 'incremental backup'.

Time Machine which has the added advantage in that you can go back in time and recover a document that you just accidentally deleted....or recover an earlier version of the document before you made the latest changes. This is because Time Machine gives you 'version' backup. It is very useful in the following scenario. You've just opened a template of a letter and used it to create a new letter. But instead of using Option-S to give it a new filename, one has hit Apple-S and overwritten the template! With Time Machine you can go back in Time and recover that template as it was an hour ago. Or two hours ago. A day ago. A week ago.

NB...Time Capsule is the hard drive system that Apple would like to sell you on which to run Time Machine. However, you can run it on other external hard drives.

The drawback with Time Machine is that it's not that reliable. The forums are full of the "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you" which is very economical with the truth. The truth is "This is Time Machine here and I just screwed up nuclear fashion and have lost all your past backups. It will take 18 hours to rebuild and make a new backup of your system. That happened to me recently and is why I have decided to only use TM for those 'Damn, I just over-wrote the template' situations.

OR....a BIG OR

you can backup your entire machine and so if your iMac hard drive decides to go AWOL, you get the iMac fixed and then restore the replacement hard drive from the backup. Even better, you can make a bootable backup of your iMac and it is dead easy to boot up from it to check that your backup is fully operational. You simply hold down the Option key at start up and using the cursor keys, select the hard drive that has the backup on it (with certain hardware spec provisos but that's a detail).

Going back to the three options, as I see it...

iCloud - you can't

external hard drive - most definitely yes, especially with USB 2 or 3 machines and a new iMac. Use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner

Time machine - yes, in theory. Provided you have a Recovery Partition on your iMac...actually, to be honest, I've never been able to recover a complete system from Time Machine - mainly because it's so damn slow.

So hope the above helps a bit. if not, just shout.

What do I use ? Both of our iMacs have external standalone Firewire drives (because our Macs have that interface). We use SuperDuper on an overnight schedule and in the morning, on the screen is the report telling us that backup worked OK. I will periodically boot up from the backup to check it's OK.

We also have belt'n'braces because the one flaw in the backup strategy above is that if anything happened to the house then both backup and computers could go up in smoke. Or get nicked. (That is one advantage of backing up data to iCloud - namely, the backup is offsite). So what have I done?

In the workshop, I happen to have an elderly MacBook Pro. I have attached to that an external hard drive and partitioned it up - one for a bootable backup of my wife's computer and one for mine. I then use Carbon Copy Cloner (SuperDuper lacks this remote backup functionality) and, again, on a schedule overnight, it backs up those files that have changed.

So in the event of a fire, theft etc, we can buy a couple of new iMacs (yes, please !!) and within an hour or so, restored them from our backups.

It can also take a long time to go back in time to the recovery date you are after.

 

[Wizard9999]

Thanks for taking the time to provide a really comprehensive post, very much appreciated. I'll take a bit of timing thinking and digest it.

Terry.

 

[AndyP]

Have you got a houseful of Macs yet Terry?

 

[Wizard9999]

Have you got a houseful of Macs yet Terry?

Well, we have a new iPad Pro for my daughter for school work. It was a painful experience to the main caused by some sales patter from the Apple store that was just plain factually incorrect. Fortunately I have had a lot of help from the head of IT at my daughter's school and the specific issue around being able to access files at home and school is now fixed. I wanted to get the iPad problems sorted out first, but guess I will push the button on the main home Mac soon, but I have had to get over the annoyance resulting from the incorrect guidance from the people at the Apple store before I could bring myself to send them more of my money.

Terry.

 

[AndyP]

Have you got a houseful of Macs yet Terry?

Well, we have a new iPad Pro for my daughter for school work. It was a painful experience to the main caused by some sales patter from the Apple store that was just plain factually incorrect. Fortunately I have had a lot of help from the head of IT at my daughter's school and the specific issue around being able to access files at home and school is now fixed. I wanted to get the iPad problems sorted out first, but guess I will push the button on the main home Mac soon, but I have had to get over the annoyance resulting from the incorrect guidance from the people at the Apple store before I could bring myself to send them more of my money.

Terry.

So apart from the duff info what's is yours and your daughters opinions on the iPad?

 

[Wizard9999]

So apart from the duff info what's is yours and your daughters opinions on the iPad?

Well, Andy, I of course have no opinion as I am not allowed on it :lol: .

