mac book pro i7 15inch lappy

[xtreemchaos]

hi all ive just been given a mac book pro i7 15inch lappy from my daughter, anybody know what softewear I should use for processing , guiding, telescope ect, its a quad core running at 2.4 ghz with 8 gb ram 500gb hd. never used one before as the price of apples kit as allways put me off, but seeing I got it for free ill give it a go.

thanks , charl.

[kerrylewis]

Well done Charl- that's a good freebie. 

I don't do any imaging but I successfully use my MacBook to control my two mounts via wifi using Sky Safari Pro

Have fun with the laptop!

Kerry 

[Owmuchonomy]

Hi Charl, wow, great gift.  I am MAC through and through.  However, not all software is compatible.  The main ones I use on my MAC are oaCapture, ImPPG, both of which you may know are designed by SGL users @JamesF and @GreatAttractor and Auotstakkert AS!2.  So that is capture, stacking and processing for my Planetary, Solar and Lunar.  ImPPG and AS!2 run great on a MAC but you need to put them in a Wineskin.  There is a tutorial on Emil Kraikamp's web page on how to do that.  It's quite simple. oaCapture is designed purely for MAC.  PHD2 runs directly on a MAC no problem so that's your guiding.  I don't use a lappy for scope control but Kerry is correct in what he says.  Final processing I use Photoshop which also runs directly on a MAC.

[xtreemchaos]

thanks Kerry, I'm looking forward to getting it tomorrow, thanks, that's the telescope control sorted mate. thanks for the advice.  charl.

[xtreemchaos]

thanks Chris, that loads of good imfo mate, a lot of those programs I use already, the mac pro is just over a year old by daughters just got the smaller lighter one think its called air, she said its a lot easy to carry around with here , I did offer her money for it but she kept refusing so ill probley buy here something nice to keep the universe in balance. thanks for the advice. charl.

[scitmon]

Lucky you! I am a macbook pro man myself too and love it.  You may want to consider what I've done which is installing a copy of Windows on it (you can dual boot with MacOs).  Here is a guide on how to do it: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201468

[D4N]

Nebulosity has a native OSX version as does Pixinsight.

Gimp is free and available for Mac.

DSS can be made to work in wine skin but is somewhat clunky.

Registax can also be made to work in wine skin.

 

If you want mount control you can use indi.

[GreatAttractor]

3 hours ago, Owmuchonomy said:

 ImPPG and AS!2 run great on a MAC but you need to put them in a Wineskin.  There is a tutorial on Emil Kraikamp's web page on how to do that.  It's quite simple. oaCapture is designed purely for MAC.

To be exact, ImPPG is cross-platform just like oaCapture and can be built from sources as a native Mac application (as I don't have a Mac, currently I don't provide a Mac binary for download).

[Charic]

A very nice present indeed.

I too have been exploring the possibilities of owning a Mac, but as you say, their prices are astronomical for the brand, but after owning their i5 2015 MacBook Pro with the retina 13" screen, at present,  it really  feels like a glorified android phone that I have been used too  for some Years?
Everything is an app rather than a software program that I need to install. its a learning curve to,  especially as I'm (was?) the streets  Microsoft engineer!!  from the Days of XP and W7, but things have improved over the Years and some folk have better and more reliable systems now?

I've no doubt that I needed to upgrade my system, and still want to own the i7 system, but the two main reasons, well three if I get into astrophotography in the next 20 Years? was music production, and flight simulation, and over many  Months of looking for a suitable, mobile unit, I kept seeing the MacBook. The version I chose, the 2015 model, has the specific ports for Firewire and USB for my outboard hardware and keyboards synths. Unfortunately though, the flight sim is the old 32bit software, so need to hold on to some old technology, as the new tech will have limitations with running the old, but I'll continue to strive forward with multiple PC. setups for the simming. 

Hopefully this thread will throw up a few suggestions as to what software is available. 

