I Just Got My Apple (MacBook) Mojo Back

I can’t believe it’s two years since I last posted on this blog. Wow! It’s not even as though there’s been nothing to write about. In fact, that’s been the problem. There has simply been too much to write about but unfortunately for readers here, most of what I have been writing has been on other topics in other blogs.

So why now, you may ask. Well, quite simply, I just got my Apple mojo back. You remember that feeling you had when you bought your first mainstream Apple product - with me it was my 2007 MacBook Pro with Leopard (OS X 10.5). I just got that same feeling for the first time in years. After eight years of being a MacBook Air devotee, I have gone back to my MBP roots and splashed out on a 2017 15” MacBook Pro.

Which is quite simply, a thing of absolute beauty! And it goes like the clappers!

2017 MacBook Pro 15" i7 2.90 512Gb/16Gb (Space Grey)

I love the MBA - I wrote about my first one back in August 2011 and its replacement in December 2015. But recently I faced a similar situation to what I encountered in 2015. My needs have outgrown the capability of the MBA; specifically the limited 8Gb memory, the restriction of the 256Gb onboard SSD and the slow Thunderbolt 2 bus. Even a year ago this wasn’t too much of an issue, but these days I find myself spending too much time looking at spinning beach balls and listening to the fans thrashing furiously. A year ago, I was really using the MBA as a mobile device - playing music, processing photos and some office work. Now, I’m more desk-bound. I’m still doing all the above, along with web development, a lot more writing and office work and more intensive photographic editing.

I half-heartedly started looking for a replacement machine about two months ago and was torn between the new MBA or a 13in MBP. With a minimum specification of 16 and 512 Gb of RAM and SSD space, this started to push the price up towards crazy money which I couldn’t justify. So I started looking at the refurb market and plumped on an Apple refurbed 2017 13in MBP before I checked out the eBay market and found a new 15in 2017 MBP for a similar price. In the heat of the moment I bought it - and that deal will soon be going to eBay for arbitration; I’ve still not received the laptop after three weeks and the seller is not responding. Caveat emptor!

Having rashly gone out and bought a bunch of accessories designed to fit a 15in MBP I was kind of stuck in that direction, but luckily found a refurb from a reputable outfit that was only £150 more expensive than the no-show.

The new box came via DPD within 24 hours and my Apple mojo was packaged with it. It took a day to set up - one of the most painless transfers I’ve ever done and it is performing flawlessly.

The MPB is connected to my old Thunderbolt 1 Belkin hub which isn’t the fastest box in the world, but I can’t afford a TB 3 replacement just yet. But it works. My photos and mail are now back on the internal SSD having been off-loaded onto external flash drives previously, and that helps speed things up considerably, although obviously with the trade-off of using up space on the SSD.

Apple Harvest HQ - November 2018

Of course, it's early days, and I've not yet tried using the laptop as a laptop as it's been tethered to my desk while I iron out any migration issues. The keyboard which has caused a fair amount of controversy remains untested, and the much-vaunted toolbar (by Apple) is just a little too far out of reach to have had any major use. (Personally, I'm looking forward to playing with the toolbar in earnest).

Next time, I'll have a look at some of the other changes that have impacted Apple Harvest HQ in the last couple of years.

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Battery Monitors - Forewarned is Forearmed!

My trip to the Apple Store in Leicester to sort out my MacBook Air battery proved to be well timed as I started a new contract this week and I’m back on the road quite a bit. So far, so good. I’m getting really good battery life while the laptop is unplugged. The machine isn’t on all the time but I’m not compromising when it is working and not letting battery life get in the way of what I need to do.

I use three tools to monitor my Apple laptop batteries; Watts, Battery Diag and coconutBattery. Watts (£4.99) and Battery Diag (free) are both available from the Mac App Store; coconutBattery is also free.

Battery Diag lives in the menubar, although there is an option to have a dock icon. The app is fairly minimal as shown in the screen shots below. If you want a no-nonsense and no-frills method for seeing the state of your battery, Battery Diag is great.

coconutBattery, now on version 3.0 goes a bit further by allowing you to maintain a historical record of your battery capacity, actual and potential. There is additional information about the battery itself, including manufacturing data such as manufacturer, date of manufacture, model and serial numbers. The history is only recorded when you elect to save it - data is not automatically saved at the end of a recharge for example - but you can export the history into .csv folder for analysis in in spreadsheet. The main screen is shown in my previous post.

Watts goes the extra mile as an all round battery management tool. Although it shows less detailed information about the battery than either Battery Diag or coconutBattery, it does enable you to set notifications to warn you about specific battery events such as low battery alerts, and reminders to unplug your laptop from the mains after a certain amount of time. In addition, Watts helps you manage your calibration cycle by providing details of what you actions you need to perform to keep your battery in tip-top condition. Watts also keeps a user driven record of the battery's capacity, but you can't do anything with it, except look at it! Watts is a bit pricey but given the cost of fitting a new battery, an extra couple of quid may prove a sound investment.

The four Watts screens

As is the case with many utility type programmes you sometimes need a couple of tools to get the best mix, and these three apps have served me well enough over the past few years. As I was writing this, I came across another battery management offering called FruitJuice which I'm running as a trial. FruitJuice seems to be very similar to Watts, but is even pricier at £6.99 on the App Store. The main difference appears to be a rather natty graphical display of battery history but I've not used it long enough to generate a graph yet! I think I'll be sticking with Watts after the trial is over.

I genuinely believe that it is worth paying attention to your battery and how it performs over time. Good battery management pays off in the long term - and let's face it - any laptop with a dodgy battery is of little use to man nor beast! Especially when you're on the road without a power supply to hand!