Goldengate

It seems umm, not sure really. It seems very A.I integrated, one of the reason I got away from Windows was because it was too A.I based.

Some things look good, but not sure if I will bother to update.

Not a problem I'll have, my Mac runs on Intel... although the Neo doesn't, I'll need to think about that.

I'll likely leave it until at least the 27.1 release.

Edited by billford (Fri 28-Aug-26 11:33:06)

You can switch Siri back to the classic experience rather than AI in Goldengate. The biggest change is stability and performance improvements - this is primarily a bug fix update for quality of life plus the rollout of AI for those that want it. If you are on Mac OS 26 then going to 27 is likely to be a significant improvement due to all the under the hood work they have done on this update.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

one of the reason I got away from Windows was because it was too A.I based.

Windows is very cloud based, but I wouldn't say AI based.

macOS 27 looks a no brainer for anyone on 26. If you're on earlier and can still get security updates, then its less obvious, as you have to fight the new user interface theme that is either loved or hated.

In reply to a post by billford:

Not a problem I'll have, my Mac runs on Intel... although the Neo doesn't, I'll need to think about that.

I'll likely leave it until at least the 27.1 release.

From what I have read, it works fine on the Neo.
If I do update it will certainly not be for a while. My Mac came with Sonoma and I was pretty quick to update to Sequoia and Tahoe. I don't think I will be as quick with Goldengate.
The one problem with Macs when updating to the latest OS is that it also updates the firmware, which may make rolling back impossible or difficult.
I have not looked into it, but not sure if it is possible to reverse the firmware.

In reply to a post by ian72:

You can switch Siri back to the classic experience rather than AI in Goldengate. The biggest change is stability and performance improvements - this is primarily a bug fix update for quality of life plus the rollout of AI for those that want it. If you are on Mac OS 26 then going to 27 is likely to be a significant improvement due to all the under the hood work they have done on this update.

So are you using Goldengate?

With Tahoa, I can switch off the AI, so all the writing tools and that sort of thing is gone and also Siri separately. I keep them both off. but so far what I have found is that if Siri is turned off in Golden gate, then the Writing tools and other AI stuff is still on. I have seen no info how to turn it off. Siri seems to be deeply integrated into the OS and so is the A.I.

I don't have any stability issues with MacOs 26,
I will see if I can get more info once it is released, but for the first time since I have had a Mac, I think I will not be in a rush to update the OS and may even not bother.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Windows is very cloud based, but I wouldn't say AI based.

macOS 27 looks a no brainer for anyone on 26. If you're on earlier and can still get security updates, then its less obvious, as you have to fight the new user interface theme that is either loved or hated.

Windows can be cloud based, but not having a MS account will stop that, But then I only using Windows 10 now.

As for Mac, I do what I did with Windows and not have it signed into an account, easier with a Mac. You say updating to MacOs27 is a no brainier, but it seems to be mainly about A.I and I just don;t want A.I on my devices.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

t it seems to be mainly about A.I and I just don;t want A.I on my devices.

I'd wait until its actually released and properly reported. Only two weeks to go.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

From what I have read, it works fine on the Neo.

I'm not too concerned about it running properly (although it will probably introduce a few new annoyances, if not bugs, Apple upgrades usually do) but, like you, I just don't want AI on my machines...

We're always being told that computers are just tools... well, tools are there to do a job, not pass opinions!

Edited by billford (Sat 29-Aug-26 08:42:13)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I'd wait until its actually released and properly reported. Only two weeks to go.

Yep, I was not going to rush into it this time anyway, so will wait until there is more info.

In reply to a post by billford:

I'm not too concerned about it running properly (although it will probably introduce a few new annoyances, if not bugs, Apple upgrades usually do) but, like you, I just don't want AI on my machines...

We're always being told that computers are just tools... well, tools are there to do a job, not pass opinions!

