Tag: Apple

Polishing the Apple

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
An old MacBook Pro gets a new SSD.

Well, sir, I guess I showed that Tim Cook feller where the bear shit in the buckwheat.

After Apple decided to jack up its prices, instead of buying a new MacBook Air suitable for walkabouts (if only around the house), I finally got around to bumping up the storage in my 2014 MacBook Pro.

This is the 13-inch model, and I was pinching pennies when I bought it Back in the Day®, going for the base configuration: 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5 processor; 8 GB SDRAM (which could be doubled at purchase but not afterward); and just 128 GB of flash storage.

What the hell, I thought. I’ll be using it during road trips. How much storage does a dog at large need?

More, as it turns out. That bargain-basement SSD got stuffed like a holiday turkey in fairly short order, throwing a significant hitch into the old MBP’s gitalong. After road trips became a less-frequent thing it wound up parked in my “studio” as a dedicated podcasting/video Mac, with a 24-inch LG display, Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, mic, headphones, audio recorder, and a couple of external drives to handle the internal overflow.

Not exactly a mobile unit. More like up on blocks.

But then so was its big brother, a 15-inch MBP, also from 2014. Once my Main Mac, it has 16 GB of SDRAM, a 500 GB SSD, and a dead display thanks to a local Apple “Genius” who FUBARed it a couple years back while replacing a dying battery.

“Due to the complex nature of this installation, OWC recommends that this battery replacement be performed by a trained professional,” advised Other World Computing, my go-to source for Apple bits and fix-it tips. I followed their advice and took it to one, but shit, I could’ve fucked it up myself and saved a few bucks. More than a few.

The botched MacSurgery turned my baby into a 500 GB SSD with a keyboard and trackpad, sharing another 24-inch external LG display with a 1999 G4 AGP Graphics Power Mac, and the less said about that Rube Goldberg clusterfuck the better because I don’t wanna jinx it. All this stuff is old, like me, but none of us is dead. Yet.

Still, the inexorable march to the grave seems like more of a sprint these days, so in a moment of weakness I acquired a modern MacBook Pro for what little heavy lifting I still do. It’s a 14-inch M4 Pro model from 2024 — 24 GB of memory and a 1 TB SSD — plugged into another LG display, with external keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc. So it’s likewise a desktop that can become a laptop if need be, which mostly it doesn’t.

But sometimes I get sick of the office and want to move around the house without stripping that beast down for travel. Maybe I want to stand for a while in the kitchen come morning, tsk-tsking the news with a cup of joe next to the Mac on the counter. When I get tired of standing there’s a comfy couch in the living room. Also, a chair with footstool facing a picture window that takes in the backyard maple and a slice of the Sandias. A large table in the dining room. Patio furniture for when the back yard isn’t overrun by terrorist skeeters.

So the other day I finally bit the bullet, dug out the 1TB SSD I bought from OWC — what, two, three years ago? — and replaced the stock drive in my old 13-inch road-tripper from 2014, installing a fresh copy of the “newest” OS it can handle, Big Sur (11.7.11).

I am no Genius, as all y’all already know. Shucks, I will never even be smart. But I’ve gotten under the hood of almost every Mac I’ve ever owned, starting with that SE from way back when in Santa Fe.

The things were easy to wrench on for a few years, even for a guy with five thumbs on each hand. Which was good, because I was often far from an actual Apple mechanic and/or too strapped to pay him. Thus I installed drives (disks, DVD, Zip), added memory, plugged in Airport cards, upgraded processors and video cards, and like that there.

I can afford professional assistance now, when and if I can find it, and even new machinery (see “14-inch M4 Pro” above). But frankly, for the kind of “work” I do these days — blogging via browser using DSL, some basic image capture and manipulation, etc. — the ’spensive new machinery just isn’t that much better than the old gear long since paid for.

Plus I like to assign myself these little penances from time to time, gauge whether I have any mad skillz left to me atall atall or have I finally become a doddering old fool, one slip-and-fall away from a lumpy cot with a thin blankie in The Home.

So it’s reassuring to learn that I can still manage a bit of simple MacSurgery without electrocuting myself, burning down the house, or killing the patient.

Of course, if I did botch the job, well … there’s still the 11-inch 2012 MacBook Air.

May the Farce be with you.

Mac Van Winkle

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
Even the tree seems to be reaching for something out of its grasp.

Anybody else having a hard time waking up all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?

Maybe it’s a side effect from 10 days of snotlocker drugs. Could be the time change and tonight’s Beaver Moon. But my eyes didn’t open until after 6 a.m. this morning, which is a rarity in these, my Golden Years.

I know it’s not the avalanche of inanities we call the news, because I’ve been ignoring that shit. Oh, I’ll lift the lid for a peek now and then, but the smell is usually a dead giveaway. There’s something down there you don’t need to see.

Speaking of things best left unexamined, after the Great Power Failure I decided to rearrange the tech around here rather than buy a new Mac to replace the 15-inch 2014 MacBook Pro that our local Apple Store “Genius Bar” demoted from a functional laptop into a half-assed desktop while replacing its battery.

