Random Tech Questions you want answered.

jdzappa wrote:

Just curious - has anyone tried uploading a new banner to a forum thread? I've been trying to add a banner to the new strategy game thread but keep getting an error message. I shrunk down the image so that shouldn't be an issue.

I’ve passed it up the line.

mudbunny wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

Just curious - has anyone tried uploading a new banner to a forum thread? I've been trying to add a banner to the new strategy game thread but keep getting an error message. I shrunk down the image so that shouldn't be an issue.

I’ve passed it up the line.

Thanks mudbunny! No worries of course - just wanted to give a heads up.

Need to buy a laptop. Trying to decide between M3 Air 16gb 1tb or a M2 Pro, 16gb 512. The latter is the best spec I could find of a older, cheaper machine. Don't want to be used, unless its Apple furbished.

My 2013 Mac sounds like a jet engine, which is problemetic when I record podcasts.

The M3 is fanles so will be silent, but its lack of ports is annoying.

THe M2 doesn't have the storage, but has a bigger screen which is better for my eyes. But I'm worried about fan noise. Also my enviroment is very dusty, so I'm worried it'll get more dust than the M3.

Any suggestions?

I would let display size be your guide. The Pro should be pretty quiet most of the time too so I wouldn’t worry about the noise that much but you can check notebookcheck for their review to see the noise levels.

1Dgaf wrote:

Any suggestions?

My suggestions is don't buy Apple, but I am biased.

kazar wrote:

My suggestions is don't buy Apple, but I am biased.

Apple Silicon is so far out ahead of the rest of the laptop market that it's not even funny.

Especially since the PC laptop market is still so in Intel's back pocket. Maybe AMD would go harder on their laptop chips if they thought they had any chance of getting OEMs to actually put them into a meaningful number of higher-margin laptops, not just the budget craptops.

But even in spite of all the Apple annoyances, modern PC laptops feel absolutely archaic by comparison.

My old work and current personal laptops are both AMD CPU, both HP.

I have a Lenovo laptop with AMD that I love but never use

Desktop is just so much cheaper and so many more options for price/performance.

The next gen of AMD laptop cpus is supposed to be something else. Sadly, I feel like I have been saying that for a few years now...

kazar wrote:
1Dgaf wrote:

Any suggestions?

My suggestions is don't buy Apple, but I am biased.

Microsoft is really trying to find that line of how much advertising will Windows users put up with and I am really getting sick of it.

On the one side you have a company trying to shove advertising everywhere they can, and on the other side you have a company who has little-to-no advertising in their OS and spends billions to try to protect user privacy including from governments. I know which side I am on...

The only reason I still have a Windows laptop is for games and I am not sure I will stick with that for my next one.

1Dgaf wrote:

Need to buy a laptop. Trying to decide between M3 Air 16gb 1tb or a M2 Pro, 16gb 512. The latter is the best spec I could find of a older, cheaper machine. Don't want to be used, unless its Apple furbished.

My 2013 Mac sounds like a jet engine, which is problematic when I record podcasts.

The M3 is fanles so will be silent, but its lack of ports is annoying.

THe M2 doesn't have the storage, but has a bigger screen which is better for my eyes. But I'm worried about fan noise. Also my enviroment is very dusty, so I'm worried it'll get more dust than the M3.

Any suggestions?

The Pro will pretty much never be heard, but any mic with a cardioid pickup will handle it in the rare occasions where it would be.

Do think about that storage difference, especially with how long these machines can last, but I'm personally a sucker for a good screen, and the Pros have arguably the best other than OLED.

There’s always Linux and, thanks to Valve’s Proton, it’s easier to play modern games on Linux than MacOS (last I checked).

My main laptop and desktop run Windows 11 but most other devices I use run Linux these days including my convertible laptop/tablet and my MacBook Pro.

Thanks LeapingGnome and Kurrelgyre.

LeapingGnome wrote:
kazar wrote:
1Dgaf wrote:

Any suggestions?

My suggestions is don't buy Apple, but I am biased.

Microsoft is really trying to find that line of how much advertising will Windows users put up with and I am really getting sick of it.

On the one side you have a company trying to shove advertising everywhere they can, and on the other side you have a company who has little-to-no advertising in their OS and spends billions to try to protect user privacy including from governments. I know which side I am on...

The only reason I still have a Windows laptop is for games and I am not sure I will stick with that for my next one.

