A blog about music, IT and technology
Tonight I created an iPad MIDI control surface for the 8 step using tb midi stuff which I’ve talked about in previous posts.
Here is a link to version 0.1 of the template with just the very basics implemented. The 8 step has a surprising amount of depth to the midi control. Download
So after many years of use I’d decided to retire my 20″ 2007 iMac which was starting to show it’s age even with an upgrade to 4GB of ram and from an internal hard disk to SSD and the Superdrive replaced with a 1TB 2.5″ spinning disk.
After seeing the release video for the new iMac on the 17th my interest was piqued enough to pull the trigger and order one.
I wanted the 4Ghz i7 and really once you’ve gone SSD there is no going back, so I didn’t want to risk the fusion drive. (Apple’s software wrapper for an internal 1TB spinning disk and a 128GB PCI-E SSD.)
Instead I plumed for the 512GB SSD, 8GB of RAM with more ordered from Amazon. The one concession I made was to not get the upgraded graphics card, the AMD M295X, instead getting the base AMD M290X.
As it turns out, I am eligible for an educational discount and as such I’ve initiated a return to Apple of the machine I have with an almost identical one ordered with the upgraded M295X.
This gives me the perfect opportunity to benchmark both and compare the results.
Here is the first collection of results for the following benchmarks, unigine valley, unigine heaven, 3dmark firestrike running in both OS X yosemite and Windows 8.1 Enterprise running in boot camp where applicable.
The benchmarks are all run in the highest possible preset available in the free version. This is to ensure that the result are comparable to other machines and not obscured by a myriad of custom settings. I will try and do some hi-res benchmarks at some point as I understand that with this machine especially, there would be interest in this.
The Windows 8.1 benchmarks are something I’ve not seen may other places.
Machine
Late 2014 – 27″ iMac i7 4790K 4Ghz, 16GB, 512GB SSD, AMD M290X
Unigine Valley – Extreme HD – OS X – 1096
Unigine Valley – Extreme HD – Win 8.1 – 1302
Unigine Heaven – Extreme – OS X – 659
Unigine Heaven – Extreme – Win 8.1 – 841
3dMark Win 8.1 – 5319
You can watch the actual benchmarks and my commentary on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB01opLsNn0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EteZl9mYLOQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dIMurjxImU
You can also watch an incredibly unscientific video of my opening every app in the applications folder at once. (hint the iMac doesn’t break a sweat). Here
Well this will be a quick one. I just want to vent my rage at the poor quality of construction of apples new wunder-headphones.
I’ve had my iPhone 5 about 3 weeks and used the headphones a handful of times in that period. Leaving them at home most days. I plug them in this morning and the left headphone is now not working. Totally out of the blue.
No amount of wiggling of cables makes even the slightest amount of crackle making me suspect this is a cracked solder somewhere and not a damaged cable.
Not a happy bunny.
Yesterday was a sad day for me. It was the day that my trusty and hardworking Macbook Pro finally expired.
To be fair to it, I could have treated it better, it was grubby and worn at the edges, it’s aluminium bent and frayed from it’s short but brave life filled with perilous adventures. It had barely ever been allowed full REM sleep, only the type you get with one lid closed. Waiting eagerly to resume it’s task within seconds of my call.
It had done the donkey work of a beast much larger than itself after me having cast aside desktop computers two years ago after having quite spectacularly destroyed my previous one in a death worthy of a hero. A death filled with blue sparks and flame.
For one who had lived life on the precipitous edge its end as it would come had been somewhat underwhelming.
It was happily chugging along, Debian and Solaris VM’s running in the background, a few ssh shells open along with 50 or so tabs open in Chrome and then with the blink of an eye appears the Apple gray screen of death.
I power it down and turn it back on, my ears pleasantly relived by the reassuring whir of fans, hard drive spindles and the cha-chunk of the cd-drive but my hopes are just as soon dashed when I fail to hear it’s yawning chime and it’s face light up with radiant colours.
Instead it sits there, brain-dead, soulless, breathing yet unable to perform.
Today I took it apart and isolated out all removable parts. Leaving the only possible culprits the logic board or it’s integrated graphics card.
Upon doing some research I find out that there is actually a known problem with a batch of Nvidia 8600GM’s present in some Macbook Pro 2.4Ghz models and that due to an unexpected failure rate apple has extended the warranty on effected units to 4 years along with free repairs. The problem seems to have been nicknamed the ‘Black screen of death’ and although this all sounds great, noises from forums and the blogosphere don’t seem to indicate the situation is as perfect as it seems.
Many seeming to have hit and miss results in actually claiming their free repair or having be charged upfront and then having had to demand a refund upon finding out that the problem is a known one and that they are entitled to their money back.
Here is a link to the Apple article laying out the details of this problem, http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377
I’ve seen reports of those who had screen or files sharing enabled having still been able to access their machine remotely or by having booted the it in to target disk mode and retrieve their data that way.
Myself, seems as I’d had it striped down, I chose to stick the hard drive in my external disk cloner/caddy and connect it via USB to another machine and pull off the things I’ll need in the coming few days until repair.
So, has this happened to you? What was your experience in getting it repaired? Did you manage to get it done free of charge first time or did you have to battle?
Mine is being picked up by courier tomorrow and am hoping for a smooth resolution.
Until then I’m stuck on a tiny and underpowered netbook hooked up to my 28″ monitor. As I type this I’m currently installing a Debian VM on it so I don’t have to miss out on my Unix fix.
Watch this space.