So, now, the 15-inch MBP awaits teardown and recycling. The 13-inch 2014 MBP has replaced it in my office, hooked to a 24-inch LG external display and a couple external drives because it has next to no internal storage (I pinched pennies on memory and storage because it was my road-tripper in the Before-Time). And the 11-inch 2012 MacBook Air, which was for traveling seriously light, has replaced the 13-inch MBP on keyboards in the world-famous Infernal Hound Sound podcasting studio.

Both have been updated to the latest versions of macOS they can handle (Big Sur and Catalina, respectively). But man, I gotta admit, these Macs were price/performance compromises from the get-go. And in 2024, it kinda shows.

The MBP rocks a 2.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 chip, while the MBA runs a 2 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7. Both have just 8GB of memory, minimal on-board storage, and a shortage of ports. And they’ve been rudely awakened all these years later to find that things have … changed.

Hey, I can dig it. Shit looks a little different to me, too. And I can’t always keep up, either.

Y’think Apple will sell me a new Mac and a new me?

A sinus of The Times?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
I’ve long had a nose for news, but a nose from news?

Seasonal allergies may be associated with mood disorders like anxiety or depression, according to The New York Times.

Huh. And here I’d thought my mood had become disordered due to the pain in my ass, an ailment I contracted from reading The New York Times.

I shouldn’t pick on The Ould Gray Hoor here. Anxiety, depression, and ass pain can be acquired just about anywhere, from the lowliest blog (thanks for reading) to the self-anointed Newspaper of Record.

Lately we are presented with a sitting president going all Oprah on his studio audience — Look under your seats! Debt forgiveness for you! No arms for them! — and his predecessor snoozing through court dates, occasionally waking to flash the stink-eye around the room or curse a porn-star paramour. A third candidate for the job has a brain worm, a slow, underhand pitch not even I can take a swing at.

Two rappers are said to be “beefing,” which seems to mean “talking shit about each other from a safe distance.” You’d think these two gents might bump into each other at some social event, like the Met Gala — which is still getting coverage three days later — and then what? An X-slap followed by a virtual duel? Mics at 10 paces?

Speaking of talking shit, slaps, and mics, the House of Reprehensibles gave the back of the hand it wasn’t using to write the Liberty in Laundry Act, the Refrigerator Freedom Act, and the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act (HOOHAA) to the Creature from the White Lagoon for trying to topple Squeaker Mikey Mouse (hey, if you can’t legislate, defenestrate). MTG couldn’t even get the window cracked, much less toss Mikey out of it. Nevertheless she drew reporters like a dead dog draws … well, reporters. (Hi, Kristi Noem!)

Shoot, we can’t even get a new iPad without drama. Not that I want one.

When not blowing my nose or shifting uncomfortably in my chair I wonder whether in the race to become all things to all people at all times the media have become “a dildo that has turned berserkly upon its owner,” to misuse a Thomas McGuane quote.

McGuane was talking about America. And in some small sense, I suppose, so am I. Back to you, Chet.

Tech-no!-logy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

The 2021 iPhone 13 Mini. Cute little kitty-cat not included.

Anyone queuing up for the new Apple gadgets this morning?

Me neither.

I have this fine 2021 iPhone 13 Mini here, which I had to snap with the 2016 iPad Pro, since I no longer have any actual cameras in the vicinity.

The iPad is practically useless — I was pinching pennies when I bought it and went for the 32GB of storage, which is of course full to overflowing despite my ruthless purging of apps, data, pix, music, etc.

It still works, but to no particular purpose, like the U.S. House of Reprehensibles, and I don’t expect to ever buy another.

Remember, kids: You can never be too rich or too thin, or have too much storage and memory.

Speaking of things that don’t work as they should, no further intel from WordPress. WP was good enough to send me a note proposing that I upgrade to their Business plan to “unlock a set of amazing features,” among them “live chat support for on-demand help from our global team of Happiness Engineers.”

This, like a new iPad — and commenting on the blog without having to buy a postcard, slap a stamp on it, and hand it over to the U.S. Mail — is another non-starter.

The Bloviator

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

It takes talent to step on your own dick without getting out of the car.

Herself is a huge fan of the original “Arthur” flick, the one starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli.

Me, I can take it or leave it, but I must admit that the thing is chock-full of quotable quotes. Pretty much any line delivered by Sir John Gielgud is a keeper.

But you have to know your audience when you cite a 41-year-old flick about a wealthy rumpot, horndog, and all-round dilettante — as Tony “The Blevinator” Blevins learned when he riffed on an Arthurism for a TikTok creator.

TikToker Daniel Mac spotted Blevins — Apple’s hard-charging vice president for procurement — in a high-zoot Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren at a California car show, and asked Blevins what he did for a living.

And like Arthur, Blevins was off to the races, quipping:

“I have rich cars, play golf and fondle big-breasted women, but I take weekends and major holidays off.”

Oof. What Arthur said was:

“I race cars, play tennis, and fondle women, But! I have weekends off, and I am my own boss.”

Frankly, it wasn’t that funny in 1981. And The Bloviator’s updated take on it really fell flat at Apple, which showed Blevins the door. And not to his McLaren, either. Turns out he was not his own boss.

A tip of the hat to MacRumors, which is where I first saw the story.