LOL, yeah, I think we are old hat.
I will use A.I on websites now and again, about once in a blue moon and I do have a A.I voice thing, which I am mucking about with, but that is offline. I may stick that on my Linux machine.

But I don;t need A.I on my Mac, any more than I need it on my phone.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

LOL, yeah, I think we are old hat.

Probably

I might not mind so much if the AIs were actually intelligent... but they're not. They can be very clever I'll admit, but that's not the same thing at all.

When used as a tool for a specific task in a particular area I'm sure they'll be invaluable, medicine for example, but in treating them as intelligent and giving them any degree of influence in areas where cleverness isn't enough then I'm very much afraid we've opened a Pandora's box...

But this isn't the place for my rants so I'll shut up

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

But I don;t need A.I on my Mac, any more than I need it on my phone.

I think the slide switch for "Apple Intelligence" is still in place on macOS 27 and iOS/iPadOS 27.

Anyone tried it yet?

I had a look on Mac Forums and a few people are having issues and by the looks of it the A.I can't be disabled fully. I updated to other Macos versions pretty quick after they were released, but I think this one is going to take longer for me to update to, if i do at all.

On my iPhone and iPad I was burned by 26, so I'm avoiding 27 for a few months, see what others think.

The best thing to do i think. I don;t have a iphone, but I would wait as well if I did.

If a update comes up for Golden Gate that can turn. off all A.I then I would look at it.

A.I can't be disabled fully

That's because most of it is on-device.

iOS 27 on iPhone is a massive improvement on 26 - essentially it is a 26 service pack fixing a number of issues and bugs. In almost all cases it is faster and more battery efficient. Possibly one of the most stable iOS x.0 releases Apple have ever done. I've been using it since public beta 1 and it has been stable on my iPhone all the way through to final release.

I can't directly comment on Mac OS as I haven't been following it but I suspect similar would be the case - all of the v27s have been designed to fix bugs and improve performance across the devices. Going from 26 to 27 is pretty much a no brainer.

In reply to a post by ian72:

iOS 27 on iPhone is a massive improvement on 26 - essentially it is a 26 service pack fixing a number of issues and bugs. In almost all cases it is faster and more battery efficient. Possibly one of the most stable iOS x.0 releases Apple have ever done. I've been using it since public beta 1 and it has been stable on my iPhone all the way through to final release.

I can't directly comment on Mac OS as I haven't been following it but I suspect similar would be the case - all of the v27s have been designed to fix bugs and improve performance across the devices. Going from 26 to 27 is pretty much a no brainer.

some of the posts on MAc forums are saying that Golden gate is snappier or seems to be and there are things like the UI that is better.
Stability wise I have had no problem with Tahoe, some people on the MAc forums are saying they have had some issues with Golden Gate.
My main issue is the A.I that is plastered in it and not being able to turn it all off.
I have downloaded and stuck onto USB Tahoe or Macos 26, I am thinking of doing a clean install,, but I done a USB just in case Apple decides it wants to stick Golden gate on.

Not as easy as with Windows, got to download the Os using the terminal and then use the Terminal to make the USB.
Someone on the Mac forums said to go back to Sequoia as it is better than Tahoe, but Tahoe have worked fine. The machine gets stuck now and again on high CPU work, so that is why I am doing a clean install,

iOS 27 is far more robust than iOS 27. They have managed to go in and clean up many more bugs/improve small details than they’d normally do.

Quite possible ten times more than normal, they really did fix a lot of them. No doubt thanks to their developers using Claude to speed up the process of tracking down and fixing hard to pin down bugs. This is one area that really can benefit from AI coding tools helping developers.

Why are you thinking of a clean install ?

macOS isn’t Windows, it doesn’t tend to suffer from that same “bit rot” that an aging Windows install can.

My MacBook Pro M1 Max is a effectively running the same install of macOS that has been migrated through all the versions of macOS since whatever my 2012 MacBook Pro came with (and was migrated via another MacBook Pro over that time).

That old install is behaving just as well as my Mac Mini with a much more recent fresh install.

