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It helps to troubleshoot every little thing. The TV card wasn't seated properly. Re-inserting the card fixed everything.
I also reinstalled Vista again as part of the process, and I won't bother doing updates this time around. No point, as Daffodil is an offline PC.
I love foxes, especially the one in my avatar.
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There, just fixed the server from a recent backup. I hope all isn't lost, though I still have to do the same treatment with all of the other sites. :/
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Since the forum is back up now, I will go ahead and post how well the 2020 13'' Macbook Pro has been doing for me. So far, so good. Over the Independence Day holiday, I was able to spend a lot of time using this laptop and measure just how well it meets my standards and needs. Safe to say, it does meet them nicely. The 16GB of RAM helps keep performance high when loading a lot of tabs in Safari or having many apps open at once. And more recently I've been testing out external connectivity.
The first device I tried was an external USB DAC known as an "ADS Tech" Instant Music device. I found one of these at a rummage sale a few months ago in near mint condition, and it has stereo audio inputs and optical audio input as well. The device can output to both formats too, but I haven't tested that part out. Recording radio broadcasts was simple. All you need is the device and software like Audacity or Sound Studio, but I prefer the latter. And today, that HDMI recording device came in the mail and I've been spending most of the evening putting that through it's paces. I will have a more detailed review in the coming days. On Windows, you use OBS or other suitable recording software, but on macOS, you use QuickTime. The HDMI dongle is listed as a USB video camera and audio device. Select those as the recording source in QuickTime, and you can save content from any HDMI source in MPEG-4 format with a .MOV extension.
As for heat, well, the MacBook can get a bit warm when under a load. This happens when recording content from the HDMI device or encoding an MP3 file which for some reason, Sound Studio used the LAME codec rather than the macOS one, and it's slow when encoding a lengthy file. Saving to M4A is much faster. Basic web browsing doesn't tend to heat up the Macbook as much as the other tasks, and for the most part, is very snappy and responsive. As for the touch bar, it's a Nintendo-esque gimmick more than anything. I only ever use it to adjust the volume.
Connectivity is okay, but Apple could have put in two additional USB-C ports on the right. Good example is using an external USB device like the HDMI dongle. I have a USB-C/Thunderbolt to standard USB adapter connected to one port, while the other is plugged into the AC adapter. Only way to connect a flash drive while using another device is to disconnect the power adapter to plug in the flash drive with my other USB-C adapter. The adapters themselves aren't a big deal... just the lack of ports. I think the 15'' MBPs do have four USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, but they still should have did the same with the 13'' models too.
One of the reasons Apple is moving to their own chips is heat. Apple is guilty of not providing adequate cooling solutions to their laptops in recent years, but Intel might share some blame too. Intel can't seem to meet Apple's demands in making a cooler more energy efficient CPU, and one of the touted benefits of the ARM transition is more performance while using less power and generating less heat. It's nearly identical reasoning to why Apple abandoned PowerPC in 2006. And to that end, I might have the very last in a series of 13'' MBPs with Intel. The latest rumor is that the first Mac to get the ARM chip will be a new 13'' MBP later this year.
I love foxes, especially the one in my avatar.
(This post was last modified: 07-14-2020, 11:10 AM by
cpd2009.)
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Though of course one major issue with the x86-to-ARM transition is with existing AAA games being no longer supported and/or the barrier to entry with porting them to ARM Macs, and the costs associated with purchasing an ARM Mac for developing iOS applications.
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Oh... were you able to download those sample HDMI recordings I sent you via FB? I know your internet tends to suck at times, so I tried to keep the file sizes as small as possible. I do need to make a longer 1080p sample recording and compress it to a usable size.
I love foxes, especially the one in my avatar.