Re: Re: Running linux in vm o
By: Derision to Nightfox on Mon Oct 22 2018 09:24 pm

The ability to burn to a blu-ray disc is built-in to macOS. There are external USB burners that work fine out of the box for burning to and reading burned blu-ray discs. Playing a movie on a blu-ray is another story. There ARE a few pieces of software... Macgo Blu-ray Player and some other bits, that'll do it, but it usually isn't cheap, and kind of not worth it when you can just download a digital file of the same quality.

Interesting that Mac OS has the ability to burn to blu-ray built in when Macs never included a blu-ray drive (even a reader) as standard. The OS wouldn't necessarily have to have the burning feature built-in, since there can also be software just for burning to optical discs. Windows has been able to burn to optical discs for a long time, but I'm still used to using software such as Nero to burn optical discs.

I guess that might be the argument AGAINST having such an expandable system, in that lots of users would rather beef it up and expand it rather than buy next years' system the minute it comes out, thus depriving Apple of their desired profit.

I dunno.. I can see how Apple would want to sell a whole system, but I think upgradability is also a desired feature. If their computer isn't upgradable, I'd be more likely to buy another company's computer instead. So upgradability can be a selling point. Sometimes you might find you need more RAM or hard drive space, or might want to put in a more powerful graphics card, and it can be useful to be able to do that. Speaking of that, I'm not sure what graphics cards are available for Mac these days, or if you can even replace them..

Nightfox

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Re: Re: Running linux in vm o
By: Nightfox to Derision on Tue Oct 23 2018 10:11:56

Interesting that Mac OS has the ability to burn to blu-ray built in when Macs never included a blu-ray drive (even a reader) as standard. The OS wouldn't necessarily have to have the burning feature built-in, since there can also be software just for burning to optical discs. Windows has been able to burn to optical discs for a long time, but I'm still used to using software such as Nero to burn optical discs.

They definitely included that, which I discovered when I got an external blu-ray burner (it was on sale, and cheaper than the DVD versions). And there in my burning software was the full whatever giggage that a blu-ray holds. I eventually swapped the DVD drive in my MacBook Pro for a blu-ray just for the burning, though I don't use it enough to really justify it, so it might eventually be a second HD in there.

I dunno.. I can see how Apple would want to sell a whole system, but I think upgradability is also a desired feature. If their computer isn't upgradable, I'd be more likely to buy another company's computer instead.
So upgradability can be a selling point. Sometimes you might find you need more RAM or hard drive space, or might want to put in a more powerful graphics card, and it can be useful to be able to do that. Speaking of that, I'm not sure what graphics cards are available for Mac these days, or if you can even replace them..

Back in the PowerPC Mac days, if you wanted to use a non-Mac-specific video card, you usually needed to flash the ROM or firmware or whatever on it in order to make it play nice with the architecture. I did that once or twice.

Since the switch to Intel, though, Macs are now just like any old PC. I am not sure about cramming better video cards in the trashcan Mac Pro, just because of the weird shape and maybe the cards need to be low profile or somehow otherwise mangled to fit, but the previous generation of towered Mac Pro should be able to handle any standard video card, assuming there are drivers for it available.

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Re: Re: Running linux in vm o
By: Derision to Nightfox on Tue Oct 23 2018 05:02 pm

They definitely included that, which I discovered when I got an external blu-ray burner (it was on sale, and cheaper than the DVD versions). And there in my burning software was the full whatever giggage that a blu-ray holds. I eventually swapped the DVD drive in my MacBook Pro for a blu-ray just for the burning, though I don't use it enough to really justify it, so it might eventually be a second HD in there.

Yeah, I bought a laptop several years ago, and I opted to have them put in a 2nd hard drive in place of the optical drive (it was an option with Lenovo) since I don't use optical drives a whole lot in a PC anymore. My desktop has a blu-ray burner that I put in it when I built it though, and these days I do use it sometimes for ripping music and movies. I still have a bunch of burnable DVD-Rs, CD-Rs, and blu-ray writeable discs, and I've thought of using some of them for backups. Sometimes I still feel like a backup on an optical disc is more secure than a backup on a hard drive, because files on a hard drive could be deleted accidentally, whereas a backup on an optical disc is permanent.

Since the switch to Intel, though, Macs are now just like any old PC. I am not sure about cramming better video cards in the trashcan Mac Pro, just because of the weird shape and maybe the cards need to be low profile or somehow otherwise mangled to fit, but the previous generation of towered Mac Pro should be able to handle any standard video card, assuming there are drivers for it available.

Yeah, the problem is finding drivers. I'm not sure if hardware makers for Mac make drivers that you can install like on Windows.

Nightfox

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Re: Re: Running linux in vm o
By: Nightfox to Derision on Wed Oct 24 2018 08:37:05

Since the switch to Intel, though, Macs are now just like any old PC. I am not sure about cramming better video cards in the trashcan Mac Pro, just because of the weird shape and maybe the cards need to be low profile or somehow otherwise mangled to fit, but the previous generation of towered Mac Pro should be able to handle any standard video card, assuming there are drivers for it available.

Yeah, the problem is finding drivers. I'm not sure if hardware makers for Mac make drivers that you can install like on Windows.

Surprisingly, macOS includes driver support for a lot of video cards that aren't actually sold as standard with Macs. Part of it, I think, is that Apple was really pushing the whole expansion-via-Thunderbolt thing, where you could have video cards in an external chassis plugged into any Mac via Thunderbolt, so they tossed support for as many as they could in there. Though, efficiency-wise, I've found that the Windows drivers are usually waaaay better than the Mac drivers.

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Re: Re: Running linux in vm o
By: Derision to Nightfox on Wed Oct 24 2018 01:33 pm

Surprisingly, macOS includes driver support for a lot of video cards that aren't actually sold as standard with Macs. Part of it, I think, is that Apple was really pushing the whole expansion-via-Thunderbolt thing, where you could have video cards in an external chassis plugged into any Mac via Thunderbolt, so they tossed support for as many as they could in there. Though, efficiency-wise, I've found that the Windows drivers are usually waaaay better than the Mac drivers.

Interesting.. IMO the OS shouldn't necessarily include a ton of drivers for everything though, because chances are the user won't install most of that hardware. Having those drivers on hand would just be wasted space. Often, for Windows at least, the hardware maker provides drivers for people to download and install when installing one of their pieces of hardware. I know a lot of hardware vendors do submit drivers to be included in Windows, but I think that's mainly for Windows to have a base of commonly included hardware in PCs, for things like hard drive controllers, USB ports, onboard audio, etc.. I imagine Mac OS would need a lot fewer drivers included since Apple is the only company that builds Macs and doesn't officially allow Mac clones.

Nightfox

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