Shoulf I get a retina macbook pro?

#101

Where all the minimized windows go? They don’t appear on the dock. I have to right click on finder, go at the top and click on them to make them reappear. It can’t be the only way to get them back!

do you mean while in mission control’s show-desktop mode? they’re just moved out of the way until you exit show desktop mode or select another window mode. Note that drag and drop works between Mission Control and multiple Desktops. It’s very handy:

https://vimeo.com/64347636

A shortcut or hot corner for ‘‘show all windows’’ would be nice but I dont see any native way to do it.

That’s Mission Control’s default mode. It shows all windows for all unhidden apps/Finder, etc.

In mission control, is there’s no way to right click the apps to close them? or do anything at all except selecting an item?

No, it’s just a window manager, not a task switcher. If you hit alt-tab to bring up the application switcher and press the “q” key when over an app icon, it will quit that app from there. I use a custom application switcher called LiteSwitch X ( http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/8242/ ) that adds drag and drop and force quit/relaunch options to that. Other people like Witch too.

If you want to set up command line rendering in OS X, I wrote a guide a long time ago:

http://polygonspixelsandpaint.tumblr.com/post/701899285

here’s a handy Dashboard widget that tells you all the shortcuts in OS X:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/xcuts.html

Some are obvious but many like command-shift-. to show all files in open/save dialogs are obscure but helpful to know.

#102

Excellent post! I need all this. I got a crazy week next monday and will not be granted a transition period to practice OS X. It’s not as easy as it seems to make the switch.

For the minimizing windows, I was talking about when you press the minus button (or double click the top bar, if enabled) of a window. It goes down to the dock but is not visible on it. You need to right click on the app, then go up up up of the menu to get it back. This I find a bit strange as it make them hard to retrieve.

#103

I would really like 2 docks. One at the bottom for productivity apps and one at the left for administration apps.
I am trying Dock-it right now but it’s a bit fugly. Is there any better way to do this?

thanks

Edit: I’ve fixed the ‘‘minimizing windows’’ problem. It was in the dock preference. ‘‘Hide in app icon…’’

That little computer start to get better and better. My mind more used to it.
Next is to install TotalFinder.

On the negative side, I got my first After Effects crash 10min ago. Since 2009 I didn’t had an AE crash…

#104

For the minimizing windows, I was talking about when you press the minus button (or double click the top bar, if enabled) of a window. It goes down to the dock but is not visible on it. You need to right click on the app, then go up up up of the menu to get it back. This I find a bit strange as it make them hard to retrieve.

Minimized Windows go at the bottom near the trash icon, not with the apps. If you’re looking for a good dock app launcher, I use Dragthing. It’s a great app that I’ve been using since System 7 days:

http://www.dragthing.com/

It’s incredibly customizable

#105

Hey guys, I have less than a month now to make my decision.

I’m going through all possible details and trying to weigh them down.

So, what Ive been recently thinking is this:

MBP has only 2 buttons, ie, no middle button. As I said, Ill be working with 3ds max quite a bit but so far I havent figure out a way to make it usable it only 2 buttons (like in Maya).

That means Ill need to have a mouse with me all the time.

However the lenovo w530 and the dell m4700 both have 3 buttons, so in theory I wouldnt need to carry other accessories…

What I have to figure out now is whether modeling without any peripheral, even with these 3 buttons notebooks, is in fact viable or practical.

Any insights?

#106

I now regret buying the Retina because I need windows. If you plan to use windows on it, get a pc. Really. On the Retina, windows icons are way too small and if you put the resolution at 1920x1600, all the screen is soft. There is no solution for this. Also bootcamp, while viable, is not the ultimate solution. It add a layer between windows and the hardware that is not 100% compatible. You’ll get some trouble. (exemple; slower wifi than on OS X due to weird drivers)
Also the keyboard is not made for windows. They’ve put the Control button at some ridiculous place on the new Retina and just copy-paste is very awkward. It’s really bad.

Seriously, for windows, avoid the macbook pro.
If you plan to use OS X of course, then it does not apply at all. It’s a very nice machine, well implemented on the mac side.

Another point; 256gb is not enough at all if you plan to have a bootcamp partition. I only have 20gb free after 2-3 weeks of usage. Damn!

I will probably sell the macbook pro very soon and get a real PC worstation because I really need windows.

Again, on OS X, all is fine.

#107

Actually I forgot to mention that Im comparing dell/lenovo with the regular macbook pro, instead of the retina.

Regular macbook pro leaves me with no worries regarding resolution and hdd space. I would replace the optical drive for a 1tb hdd. Also, would get the anti glare high res screen.

