Macbook M1 Accessories

The M1 Macbook has only an audio jack and two USB C ports, so a dongle was a necessary expenditure. I ended up buying the model shown in Figure 1. It only cost about Rp300,000 or A$30, so certainly not expensive. It was bought online of course. In a store, it would have cost twice as much.

Figure 1

After clipping it in securely, it is working fine. I tested it out by inserting a memory card. However, I left it connected overnight and noticed a significant drop in the battery percentage. The problem is that the dongle lights up in blue when inserted which is useful in a way but it also drains the battery. I don't think there's any way to disable the light, so it's only to be inserted as needed. I have a USB 3 card reader with USB C connector so I can use that where memory cards are involved and it doesn't draw any power. For HDMI output however, I'll need the dongle.

So far I've downloaded VLC for playing movies, Calibre for my ebook library, Chess X for playing and analysing chess moves and SageMath for mathematical investigation. Most of the work I do is done within the Chrome browser.

Raspberry Pi 400 (2020) versus MacBook Pro (Retina 13" late 2013)

I have two computing devices with keyboards: one is a Raspberry Pi 400 released in 2000 and which I bought in April of 2022; the other is laptop, my MacBook Pro, released in late 2013 and which I purchased in August of 2014.

The specifications are as follows:

MacBook Pro Retina 13" with 2560-by-1600 resolution at 227 pixels per inch and 2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 2.9GHz) with 3MB shared L3 cache. It has a 256GB SSD and 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L onboard memory. The Intel Iris Graphics support dual display and video mirroring, simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on up to two external displays, both at millions of colors. There is a 720p FaceTime HD camera.

The Raspberry Pi 400 contains the same general specifications as the Raspberry Pi 4 but is tweaked for this new form factor. Thanks to work on the device’s thermal performance, the processor on Pi 400 has an increased clock speed over the base Pi 4. As a result, the Pi 400 has an increased clock rate from 1.5 GHz to 1.8 GHz. Meaning you should get slightly better performance when using this device. Unlike the Pi 4, there is only one variant of the Raspberry Pi 400. You can only get 4GB of memory with this device. Another change with this device is that it only has three USB ports. One is a USB 2.0 port, and the other two are USB 3.0 ports. The rest of the specifications of the device remains the same as the Raspberry Pi 4. You have access to the same GPIO pins, gigabit ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth as the base device.

It's probably not fair to compare the two devices but, as I use each of them daily, I will. In its day, the MacBook Pro was a premium device and it still holds it own. I've installed Linux Mint, replacing the Mac OS, and am quite satisfied with its performance. Mind you, I don't demand much of it nowadays. At most I'd have twenty tabs open in Google Chrome at any one time, sometimes watching YouTube videos or playing music in the YouTubeMusic tab. I may do some editing in Google Docs. The laptop sometimes runs hot and the fan works overtime but only when processor intensive tabs are opened like AirTable. The only hardware problem I have is the camera which ceases to function under Linux. For me this is not a problem but it might be for others who want to use programs like Zoom or the like. The battery of course after all these years is very weak and is rapidly depleted when not connected to an AC power outlet.

The Raspberry Pi 4 performs well enough given that it is a budget device. It could definitely benefit from 8GB of RAM instead of only half that. At times there is a noticeable lag in keyboard response if too many tabs are open in the Chromium browser. The Bluetooth is faulty and I've been unable to connect wireless earphones to the device. This is a problem since for some unknown reason there is no earphone jack. I've created a workaround that I've discussed in an earlier post. The keyboard is far less satisfying than the one of the laptop. The lack of a fully fledged browser like Chrome is annoying but with the Raspberry Pi OS that's what you get. I've tried booting into Linux but things didn't go and again I've described the experience in earlier posts. There's no battery for the Pi, it must be connected to an AC power supply but its form factor makes it very portable. To function, it just needs power and a monitor or TV.

The MacBook Pro model that I have is currently selling for about US$250 on Amazon while the Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit is selling for about US$100.

Flatpak Installation Now Working

For whatever reason, my installation of flatpak is now working. I followed the terminal steps as outlined on this site, a screenshot of which is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

I went to flathub.org and practised installing a free software program called Plots.

Figure 2

It took quite some time for the installation to complete but it eventually did and the program is up and working now.  I described flatpak in my post of Friday, 11 March 2022 titled Installing Calibre and Other Software on Ubuntu. 

Unfortunately, the webcam is still not working despite trying out numerous suggestions from within and without the Ubuntu help community. It's not a deal breaker as I rarely ever used in my Mac OS anyway. It's still annoying and I'd eventually like to resolve the problem.

USB Tethering: Mac and Android

I long ago discovered that my Macbook Pro doesn't play well with repeaters. It will connect without problem to the main router but, if it needs to connect via a repeater, then IP address conflicts arise and connectivity is lost. This was the problem in my bedroom but I overcame it by making use of the Ethernet port on my repeater. Once I connected the laptop to the repeater via an Ethernet cable, there was no problem. 

Recently however, my granddaughter was having buffering problems when watching Netflix over WiFi on her iPad Pro. I gave the repeater to her, connected her to an Ethernet cable via a hub and all was well. For her, that is, not for me. I was very quickly confronted with my old problem again. However, I had my Android phone and thought that the solution would be to tether the laptop to my phone via Bluetooth. The Macbook was having none of that. No problem I thought. I have a USB cable so I'll tether via that. No luck.

A little investigation led me to a site run by Joshua White and an app called HoRNDIS-9.2.pkg (46919 bytes) that I downloaded to my laptop and installed. I restarted my laptop and connected to my phone via USB and I'm typing happily away creating this post. 

No help of course from Apple popped up at the top of the search results but at least I'm connected now. I haven't tried watching Netflix or similar yet, in order to test the speed of the connection. I'll do that later and add to this post if there any problems. On his website, Joshua explains the technicalities of how the app works.

I still don't know why the bluetooth tethering didn't work. Perhaps there's a similar program that needs to be downloaded for that to work as well. For the moment, I'm just happy that I'm connected. Perhaps the motto of all this is indeed that CABLE IS STABLE.

WiFi Problems with MacBook Pro

My somewhat dated MacBook Pro is still serving me faithfully but I've had problems with getting it to connect with WiFi repeaters. 

I have a TP-LINK TL-WA855RE N300 Wi-Fi Wall Plug Range Extender/Repeater/Access Point and was having no end of trouble getting my MacBook Pro to maintain a WiFi connection to it. It would connect but soon an IP conflict message would appear and the connection would be broken. Having become so reliant on WiFi, I'd forgotten that this repeater has an Ethernet port. 

When I remembered, I then used a wired connection. My MacBook was assigned an IP address and that was the end of my problems. I need the repeater in my study, which is a little out of range of the TP-Link router, and so the lack of mobility is not a problem. I can simply turn the WiFi back on when I'm elsewhere in the house. 

The problem only occurred with the MacBook. My Samsung smartphone experienced no such problems. So the WiFi connectivity problem was never resolved but an alternative connectivity solution came to the rescue. Whether this same problem occurs with the latest MacBooks I don't know. 

Of course I don't have a dedicated Ethernet port on my MacBook Pro and so I needed to use a dongle, which fortunately I already had in my possession. With that and an Ethernet cable, I've had no further problems. It's just a reminder that, even in the world of technology, everything old can be new again. Once upon a time, there was no WiFi and Internet connectivity, when there was an Internet to connect to, was achieved via cables. Now, in my study, I'm living in the past.