The Apple Thread - The Bear and Badger

Diluted Dante

Ive never binned a working one.

I have multiple old monitors and TV's still.

Jaco

Yup. Sell, recycle or donate, always.

poprock

Yossarian wrote:

Fingers crossed that Apple will extend their iPhone buyback programme to Macs and othe manufacturers will follow suit.

They’ve been offering that for years. They don’t pay very much though – putting my Mac Mini’s serial number into the system, they offer less than thirty quid.

Jaco

poprock wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

Fingers crossed that Apple will extend their iPhone buyback programme to Macs and othe manufacturers will follow suit.

They’ve been offering that for years. They don’t pay very much though – putting my Mac Mini’s serial number into the system, they offer less than thirty quid.

Crikey. That's... low. 2012 i7 Mac Minis are still going for £500-ish (depending on spec) on eBay. Even the dreaded CEX would be a better option.

poprock

Yep. I don’t think Apple really want to deal with recycling things. They just want to be able to say they offer it.

Yossarian

They could do that without offering any cash back at all.

And of course these aren’t great deals, but they may just be good enough to convince someone who would otherwise have binned their macs to take them into the shop when getting a replacement.

yourfavouriteuncle

I threw an old, non working, iMac out of a 2nd floor window once. I was hoping for rock star style implosion instead we just had a bit of glass and plastic to clear up during the morning comedown. Everything else gets sold or gifted now.

Yossarian

Kernowgaz wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

Yeah, that’s the other alternative. It’s also worth mentioning that the AirServer app will turn your Bone into a fully fledged Apple TV and Google Cast receiver for £17 and it works very well.

https://www.airserver.com/Xbox

I use it to stream music from my phone in the background of whatever I’m playing.

The Apple TV’s UX is a lot easier, however, especially as I haven’t bought a Bone media remote. Plus, the ATV is completely silent as far as I can tell and starts up incredibly quickly. Still, if you already have a Bone, those trade-offs might well be worth £150-odd that you’ll save by going down that route.

Using the Airserver on the XBox One can I cast Safari from my Iphone ? so I can basically cast football from iPhone to my Tv via the Xbox

I am typing this on my phone and reading it back off the TV thanks to AirServer which is a bloody awful experience but it does answer your question.

b0r1s

I hand down most of my Apple kit, because it generally lasts well. My daughter has my laptop from 2015, the fiancé has my old iPhone and I've handed down at least three iPads. I tend not to sell anything as I can't be arsed with eBay.

Kernowgaz

Yossarian wrote:

Kernowgaz wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

Yeah, that’s the other alternative. It’s also worth mentioning that the AirServer app will turn your Bone into a fully fledged Apple TV and Google Cast receiver for £17 and it works very well.

https://www.airserver.com/Xbox

I use it to stream music from my phone in the background of whatever I’m playing.

The Apple TV’s UX is a lot easier, however, especially as I haven’t bought a Bone media remote. Plus, the ATV is completely silent as far as I can tell and starts up incredibly quickly. Still, if you already have a Bone, those trade-offs might well be worth £150-odd that you’ll save by going down that route.

Using the Airserver on the XBox One can I cast Safari from my Iphone ? so I can basically cast football from iPhone to my Tv via the Xbox

I am typing this on my phone and reading it back off the TV thanks to AirServer which is a bloody awful experience but it does answer your question.

Thanks. I tried it last night and it worked , cheers.

[Deleted User]

Before I start this post, can I just make it clear that I do not want lectured on backing things up, and any comments about lessons learned, even in jest, will not be taken kindly. I would like practical answers only, please.

I own a Mac Mini. Last week it died. I’ll put the lead up to it dying below, but that’s a distraction right now. It has died, and it has taken me a number of days to get through the supposedly simple process of installing macOS onto an external drive and getting it running.

I have opened Disk Utility and tried running First Aid on the internal drive, but there are a number of missing thread IDs (which apparently means corrupted drive/data) and the First Aid fails.

While a lot of my documents are backed up to the cloud, I have a large number of photographs which were on the desk top, waiting for sorting before I did anything with them. (Yes, I know there is (now) an option to back up the desktop to the cloud, but I apparently did not have that set up.) Basically, it’s pretty important for me to get as much data off of that corrupted hard drive as I can.

• Is there any point in me taking my Mac Mini into the Apple Store for technical support? Does anyone have experience of that?

• Has anyone used a company for data recovery that they can recommend?