Now we are past the issues I think she is very happy with it, though she was very upset at one point to the extent that she was in floods of tears saying she should have got a laptop (which was our initial plan). I am sure I am not alone in coming down rather hard on anyone who upsets one of my kids that much, so some of my interactions with the Apple store were... robust.

She was able to load MSOffice onto it using the school's licence (again great help from the school's head of IT) and with the addition of one of the Apple magic keypads that seems to work very well for her. From the little I have seen (I have had a sneaky look when she was out) the screen resolution is very good compared to my now aged original iPad.

Terry.

 

[RogerS]

When you come to bite the bullet, Terry, don't forget to check out the Apple Refurb store for a bargain. And don;t be put off by the word Refurb...these Macs are as good as new.

 

[AndyP]

So apart from the duff info what's is yours and your daughters opinions on the iPad?

Well, Andy, I of course have no opinion as I am not allowed on it :lol: .

Now we are past the issues I think she is very happy with it, though she was very upset at one point to the extent that she was in floods of tears saying she should have got a laptop (which was our initial plan). I am sure I am not alone in coming down rather hard on anyone who upsets one of my kids that much, so some of my interactions with the Apple store were... robust.

She was able to load MSOffice onto it using the school's licence (again great help from the school's head of IT) and with the addition of one of the Apple magic keypads that seems to work very well for her. From the little I have seen (I have had a sneaky look when she was out) the screen resolution is very good compared to my now aged original iPad.

Terry.

Always difficult with kids to match their expectations. I think my oldest would have preferred an iPad over the laptop she was given for Xmas. Interesting that the school have MSOffice for Mac licences. If the school had the same here I might have been tempted but they are very firmly Windoze. She changes school in September so I'll be interested to see if there will be a change in policy.

 

[Rod]

Cannot remember if it was this thread or another about upgrading.
I've just bought a 2 1/2" 960GB SSD for £160 which I think is a very good price?

Rod

 

[Rod]

Finally got around to fitting the SSD - boy what a difference it makes, a massive improvement - things really whiz along.
Upgrading the RAM to 8Gb didn't make much improvement but this upgrade really does.
I have being trialling Apple's video editing software Final Cut Pro X, which struggled at times with frequent "wheels of death" but now no sign of them with the processes working many times faster.
Money well spent [emoji4].

Rod

 

[RogerS]

Rod, glad to hear of your success and also please that you've proved my own thoughts re SSD's. It depends on the program that you are using. SSD's come into their own if you need to do a lot of page swapping....editing and processing video files is a prime example as you've found out.

With the programs that I use, I find that all I need do is keep an eye on Memory Pressure as displayed by Activity Monitor. It takes ages to creep up to a point where a restart is advantageous. Usually it happens with some heavily graphic/video laden webpage and Safari seems reluctant to give up the RAM when you leave the page.

 

[Rod]

At one stage I'd thought I'd killed it - everything dead during the Superduper transfer - turned out I'd accidentally pulled the power plug from its socket and the battery was flat. Doh!
In my panic I looked at new prices, the £500 they charge for a bigger drive 250 to 500 is a bit steep especially as my 1Tb cost only £160? Also cannot understand why they don't go that high especially with data hungry processes like video editing etc.
I think I read the new ones come with their HDs soldered in making upgrading very difficult?
I've been trialling Final Cut as it can automatically sync video and audio tracks from different sources - very difficult on iMovie even using the handclap (clapperboard) routine. It's not cheap at £229 but you cannot buy Premiere Pro - you have to rent it at £220/yr.

Rod

 

[RogerS]

Rod

You might find this thread interesting (Synchronising-audio-and-video-from-multiple-sources)

 

[Rod]

Thanks Roger - a lot of that washed over me but an interesting read.
I tried to do it with iMovie and was 99% successful - I was doing a picture within a picture and the sync faults in the small screen were not that noticeable? But trying to match up sound waves is not that easy especially as I was recording a show and couldn't really start clapping my hands in the middle of the audience to give a sharp sound wave reference. Never realised that's what the clapperboard was mainly used for in film making.
FCPX and PP do it automatically by matching up the sound waves making the process very simple.
There's other bits of software that will do it too like Plural Eyes but they are not cheap $299!!
There's a video on utube where it shows 30 separate tracks being sync'd using FCPX - very clever stuff though I don't think I want to go that far?
My Last shoot I used 2cameras - one recording the whole stage and another for close ups etc.
I'd also like to buy a separate sound recorder as the camera ones have a lot of limitations but that's another slippery slope!

Rod