Unless you are having specific issues, doing a clean install of macOS as opposed to upgrading really isn’t necessary.

This is one of the benefits of macOS not having a central registry, Apple retiring old feature rather than supporting them forever and not having the equivalent to DLL-hell that Windows has suffered from (though DLL-hell is less of a issue nowadays). And also Apple’s decision a few years ago to make all the system files totally unwritable (think Windows has some of that now but not in the way macOS does).

Worth reading Mark Russinovich blogs from a few years ago where he described why the idea that the registry causes slow downs is actually technically incorrect. The registry is a database, like any other database it is not read as a text file, it is random access.

the old "bit rot" was mostly caused by DLL-Hell, which has been effectively solved by the OS virtualising the directories that applications write DLLs to without using system calls. This stops one badly behaved application from breaking the OS.

Apple went the other way and decided to break older applications, which is why subscription versions of MS Office and Adobe products became very very popular on macOS.

Now and again the Mac seems to go on a go slow, certainly with higher CPU stuff, that it did nto do before. Also seems not to load pages from the web as fast for some reason, but the speed internet wise is fine.

Also, if I do decide to go back to Sequia, then I will have to do a clean install.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

It seems umm, not sure really. It seems very A.I integrated, one of the reason I got away from Windows was because it was too A.I based.

Some things look good, but not sure if I will bother to update.

Running it so far on a Mac Studio and a MacBook Pro M4 Max and so far it hasn't broken anything.

I was slightly worried about the driver extension compatibility on an ATTO ThunderLink adapter on the Studio but that seems OK.

I can't see anything too AI shouty either, Siri AI (beta) is disabled by default as is the ChatGPT integration likewise in a benign state. So I wouldn't worry about either of these.

I've installed it on an external SSD on my M4 Mini Pro and initial feeling is that it does subjectively feel much snappier than the Sequoia that I'm running (even though the internal SSD is considerably faster than the external one). But, at the moment I'm still sticking with the "if it ain't broke" philosophy and continuing to run Sequoia. The M4 pro, with 64G of RAM, is plenty fast enough.

I may do that if I can find a spare drive and have a peak.
i have just reinstalled Sequoia, don't want to do that too often. I printed out a list of the software I had on the machine and there is a lot I had on I don't use. Even so it have taken me a while to get tot he stage I am at and while I 99.9% of the software i want on the machine, I still need to se some up.

Still having the issue of a bit of a delay before some sites start to display, including this one for some reason. I don;t remember having it before, maybe I did. i will put the PC on in a bit and see if that does it.

64GB is a fair bit of ram, certainly for a Mac as it would not be cheap. I have 16Gb on a M2 pro and to be honest for the most part it works okay. I may update one day, see how things go moneywise and what doc says when i have tests in a few weeks time. I do have money saved, but with no work at the moment it would not take long to go down.
Anyway at the moment this Mac does me fine, I did think about getting a Neo just for a laptop, but i am not a fan of laptop, so maybe a Ipad. I will see what happens.

Anyway, the machine is back up and working with Sequoia and seems to be okay.

I run a number of virtual machines, so find the RAM useful. It would be much more expensive nowadays but I got it as an Apple refurbished a while ago. I buy all my Macs that way - normally saves a few hundred quid and they’ve all been as good as new. You just need to wait a while for the right one to come up.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I run a number of virtual machines, so find the RAM useful. It would be much more expensive nowadays but I got it as an Apple refurbished a while ago. I buy all my Macs that way - normally saves a few hundred quid and they’ve all been as good as new. You just need to wait a while for the right one to come up.

Unfortunately there's not much good news on the horizon when it comes to RAM prices either...

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/17/apple-higher-ra...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Unfortunately there's not much good news on the horizon when it comes to RAM prices either...

My company used to provide Macbook Pro 14" to most staff, some with 32 or 64gb most with 16gb. Now the majority are getting Macbook Air. The Windows side is equally suffering, RAM allocations are down, people told to try their experiments in "cloud" which needs funding.