How it died: A short while ago, I saw What We Do In The Shadows on the iTunes Store for £1.99. I thought I had it already, but when I checked, no. So I bought it. But it was bugging me for a few days, and when I checked back my purchase history (I knew I’d watched it on a particular holiday, so was able to check the month) there it was. After a lengthy exchange with Apple (I think the first customer service assistant was deliberately avoiding my questions, knowing what was coming after deleting the newer purchase from my library and refunding £1.99) the end result was basically, “The version available changed, we removed the old one from your account, no, we’re not giving you back the new version, not our problem, fuck you.” I pointed out, repeatedly, that they actively encouraged deleting movie files to save room on your computer, but they just shut me off. So, I started downloading my iTunes library to move onto either an external drive or into the cloud, but apparently I asked for too many to download. It’s filled up the internal HDD, which has now shat the bed.

pantyfire

If it's dead, dead then you could try taking the drive out of the Mac mini and then popping it into one of these and then manually going through the drive.
I suspect that's what a file recovery service would try first of all.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/hard-drive-docking-station

I've done it with two 'dead' drives in the past and it's worked a charm, the drives were actually ok in the end and have been used as external backups.

g.man

I've had two similar things happen with iMacs over the years.

Many years ago, The external drive attached to iMac1 failed. The Apple Store sold me disc recovery software. Didn't cost that much in the grand scheme of things. Maybe £60-80 quid. This magical program enabled me to recover virtually everything from the broken drive, which included my entire massive iTunes library. It took three whole days of watching a progress bar, but I got it all back.

Years later, iMac2 died. It's my business machine, so this is a very bad thing.
I carted the whole thing into The Apple Store, bought a new iMac, connected the two together in store, and didn't leave until everything had successfully transferred to the new iMac. It took an entire day (including late closing), but fair play to the staff, they'd assign someone to guard it every time I left the store for a coffee/fag/food.
Everything I'd lost did end up on the new machine. Job done.

So, in short, yes, The Apple Store (in my experience) can be a helpful place when the shit hits the fan.

[Deleted User]

Cheers, gents.

pantyfire

FYI my old boss has had two Mac's die on him - no boot up. I pulled the drive and used that caddy thing and recovered all his files on both occasions.
With Gs second story, he has essentially done the same thing by turning the old Mac into an external drive using target disk mode.

poprock

Target disc mode has saved my arse on many occasions.

[Deleted User]

Sat in an Apple Shop waiting to see a "Genius". I know how to spend a Friday night.

x

[Deleted User]

Roughly 18 other people waiting too. So much for "It Just Works."

[Deleted User]

This entire store is a nightmarish vision of style over substance. I can't imagine hating any shop more.

[Deleted User]

And it's in Meadowhall. Internal Rage is dialled right up here.

x

[Deleted User]

All the Geniuses (Geni?) are getting all their answers from an iPad. FML.

Yossarian

Geniuses are Apple Certified technicians. They probably aren’t getting all their answers from their iPads.

Jaco

Yossarian wrote:

Geniuses are Apple Certified technicians.

I think the problem is that Apple Certified technicians are usually not geniuses.

[Deleted User]

Either or they are just addicted to them and only half listening to the customers then.

Twenty minutes past my appointment and still waiting. Full Patrick Bateman mode building.

Yossarian

Jaco wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

Geniuses are Apple Certified technicians.

I think the problem is that Apple Certified technicians are usually not geniuses.

The ones employed by Apple are. They have t-shirts to prove it.

poprock

I just had a perfectly nice experience with Apple support via online chat.

Bought an album on iTunes and one track wouldn’t download. Chat lady sorted it by giving me one song credit and telling me to log out, go buy the song, and log in again when it asked me to complete the purchase. Worked first time.

[Deleted User]

Attempting to charge me 25 quid because the date of manufacture is 1978. True Genius!

[Deleted User]

Ok ultimately a good experience. iPad says 25 quid but they are overriding it as both Apple Online and AppleCare had previously told me it was free.

x

Jaco

Yossarian wrote:

Jaco wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

Geniuses are Apple Certified technicians.

I think the problem is that Apple Certified technicians are usually not geniuses.

The ones employed by Apple are. They have t-shirts to prove it.

I have a t-shirt that says “Godzilla King of the Monsters”, but I am not a 300ft tall, fire breathing, giant moth clobbering Uber-lizard.

More’s the pity.

Paul the sparky

It'd make the hiking a bit of a non-event though.

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