So I got my second mac two weeks ago, and thought it is now the time to reinstall Yosemite on my older mac. A new life to the older mac should include new blood and soul, so I ordered a Samsung SSD Evo 850 with amazing 535MB-S reading speed, the boring spinning HD is only 80/100 in best cases. This is possible on my MacBook Pro 2012, newer models already have almost the same SSD’s by Samsung. The new Mac I got was the Air 11.6, and I was amazed with the supersonic boot time and indescribable copy-paste processes. So I thought why not to give it a try and replace my spinning HD on the Pro with an SSD, why not to do it myself?? I listened to many videos on YouTube and read many reviews of upgraded Macs with SSD’s, so generally I know what I am going to do and what tools I will be using.
I ordered Samsung Evo 850 with 250GB, and additional Apple repair kit including Phillips 0 and Torx 6 and many other little things I don’t know what they are exactly, but it seems to me that they are to take apart smaller devices like the iPad and iPhone.
I unscrewed the ten back cover screws, searched for the HD, took off the two screws and bracket that hold the HD in the left lower corner, and unplugged the cable and put into the same place the new SSD. The bracket is back in place and all the screws are tight. I was supposed to unplug battery cable for extra safety, but I decided to do it without any further complications.
Now to the Apple traditional chime. nothing, no spinning, no buzzing. That was painful for the first time as I used to depend on the clicking sound that the platters inside the HD make to be sure that the booting is going well. I waited for a couple of minutes, nothing. I hit Command+F5, no VoiceOver. So the only resort is to ask for sighted assistance. My wife came in and happily told me that my mac is asking for our home wireless key to get connected and download some additional files. I expected that actually, OS X uses basic data to initialise the installation and that all require internet connection. We filled in the required key and gave it some two minutes more. I hit Command+F5 and VoiceOver was there.
So, the whole thing started, the installation did not take very long. I would say without the enormous OS X 5 GB it took around 12 minutes to install the whole thing until the first Welcome to OS X message.
That was amazing! Everything was totally different, super fast, super cool, no heat, and most importantly more than 3 hours of battery life in one single charge. I now get full 10 hours on my MacBook Pro 2012, and before this I was getting 6 to 7 hours with the older spinning HD. Everything was great, the boot time is a crazy 12 second time!
So with a new Mac Air and a revived MacBOok Pro, I thought it is time for a total change. I decided to reinstall Windows on my Windows machine and then leave it to my little ones. I burnt my Windows 10 ISO, looked for sighted assistance all through the installation. Needed to install the drivers and almost everything. It took me around 40 minutes for the installation of Windows and more 15 minutes for the drivers. I could not download NVDA to get rid of being dependant on my sighted assistant, but the wireless card was not properly recognised by Windows. I checked everything I am familiar with, and thanks for Microsoft, Windows Update is now hidden in the latest Windows 10. I tried with older drivers for other machines and that worked. NVDA is downloaded and ESpeak is blabbering out there. The long installation time and being busy with visitors led me to abandon what I have been working on and I turned off that Lenovo. Two hours later, I plugged in the charger, hit the power key, waited for three minutes, nothing, nothing. Just two options down the screen. Nothing interesting, but the gist of it is that the operating system is unable to start. No further clues! Nothing. Now all went the drain! I burnt another disk and tried to reinstall Windows, I am stuck at my OS partition. It says something about MBR and the setup can not proceed and install Windows on this partition. I have two partitions on this machine, the one where I usually install the operating system on, and another one with old data including family photos, videos, books, apps and many many other stuff. I googled for a solution to this, and there were only two: whether to format the whole HD and start all over, and the second one is to use Command Prompt to go through extensive typing. All, of corse, with sighted assistance and no speech.
The situation now, the Windows machine is thrown somewhere in an old bedroom cupboard, all burnt DVD’s are stacked and will be sent for recycling, I am so grateful to Apple, I am so upset with Microsoft! And most importantly, I promise not to use Windows again, never ever!
By Maldalain, 29 September, 2015
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
Thanks for sharing.
Hello,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I agree that the Mac OS are easy and straight forward to install. In some cases, a visually impaired person will be able to perform this task with little to no sighted assistance.
Windows on the other hand, when set up as a fresh install, will need sighted assistance. For upgrades, such as from Windows 7 to 10, a visually impaired person with some tech knowledge will be able to do without a sighted assistance.
As far as operations, Windows are perfectly stable when used with good hardware. I use workstation class HPs and have yet to run into any problems. Remember, Apple hardware is expensive so to compare it to something like Lenovo, isn’t a good comparison.
This brings me to my next topic. While I like Apple computers, I find that support and upgradability is lacking. For example, a mac that is 8 years old, although working perfectly, is no longer upgradable. Firefox, safari and security is no longer update. Yet, on the same Mac, I can install Windows 10. I know some of you will say well, it’s an old computer. But not everyone can afford to keep buying a 2k PC every 8 years.
On the flip side, I have an HP workstation that’s over 10 years old running Maverick. I compared it to a new Mac Pro and my 10 year old is only a few clicks behind.
So while I like apple products, I will stick to my Hybrid PCs and IOS devices.