The technology industry is slowly, but surely, killing itself.

Lenovo now want an extraordinary £1080 for an extra 32GB of RAM (£33.75 per GB) on ThinkPads and Apple want £25 per GB on Macs for extra RAM.

It's all more than slightly unhinged by the AI juggernaut

Edited by Pheasant (Fri 18-Sep-26 18:02:25)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

It's all more than slightly unhinged by the AI juggernaut

What appears to be worse is the money was all venture capital... but now we see the likes of Nvidia investing in companies buying Nvidia product, so its now circular. The money will break it eventually, maybe when the US has a change of administration.

You like I probably worked and lived through the last real IT bubbles we had 25+ years ago - I keep getting told “…you’re wrong, this time it’s different” usually by younger idiots that weren’t born then and have no life experience of this and just believe in the [censored]..

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

You like I probably worked and lived through the last real IT bubbles we had 25+ years ago - I keep getting told “…you’re wrong, this time it’s different” usually by younger idiots that weren’t born then and have no life experience of this and just believe in the [censored]..

Pretty much, started doing IT for paid work in the mid 1990s, saw the Y2K inspired massive equipment replacement, then the crash of vendors as the realisation hit this wasn't a "new normal" of business expenditure. The current race to the bottom is frustrating given how many pension funds invest in IT companies.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

From what I have read, it works fine on the Neo.

Thought I'd try it out on the Neo... it started to do a 16GB download, so I stopped that and went googling.

Seems that that 16GB expands into ~30GB of LLM on the SSD which I don't want and can't get rid of... so automatic updates are now turned off and I'm sticking with Tahoe.

Even though I was not using Siri AI, just had regular/classic Siri enabled, Apple Intelligence appears to be using / reserving 13.8GB on drive:

System Settings > General -> Storage -> macOS -> 'i'

I've switched off Siri completely (I think) to see what, if anything, that does to that Apple Intelligence pool of storage.

In reply to a post by billford:

Thought I'd try it out on the Neo... it started to do a 16GB download, so I stopped that and went googling.

Seems that that 16GB expands into ~30GB of LLM on the SSD which I don't want and can't get rid of... so automatic updates are now turned off and I'm sticking with Tahoe.

Yes, that is one of the complaints about it, while you can turn of Siri,. a fair bit of space is still used for A.i even if it is not enabled. Not sure why Apple have done this as I have proved by installing golden Gate onto a external drive that it works fine without the A.I. GG don't enable the A.i so don't take any extra space if installed on a external drive.

A bit naff, certainly for people who has the lowest size of storage.available with is 256GB.
Maybe Apple will change things if enough people complain,

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Even though I was not using Siri AI, just had regular/classic Siri enabled, Apple Intelligence appears to be using / reserving 13.8GB on drive:

System Settings > General -> Storage -> macOS -> 'i'

I've switched off Siri completely (I think) to see what, if anything, that does to that Apple Intelligence pool of storage.

Not possible to get get the disk space back, a bit stupid in my opinion.
Apple need to change this.

Running it on a external drive, A.i is disabled and nothing is downloaded., so it can be done.

Seems a waste, especially on a modest size drive. They may see the error of their ways and change it in a future 27.x update. You never know.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

A bit naff, certainly for people who has the lowest size of storage.available with is 256GB.

Yeah, that's me

Maybe Apple will change things if enough people complain,

Maybe, but I'm not going to hold my breath...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Seems a waste, especially on a modest size drive. They may see the error of their ways and change it in a future 27.x update. You never know.

We can hope.

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

A bit naff, certainly for people who has the lowest size of storage.available with is 256GB.

Yeah, that's me

Maybe Apple will change things if enough people complain,

Maybe, but I'm not going to hold my breath...

