Macbook Pro 13″ v.s MacBook Pro 13″ Retina
Which is better and why?
This may seem like an obvious choice however upon closer inspection the difference may change your mind. When the retina display machines first came out the advantages of the normal MacBook were not discussed. There is one key difference between the two machines in the long term (besides the retina display). And that is the longevity of the machine. By longevity we mean the machines capability to adapt to the ever increasing performance requirements of software. In previous articles we have discussed how Apple have ramped up their production of new operating systems not to mention all native and 3rd party applications… What this results in is the bar being set higher and higher with each improvement from a performance perspective. The retina display machines don’t have any ability of being upgraded – besides the select few when they were first released. So in a year should you run out of space, machine becomes slow or you need an additional internal storage drive you are stuck.
What are the pro’s of the non-retina 13″ MacBook Pro?
– Hard drives can be upgraded from SATA hard drives to solid state
– The internal CD drives can be exchanged for additional internal storage using a specialised bracket
– Hard drives may be upgraded to fusion drives
– RAM can be upgraded at any point
Advice
When making this purchase it’s something we suggest taking the time to consider. Most individuals and companies alike don’t buy hardware for 8-12 months… If you are thinking of upgrading or buying a new machine we are always available to advise and get the right machine for you.
Slow Apple Mac? Mac start-up very slow? Beachball of death?
So you noticed that you have one of the following Apple technical challenges:
– Apple Mac start-up is very slow – you need Apple technical support in South Africa
– You have the Apple Mac “beachball of death” (spinning wheel)
– General usage of your Apple Mac is slow.
What this article aims to provide is Apple technical support in South Africa for Apple users who are experiencing a slow Apple Mac or the “beachball of death”. There is a step by step guide that aims to assist in identifying which Apple support route you will need to take and what South African Apple technical support is available.
Let’s first start with: Apple Mac start-up is very slow
Why does your Apple get progressively slow or suddenly becomes very slow? To answer this Apple technical question we refer to our panel of ZA Support South African Apple technical experts. The question is broken down into two parts. Starting with your Mac getting progressivly slow this may be due to an Apple hard drive failure, Apple RAM failure and Apple operating system failure the other is an Apple logic board failure.
Here are some steps to try and identify the symptoms:
– Run a disk utility repair through the disk utility application in utilities. (Drop us an email if you are not sure how to get there)
– If the status of the Apple hard drive is marked in red it is strongly recommended to have the hard drive booked in with ZA Support or to consider upgrading the Apple hard drive to an Apple SSD if you do not require any Apple data-recovery.
– If you have not run any Apple updates (bearing in mind if this is an Apple hardware problem no update will solve that) now may be a good time to start. Navigate to software update on the top left hand side of your screen when clicking on the Apple icon. PLEASE consult us if you are being prompted to upgrade your operating system as this make your machine very slow.
– Check your activity monitor which is also located in the utilities menu. You should be focused on two key indicators. The one is the CPU performance, the other is the RAM usage. Depending on what you have running your CPU performance may be very high (normally over 20+ %), similarly if your RAM usage is very high (You have very little free – 100mb or less) your Apple will be slow. If you have not done this before please contact us!
Next, Apple Mac “beachball of death”.
What is the Apple beachball of death? Well, it is really simple if you have ever experienced it you will know what it looks like and that it can be really frustrating to deal with in the middle of work assignments. The beachball of death symbolises your Apple machine under strain or showing signs of being under resourced when dealing with tasks.
Things to try:
– Close all your Apple applications, then open one by one and take careful note of how the machine behaves. Usually one will find applications like Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes among others can be major culprits of this problem. In many instances performing an Apple RAM upgrade solves the problem.
– Download a thermal sensing program which is able to check the temperatures of the graphics card and the CPU unit. Sometimes this helps to identify whether the fans on the machine are not running fast enough causing it to overheat.
– Check your Apple hard drive to see if there is enough free disk space. The recommended minimum is around 10Gb free space however when you are working with larger files sizes this could be bumped up to 30GB maybe more depending on the size of the average files. No free Apple hard drive space = a Mac that may not restart.
General usage of your Apple Mac is slow.
When you are seeking Apple technical support in South Africa because general use of your Apple Mac is slow here are some key questions to ask:
– Have you updated your Apple to Mavericks or Yosmite? If so, does your machine have the adequate resources necessary to run those operating systems? If this sounds like an alien language click here to ask us.
– When was the last time the machine had a service? Not the kind where you have it dusted off… The kind of service where it was cleaned inside, a full audit was done and proper technical testing was completed? Not sure? Click here!
– Run a disk utility repair through the disk utility application in utilities. (Drop us an email if you are not sure how to get there)
If you are unsure about any of the things we are referring to or you are experiencing some of them we would be delighted to be of assistance in helping you out with them!
Apple technical support South Africa articles of interest
Apple solid state hard drive upgrade
https://macbookbattery.co.za/upgrade-ram-ssds-and-more-for-apple-macbook-pro-and-imac/
Yosmite operating system upgrades
https://macbookbattery.co.za/upgrade-apple-ram-ssds-south-africa-yosmite/
Apple support South Africa for Apple SSD upgrades
https://macbookbattery.co.za/apple-technical-support-ssds/
