Random thoughts.... [Tech Edition]

If you mean the machines at my uni, it's iMacs, and they are 2011 models, but even a brand new non-Retina 21.5" iMac (which I presume is usually sold for educational purposes only, even if you can buy them privately here) comes with a 5400 rpm drive. Heck, doing a bit of research, even if you opt for the 4K display, you still get the 1TB 5400 rpm drive on the basic 4K model.

When it comes to MacBooks, I believe the last one with mechanical HDD's were Mid 2012 non-Retinas. Unfortunately, those were also the last models with (somewhat) easily replaceable RAM and batteries...
 
Can apple genius bar people swap drives? Theres a 2011 iMac upstairs in the office that has sat unused for years. I want to use it but want to swap the 1TB HDD with an SSD and I don't want to personally damage the machine taking it apart.
 
Can apple genius bar people swap drives? Theres a 2011 iMac upstairs in the office that has sat unused for years. I want to use it but want to swap the 1TB HDD with an SSD and I don't want to personally damage the machine taking it apart.
Pretty sure Apple won’t do it but third party stores might.
 
Swapping the hard drive in a '11 iMac should be fairly easy. Back in those days Apple designed the hardware for user serviceability - I had zero issues doing the same HDD-SSD swap and RAM upgrade in my '09 polycarbonate Macbook a while ago.
 
I'm guessing these are older machines. I think when it comes to laptops Apple doesn't sell any with spinners anymore.

I checked when I wrote the post earlier. The base spec iMac still has a terabyte spinning drive. It’s ridiculous.

And yes, Apple’s laptops are all SSD, as they damn well should be. Not that there’s enough room in any them for a spinner anyway.
 
Swapping the hard drive in a '11 iMac should be fairly easy. Back in those days Apple designed the hardware for user serviceability - I had zero issues doing the same HDD-SSD swap and RAM upgrade in my '09 polycarbonate Macbook a while ago.
The screen has to come out. The glass is held on by magnets and metal clips along the chin. Pull with a suction cup along the top edge until the magnets let go, then slid it up and away. After that you have the naked LCD panel, screwed to the chassis. When the screws are out, you’ll have to lift the panel out of the chassis and simultaneously disconnect the wires from the logic board.

It’s perfectly doable if a bit nerve-wracking.

Working on a MacBook is way easier because you don’t need to manhandle a naked 27” LCD panel.
 
Do you have "smart home" products, especially ones which open locks? Have you thought about the security of them? Think again...

 
Do you have "smart home" products, especially ones which open locks? Have you thought about the security of them? Think again...

This right there is the reason I don’t have any of that stuff. Even when looking at nanny cams I insisted we don’t buy Arlo or anything like that. Instead I got a bunch of Foscams with an NVR, firewalled them off the internet and set up a VPN tunnel for off-site access.
 
The security of the lock only needs to exceed the security of the material. Usually people just break a window.
 
The security of the lock only needs to exceed the security of the material. Usually people just break a window.
That’s loud, obvious and attracts attention, simply unlocking the door like you belong is way more subtle.

This is not the most realistic vector of attack it requires too much equipment and relies on line of sight. However it does expose that these devices are mostly designed for convenience not security.
 
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That’s loud, obvious and attracts attention, simply unlocking the door like you belong is way more subtle.

This is not the most realistic vector of attack it requires too much equipment and relies on line of sight. However it does expose that these devices are mostly designed for convenience not security.

Your use of the word designed makes it sound like they spent more than an hour slapping various parts together. I am certain that as soon as it did whatever primary function it was intended for, nobody thought, or even considered security.
 
Your use of the word designed makes it sound like they spent more than an hour slapping various parts together. I am certain that as soon as it did whatever primary function it was intended for, nobody thought, or even considered security.
Some companies are better than others but by and large you are right
 
My fuel card (which is a basic Mastercard issued by a fuel chain) comes with an app. The biggest reason I even have this card is for Apple Pay since my bank doesn't support it. The app allows you to pre-pay your fuel before even getting out of your car, among other things.

So I went to buy a tank of diesel and a wash today. I open the app and get greeted by the login screen. Apparently they pushed a new version which, again, means I had to sign in. This is a fairly convoluted process involving my electronic ID and whatnot.

Why is this so difficult for some devs to get right? I was only moderately annoyed at having to do all of this while parked in front of the car wash (thankfully nobody had pulled up behind me) but some people I know would simply have decided not to use the app ever again.
 
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some people I know would simply have decided not to use the app ever again.
I am those people. Had a similar experience with Plex one time. This was a few years ago when they completely rewrote the iOS version of their app to have automated background sync, which still doesn’t work right. Since there was no bg sync what I would do was the night before manually kick off sync and in the morning grab my ipad knowing I had stuff to watch. Well the app updated overnight and now required you to login to use, which of course required internet connection, of course I discovered that on a train platform that had no wi-fi so I couldn’t access stuff that was already there. If it weren’t for the fact that there is basically no alternative to them I would have dumped them.
 
Facebook devs, on the other hand, seem to have mastered this. I can't remember ever being kicked out by the app or web site.
 
Why is the 5400 RPM iMac around? EDU for sure, I’m surrounded by these fuckers.
 
I have no idea. Everything else they make is SSD. Just put a 128GB in there and let the spinner die.
Especially considering that:
A - They are hella cheap
B - Everything is on some sort of a cloud so local storage is irrelevant

I have an interesting issue so to speak that requires a bit of a back story.

I have a Roku TV, and as it is obviously a streaming client it has network connectivity both wired and wireless, it also has what is called private listening mode which is ability to use either a networked remote or the remote app on your phone to stream audio to connected headphones as opposed to outputing it to speakers/soundbar. The feature is rather handy when everyone in the fam goes to bed at least 2 hours before you do.

I also recently got an XBone, which of course also has network ability also both wired and wireless and since everything is in the cloud these days that is how I get my games as opposed to physical disks.

Since 4k streams are rather large when I originally set up the TV I used a wired connection (I also had a slower wi-fi network at the time). So figuring that since my network is now 802.11ac and Xbone is pretty new and not wanting to run a wire to it I set it up for wi-fi. However the game downloads were rather slow (and they are big ass downloads) so I decided to switch it to wired and put TV on wi-fi. That didn't actually speed up game downloads that much as it appears their server is the actual bottleneck because even the Xbone built in speed test shows speed capability of at least 5x of what it runs at.

At first it didn't seem like the TV was much affected by being on wi-fi, that is aside from private listening going all wonky, it would get out of sync, randomly go silent, sometimes fail outright with a message. Last night was the worst so I switched the TV back to wired and the issues disappeared... I'm thinking that those big 4k streams are using up all the bandwidth so there isn't enough left for the audio stream. Not a huge deal obviously but is a little weird.
 
MS throttles the download speed to the Xbone. Beyond that, put a hub behind the TV and run wires to both.
 
MS throttles the download speed to the Xbone. Beyond that, put a hub behind the TV and run wires to both.
I considered adding another GigE switch there yes but since downloads are throttled significantly below the wi-fi’s capability anyway there isn’t much point to it.
 
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