I have 512GB of internal storage, but i still don't want to fill it up with stuff I don't need or want.
I have also got a hub with two drives iin, so can put some apps on that, also use it for storage, but that is not the point.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I have 512GB of internal storage, but i still don't want to fill it up with stuff I don't need or want.
I have also got a hub with two drives iin, so can put some apps on that, also use it for storage, but that is not the point.

Easier on a desktop than on a laptop like the Neo or Air.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I've switched off Siri completely (I think)

There's an article here from EnGadget about that- https://www.engadget.com/2274326/how-to-disable-rest...

eta- for the iPhone.

Edited by billford (Sun 04-Oct-26 17:54:35)

From Mac forums, I have found the link below to disable A.I on Golden gate, it also gets rid of the fiules as well so space back. so they say.

https://github.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI


Below is the forum it came from

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/can-we-turn-off...

That looks more than a bit useful, thanks 👍

In reply to a post by billford:

That looks more than a bit useful, thanks 👍

I will wait until someone tries it first, saying that i could try it as long as i have a time machine back up to go back to.

Yes, backups are always a good idea before messing with the OS

Not sure whether I'll bother- my main machine won't upgrade beyond MacOS26 anyway (Intel hardware), and the Neo was mostly bought out of curiosity and as a (not too expensive) temporary backup machine if I ever needed it. The only half-serious work it's been used for is a bit of DVD ripping and transcoding with MakeMKV and Handbrake.

At which it was pretty quick, I must say.

I’m not missing 13GB to the point where I’m going to mess about with my main desktop OS, at the risk of putting the whole thing on the fritz and spending ages recovering it

I’ll leave it up to you guys to do the guinea pigging 😂

Where's your sense of adventure?

An understandable pov though.

I'm no Mac expert so I'm distinctly nervous at the command line at the best of times^* and, even on a "secondary" machine, with something like this I'd make damn sure I knew how to recover if it all went pear-shaped.


^* especially if it's anything that starts with sudo!

Edited by billford (Mon 05-Oct-26 13:00:36)

Hahah. All the good stuff starts with sudo. But you're on your own...😅

A lot of stuff ends with sudo too.

Still, it’s marginally safer than logging on as the root user.

In reply to a post by billford:

Yes, backups are always a good idea before messing with the OS

Not sure whether I'll bother- my main machine won't upgrade beyond MacOS26 anyway (Intel hardware), and the Neo was mostly bought out of curiosity and as a (not too expensive) temporary backup machine if I ever needed it. The only half-serious work it's been used for is a bit of DVD ripping and transcoding with MakeMKV and Handbrake.

At which it was pretty quick, I must say.

Fair enough, according to Mac forums there is another way of doing it

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/10/05/apple-intellige...


what do you use for DVD ripping? i find Mac music is pretty slow, certainly slower than my PC. I do have To flac converter2, which is okay, still a little slow, but it is Flac only

I'm no Mac expert so I'm distinctly nervous at the command line at the best of times* and, even on a "secondary" machine, with something like this I'd make damn sure I knew how to recover if it all went pear-shaped.

A good position to take. I used to be a unix admin and a space in the wrong place on an rm command I managed to wipe out the whole box - had to restore it from backup (luckily I also managed the backup so was able to do it with no-one being the wiser).

I could probably do this on a spare machine, with lower risk, should anything go sideways or I make a mistake. But as it’s not really pressing (for me anyway) I’d prefer to wait and see until Apple does anything with a future update - there’s enough attention being drawn to this and they want to appear to be on the users side when it comes to ‘imposing’ AI on them - so let’s see…

If they don’t come around, then I may roll the dice, but I’m not missing 12-13GB so desperately that I need to roll the dice now.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I’m not missing 12-13GB so desperately that I need to roll the dice now.

I agree with that - 15GB is nothing nowadays. But the problem is that Apple still sell new computers with only 256GB storage. That is woefully inadequate nowadays. Even the 1TB of my Mac mini would be pushing it a bit if it weren't for the ease of adding fast external storage. That, as has been said, is not such a convenient prospect on a laptop.