Microsoft software has become straight up nag-ware and I hate them for it. I always preferred Windows to macOS, but I switched because of the Apple ecosystem. Now I can’t ever see myself buying a Windows PC for anything other than games.

Yeah I'm glad Edge is finally chromium but dammit every time I use it it nags me to be the default browser and it's not gonna happen

PaladinTom wrote:

Microsoft software has become straight up nag-ware and I hate them for it. I always preferred Windows to macOS, but I switched because of the Apple ecosystem. Now I can’t ever see myself buying a Windows PC for anything other than games.

The Apple ecosystem is one of the many reasons I don't touch Apple products. Choice is important to me and being locked into any one vendor is bad. I am in the middle of trying to decouple myself from all the Google services I am using for much the same reason.

Stele wrote:

Yeah I'm glad Edge is finally chromium but dammit every time I use it it nags me to be the default browser and it's not gonna happen

I read that Edge's previous renderer was generally better than Chromium, but Google kept changing their sites to slow it down so eventually Microsoft gave up and switched.

kazar wrote:

The Apple ecosystem is one of the many reasons I don't touch Apple products. Choice is important to me and being locked into any one vendor is bad. I am in the middle of trying to decouple myself from all the Google services I am using for much the same reason.

iPhone lock-in I get. That is annoying.

But on my Mac I've got 3 different browsers and 3 different app stores installed, not to mention all the software I've downloaded from the web. Oh, and 2 different software suites that will open Microsoft Office docs. The closest thing I am to "locked in" here is the small company that makes the specialized multimedia software I need only releases their stuff for Mac OS.

And of course the thousands of games that won't play on Macs...

kazar wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

Microsoft software has become straight up nag-ware and I hate them for it. I always preferred Windows to macOS, but I switched because of the Apple ecosystem. Now I can’t ever see myself buying a Windows PC for anything other than games.

The Apple ecosystem is one of the many reasons I don't touch Apple products. Choice is important to me and being locked into any one vendor is bad. I am in the middle of trying to decouple myself from all the Google services I am using for much the same reason.

I hear you. I de-Googled several years ago myself. I like the idea of an open ecosystem where everything “just works” with everything else, but sadly that’s not the reality. Once I started using Apple stuff I came to appreciate how (for the most part) all of their tech works pretty well together. Is it a walled garden? Yup, but it’s a pretty nice one. Do I feel good about it? Not really. But there is no alternative really besides Android and at least Apple seems to take user privacy pretty seriously.

How do I get Edge to save my passwords? It's supposed to be able to do it but I can't figure out how to switch it on. If it's anywhere in Settings I'm unable to find it.

Because of the multiple computers and OSes I use at home and work, I regularly use 3 different browsers - Safari, Chrome, and Edge. Edge is the only one that doesn't save site login details for me. I can get 1Password to paste them in for me, but that means entering its password every time I log in anywhere, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Robear wrote:

And of course the thousands of games that won't play on Macs...

Apple does have their Game Porting Toolkit which is essentially their answer to Proton on Linux/Steam OS. But it's less of a "throw the Windows version at it and we'll do the rest" and more "hey developers, you can use this to quickly and easily port to our platform." Not sure how well it's being used by game companies, but it's there. Or at least the initial demos were impressive; I remember people going into the dev tools and having decent success running Windows games. Haven't actually heard anything about the thing recently, though.

Where Apple really screws the pooch on games is they keep ending support for old applications and game companies don't really update their old titles to keep up, so your back catalog tends to evaporate. It's disheartening to fire up Steam and see games that used to run fine, but don't any more.

Where Apple also really screws the pooch on games is not supporting Vulkan, and continuing to try and force Metal to be a thing. No one cares about Metal. Metal is just a waste of everyone's time.

CaptainCrowbar wrote:

How do I get Edge to save my passwords? It's supposed to be able to do it but I can't figure out how to switch it on. If it's anywhere in Settings I'm unable to find it.

Because of the multiple computers and OSes I use at home and work, I regularly use 3 different browsers - Safari, Chrome, and Edge. Edge is the only one that doesn't save site login details for me. I can get 1Password to paste them in for me, but that means entering its password every time I log in anywhere, which kind of defeats the purpose.