In the end, Id be left with poor battery life and maybe driver issues, as you said, but Id get all packed in a nice chassis and osx natively.

Now the fact that id have to bring mouse or tablet due to lack of 3 button might be a deal breaker. Thats why I need some info on this for those lenovo/ dell

#108

Well, the original macbook pro must be better yes. I think a lot of people do exactly that.

#109

Have you tried increasing the ppi (probably to twice as high) in Windows? It will not solve everything, but the icon problem should not be an issue after that. In Display you can also set the overall text size to a bigger one.

Look for “Set Custom Text Size (DPI)” or “make it easier to read what’s on your screen”

More info here:
http://www.microsoftfanboys.com/2013/02/how-to-adjust-windows-8-display-settings-for-high-dpi-ppi-screens/

#110

PS Hold down the <ctrl> key on your desktop and use the scroll wheel up and down. (In Windows)

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

For the ctrl key:
http://dustyreagan.com/map-the-apple-key-to-ctrl-in-boot-camp/

And some of these tools can also help:
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/desktop-customization-tools/

#111

The ppi trick work only for windows casual usage. Not in your softwares. If I were to only use windows for internet, that would not be a problem but it doesnt scale the interface of Adobe Suite or 3D softwares.

#112

Most softwares haven’t updated their widgets/UI to deal with it, which I frankly find shocking.

ZBrush in particular is murderous on my 2.5k 27", on a retina it must be simply impossible to click the axes buttons on the transform sliders (although AFAIK in the case of ZBrush that’s true on mac too).

Hopefully with the frequency these PPIs are cropping up these days it will become a priority soon enough.

#113

True - in Blender there is a ppi setting that makes it automatically compatible with retina like screens. I think it’s a bit ridiculous in this day and age that professional applications such as the Adobe products and 3dmax, have no option to increase the overall size of their interfaces.

Very odd.

#114

So anyone know where I might find some more info in the 3ds max + 3 button notebook synergy?

#115

just a note that I just discovered that Boot Camp runs Windows drives in IDE mode for compatibility reasons so it cripples the speed of drives to half their speed. You can’t enable AHCI mode:

http://polygonspixelsandpaint.tumblr.com/post/50262062268

#116

They’ve just ordered a mac pro 12 cores to run windows at my job… for me.

:sad:

I’ll run HD footage most of the time. I guess that will slow things down.

#117

From local storage several streams of full HD footage are hardly enough to clog even a crippled storage bandwidth, unless it’s uncompressed frames, the decoding, eventual effects/adjustments and other things normally cap before you can hit your snazzy 400MBps SSD R0 storage.

If you store the footage on spindle drives, even two decent 7.2k rpm ones striped will usually be accomodated for all, or almost all their bandwidth.
You can play a single loselessly compressed 12bit 2k footage stream off IDE mode just fine.

IDE mode can still hit 230MBs sequential read just fine in the same exact test and config AHCI will scratch 250. Past that, AHCI will pull ahead like a monster, but it’s not exactly common disposable storage for lots of footage that can buzz past 230MBps, writing is hardly affected.
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=505&Itemid=38&limit=1&limitstart=4

If the difference is greater than that, I would look at the provided drivers 2 HAL sooner than I would at IDE vs AHCI.

I don't think it will be a major drawback in most cases, but if you had an SSD or striped SSD online buffer large enough and ran multiple full HD uncompressed streams off it then yeah, it might.

I would be doubtful of launching applications or paging ram to be affected by that, not by much, unless (again) there are issues with the drivers/HAL access layer being affected.
Paging is usually mostly affected by write speed, and in single SSD configurations you’d be hard pressed to get anywhere near the limit of IDE mode, and launching apps simply doesn’t see enough marshalling to the bandwidth limits to be exceeded.

@Beige, are you assuming those issues will be present, or did you test for the difference?
It might be a cool addition to the article to test the drives properly in both environments (if you can find aligned tools), and then if possible do the same on a native window install with the same controller chipset and drive. Surely it’s close enough to the matter of file systems to slip in :slight_smile:

#118

I borrowed a mid 2010 mbp and I managed to get roughly 2 hours of modeling in 3ds max (bootcamp). Im not sure if that’s good though. Anyone has any idea if dell/lenovo would give me much more than that?

#119

I guess the battery life is more about how new your laptop is and what kind of battery it is.

Macbook pro are not bad at all with battery life but the best thing with any laptop is to plug it!

You plan to work in a coffee or what??

#120

I recommend looking into using a custom bootloader then - that’s the only way you’ll get around the EFI/BIOS limitation. Otherwise, just run your apps in OS X.