[xtreemchaos]

thanks Guys for all the fantastic imfo, I got it thisafternoon and Im well chuffed with it, it feels really classy with all the alloy feel to it. it really is like new not a scratch or mark on it anywhere, my daughter do look after stuff well.

heres the full specs- MacBook pro 9,1 i7, 2.3 ghz, 8gb ram, GeForce gt650m gpu 500gb ssd

heres a few pics.

it looks small next to my 17.5 inch HP, but will be easyer to handle when outside on night session.

thanks again all, I'm sure ill have more Questions.  clear skys, charl.

[AngryDonkey]

Hi Charl,

I've got the same machine and it's definitely the best laptop I've ever had.

If you already have a Windows setup one other option you have got is to use a virtual Windows machine on your Mac (which is what I am doing) as it's plenty fast enough to cope with it. VMWare Fusion or Parallels are the best options to do this, they are not free but don't cost much. You would also need a valid Windows license for your virtual machine so that might be an extra outlay but again Windows 10 is very cheap nowadays.

On top of staying with what you are used to the main benefit I see from this setup is that you can take this virtual machine with you in future whenever you change your hardware (if you use VMWare this is also true if you go back to a Window based computer). You can just copy the VM file and are ready to go. This has saved me a lot of time in the past and is definitely the way I will do it in future. It's also a fantastically easy way to make a backup of the entire machine in case something goes wrong or you are infected with ransomware or a virus.

Mike

[Charic]

My MacBook has Bootcamp installed, because its an Intel based Mac, though I have not used the facility yet, but its  a dedicated option to install  your Windows installation.

[xtreemchaos]

thanks Mike, great imfo mate, I'm learning more each day, just learnt yesterday that we have 2 gpus a intel one and gforce one and it switches between depending on what where doing ,isn't that cool, the only thing I'm worried about is the ssd, I'm a gamer and ive gone though 3 ssd,s in the last two years ,ive gone back to using normal 10,000 speed HDs. thanks for the advice. charl. ps I'm not going to be gaming with the MacBook, I have a dedicated gaming rig.

[xtreemchaos]

thanks Charic, that bootcamp sounds good is that the duelboot program ? . charl. 

[Charic]

11 hours ago, xtreemchaos said:

thanks Charic, that bootcamp sounds good is that the duelboot program ? . charl. 

......I think it is. Though when I asked a colleague of mine, he said Why? When you get a Mac, you won't go back!
Funny old thing though, I still have technology and software that needs windows, and like yourself, I have a dedicated PC ( two identical?) but their old hat now, Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q8300 - 4M Cache, 2.50 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB......... if you can remember that far back, but they do the job, but an i7 would be my preference if/when  I build a new one.
Having a dual boot MacBook could be advantageous, but I'd need to buy W10 which I've never used yet. My W7 takes eons to update!, soon to be unsupported, so W10 would have to suffice, but not sure my software, 32bit-FSX can/would benefit from the new hard/software!
My Retina 13" only has 128GB so thats an issue in-itself, but there are 'jet drives' (Transcend) that become 'one 'with the MacBook, possibly the easiest upgrade,  doubling the amount of internal storage, without removing the case, but this laptops primary roll is to work with my synths, and audio hardware, and so far, after a quick initial connection and set-up, I was able to play my synths into my DAW, and NO latency was observed through the headphones, a good start, but I'd still prefer the self-build route for a dedicated gamer machine.

[Ouroboros]

I also use a MacBook Pro.  I went down the Parallels route and run Win7 on it as a virtual machine. 

I think if I was starting now I'd try and see if I could avoid using a virtual machine. The VM works well, but it is an extra layer of complexity to get to grips with. Moreover in the three years or so since I got my MacBook I have become aware that a lot of people claim to use a Mac for all their astro needs. More software for Mac is becoming available. So in the first instance it's probably worth investigating whether you can do everything you want on the Mac. You may have to do it differently, you might have to buy some new software, but Parallels (or similar) plus a copy of Windows will cost you anyway. 