I am not sure, but you can set 1Password to only require the vault password whenever you open a new browser, instead of every time you use it. That is what I do so I basically only ever have to put in my vault password once after I reboot. I use Firefox though, maybe it is different on Edge.

LeapingGnome wrote:
CaptainCrowbar wrote:

How do I get Edge to save my passwords? It's supposed to be able to do it but I can't figure out how to switch it on. If it's anywhere in Settings I'm unable to find it.

Because of the multiple computers and OSes I use at home and work, I regularly use 3 different browsers - Safari, Chrome, and Edge. Edge is the only one that doesn't save site login details for me. I can get 1Password to paste them in for me, but that means entering its password every time I log in anywhere, which kind of defeats the purpose.

I am not sure, but you can set 1Password to only require the vault password whenever you open a new browser, instead of every time you use it. That is what I do so I basically only ever have to put in my vault password once after I reboot. I use Firefox though, maybe it is different on Edge.

Yeah i would look at 1Password's settings, because i'm not sure why you'd need to enter your master password every time you use it. They do have a plugin for Edge, so as long as you've unlocked it once, you should be able to use it normally. You can also tie 1Password into Windows Hello, which lets you use a PIN or biometrics to unlock it instead of your full password.

beanman101283 wrote:

Yeah i would look at 1Password's settings, because i'm not sure why you'd need to enter your master password every time you use it. They do have a plugin for Edge, so as long as you've unlocked it once, you should be able to use it normally. You can also tie 1Password into Windows Hello, which lets you use a PIN or biometrics to unlock it instead of your full password.

My memory was slightly faulty, it was the Windows Hello PIN that I was being asked for every time, not 1Password's password. (Face camera or fingerprint are not available on that computer.) I've turned off 1P's Hello integration and we'll see how that goes.

Had to post this twice - the first time I hit Post, GWJ put me through a Captcha, and when it was done, my comment had disappeared and I had to type it again.

CaptainCrowbar wrote:
beanman101283 wrote:

Yeah i would look at 1Password's settings, because i'm not sure why you'd need to enter your master password every time you use it. They do have a plugin for Edge, so as long as you've unlocked it once, you should be able to use it normally. You can also tie 1Password into Windows Hello, which lets you use a PIN or biometrics to unlock it instead of your full password.

My memory was slightly faulty, it was the Windows Hello PIN that I was being asked for every time, not 1Password's password. (Face camera or fingerprint are not available on that computer.) I've turned off 1P's Hello integration and we'll see how that goes.

Had to post this twice - the first time I hit Post, GWJ put me through a Captcha, and when it was done, my comment had disappeared and I had to type it again.

I find using the Windows Hello PIN pretty painless since it's only a 4-digit number i can quickly type in rather than my very long master password. You usually have to enter your master password at least once every 2 weeks, which isn't too bad (and maybe there's a setting to change that frequency, I've never looked into it).

Is YouTube just having trouble on Firefox lately, or is Google throwing a tantrum because uBlock Origin is installed? I did disable it on YouTube to see if that helped, but the problem persists.

I suppose I could string some ethernet to my desk and see if that affects things, but everything else is working fine over the wifi bridge.

I'm not noticing any problems with Firefox (with uBlock Origin plus a few other security-related extensions) and Youtube. I do have YT premium for some reason, maybe that makes a difference.

If MacOS has 1% of the number of playable games as Windows, I'll eat a Macintosh on video.

Robear wrote:

If MacOS has 1% of the number of playable games as Windows, I'll eat a Macintosh on video. :-)

About 30% of Steam's catalog is on Mac, according to SteamDB:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/QZMGPgJ.png)

If you search on Steam in the store, there are 19,613 games with the MacOS tag. But Wikipedia lists about 2500 MacOS games. Sources for pc games on Steam claim around 73,000 this year. However, the total number of games released on the Windows platform is likely many more times that. I would argue that, hyperbole aside, and bearing in mind that I didn't specify Steam, no one really knows how many PC games there are. Far easier to figure out how many Apple has approved (easy being relative here), and it's at least an order of magnitude smaller, and many of those, as mentioned, have aged out).

I don't think it's more than 2M, though, so if you want to watch me crunch a Macintosh, I'll run to the store and get one. I love a good crispy, juicy Mac.

I still hold that Windows is a far better, and more prolific, gaming platform than MacOS. Apple does not have any GPUs that compare to high-end desktop Nvidia ones, right? Or did I miss something?