Incidentally if you do choose the Parallels route, they have loads of helpful advice on their site, and there are a lot of helpful videos on YouTube explaining how it works, the best ways to set it up and so on. I'm glad I spent a bit of time researching how to best use it before I installed it.  For example even though Macs are (supposedly) less vulnerable to malicious software, the virtual Windows machine is just as vulnerable as any Windows machine ..... and, under certain set up arrangements, a Windows virus could scramble your Mac as well. So you need to think about protecting you VM. 

[Rob63]

Hi Charl,

since you do a lot of solar imaging, I'd recommend going down the bootcamp option as this will give you a much better frame rate when capturing.

I have a MacBook Pro as well and with the ASI174 I get around 30fps using a Parallels VM (windows 10) and software is not 100% stable - sharpcap occasionally crashes (fire capture even worse with 174 but better with 120MM ).

Using Bootcamp to run Windows 10 with a local account, I get 75fps full frame capture and no crashes. Only negative thing is that you won't have as much disk space because you are creating a partition so what I have done is given bootcamp 128Gb and added a 2Tb flash drive and use a batch file to transfer everything to the flash drive after each capture run. The Mac's SSD is very fast so is ideal for capturing high frame rates but you can easily fill it when capturing Solar images.

 

Cheers

Rob.

[Davey-T]

I also use the Bootcamp option on my MBP, using Win7 Pro purchased off EBay, about £35.00 IIRC, runs Firecapture no problem, I did only make a small partition for the Bootcamp bit, could have done with being a bit bigger so needs some thought as I don't think you can enlarge it once set.

OK though as I save solar vids directly to an external 1tb USB3 drive.

Dave

[Charic]

19 minutes ago, Rob63 said:

The Mac's SSD is very fast so is ideal for capturing high frame rates but you can easily fill it when capturing Solar images.

Unable to update the MacBook by the end user, I'm still considering the Transcend Jetdrive 128gb for my 13" retina MBP which increases the amount of storage in a unique way? https://www.transcend-info.com/apple/jetdrivelite/

Not wanting the expense of the i7 and this i5 was available to me off the shelf at a good price, I had little option, but 128gb is probably too small for my end requirement, which will be transferring  audio files when using my Digital Audio Workstation and keyboard synths.

[Charic]

23 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

I don't think you can enlarge it once set.

Boot Camp Assistant should allow you to remove the Windows install and return the MBP to its original format.
A fresh install with a larger partition should be possible.

[Davey-T]

9 minutes ago, Charic said:

Boot Camp Assistant should allow you to remove the Windows install and return the MBP to its original format.
A fresh install with a larger partition should be possible.

Yep, but I can't go through all that kerfuffle again, pity some sort of partitioning app can't resize it.

Not to worry as saving to external drive makes it easier for processing as I can do all processing on it up to tiffs, throwing out all the rubbish along the way then just transfer them to another laptop for finishing with ImPPG and PS.

Dave

 

[Charic]

I'm still learning MAC  but yes, in windows, you could just resize the partitions.
Its also the reason my W7 has been down for so long, its the kerfuffle that you mention, getting things back in order to make it safe and secure and working correctly.
I  still need W7 for some specific tasks and applications.  W10.5 0r 11 will probably be my next installation, given the speed and interest I have for W7 at present?

[Charic]

54 minutes ago, Charic said:

Unable to update the MacBook by the end user, I'm still considering the Transcend Jetdrive 128gb for my 13" retina

Oops! that was actually the second option, not the first?

The first option was the Tardisk https://www.tardisk.com Its the Tardisk that is unique in the way it installs by becoming one with the MacBook and not seen as two storage units, and the OS  prioritises the most used files, speeding things up even more?

[iapa]

http://www.cloudmakers.eu/xindi/ do a full suite of guiding and capture software for OSX.

There is not as wide a range of camera/mount support as with Windows (using ASCOM).