Apple should not be selling a laptop nowadays with only 256GB storage. It's like selling a computer with 4GB RAM and no prospect of upgrading it.

Laptop / desktop I personally won’t buy anything with less than a TB in storage. Trouble is prices have become crippling in the last 12-15 months on RAM and storage. There are savage supply chain shortages and the prices are insane.

Much of this is unseen, with a modest vanilla sort of spec. But anything more than this is a rude awakening to RAMageddon and the supply chain trashing that the AI hypercalers have inflicted on us all. Rant over.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

what do you use for DVD ripping? i find Mac music is pretty slow, certainly slower than my PC. I do have To flac converter2, which is okay, still a little slow, but it is Flac only

I was ripping video DVDs, not audio, into m4v format for iTunes and Apple TV. Handbrake used to work fine on its own but later versions won't look at DVDs with copyright protection. After a bit of hunting around I found MakeMKV, which will and does what it says, but the aforementioned apps won't read mkv files (and anyway they're HUGE!) so I still used Handbrake for the m4v conversion.

I haven't ripped any audio CDs for years, not since the days of iTunes, but from memory I just imported them direct. Time wasn't really an issue- if it looked like being a long job I'd just start it off last thing at night and go to bed .

Legality is still marginal of course, but it's for personal use only so more or less OK.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I’m not missing 12-13GB so desperately that I need to roll the dice now.

It's not a complete showstopper for me either, even on the Neo, it's the principle of having something large on the disc that I didn't ask for, don't want (with a degree of passion ) and can't get rid of .


eta- but like you I'll probably give Apple a chance to listen to the users.

Edited by billford (Tue 06-Oct-26 10:25:04)

In reply to a post by ian72:

luckily I also managed the backup so was able to do it with no-one being the wiser.

A good sysadmin always knows how to cover his tracks

A really good sysadmin leaves no tracks to be covered. No-one knows about the day I managed to infect the main file server with a virus.

I was lucky in that I purchased my (Apple refurbished) M4 Mac Mini Pro shortly before prices started rising. A 1TB/64GB model appeared in the list at a very attractive price and it was too tempting to resist.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I agree with that - 15GB is nothing nowadays. But the problem is that Apple still sell new computers with only 256GB storage. That is woefully inadequate nowadays. Even the 1TB of my Mac mini would be pushing it a bit if it weren't for the ease of adding fast external storage. That, as has been said, is not such a convenient prospect on a laptop.

Apple should not be selling a laptop nowadays with only 256GB storage. It's like selling a computer with 4GB RAM and no prospect of upgrading it.

That is the problem, for a lot of people 256GB will be fine, but if a load of it is taken up by something that they don't want, then that is an issue.
512 should be the minimum now, but that puts the prices up, certainly at the moment.
The reason why I went for the Mini M2 pro instead of the standard M2 was because it worked out cheaper because it had more storage space, I did not have to add any, plus ram.

In reply to a post by billford:

I was ripping video DVDs, not audio, into m4v format for iTunes and Apple TV. Handbrake used to work fine on its own but later versions won't look at DVDs with copyright protection. After a bit of hunting around I found MakeMKV, which will and does what it says, but the aforementioned apps won't read mkv files (and anyway they're HUGE!) so I still used Handbrake for the m4v conversion.

I haven't ripped any audio CDs for years, not since the days of iTunes, but from memory I just imported them direct. Time wasn't really an issue- if it looked like being a long job I'd just start it off last thing at night and go to bed .

Legality is still marginal of course, but it's for personal use only so more or less OK.

Oh yes, I missed something reading the post
Still, i want to rip some DVDs, so the info is still useful, thanks. Oh yes this is for my own use, stick them on the NAS. i also go a couple of blu-rays, i need to find something to do them

Thanks for that

According to their website (here), MakeMKV will handle Blu-Rays, but I haven't tried it on those so can't comment.

In reply to a post by billford:

A good sysadmin always knows how to cover his tracks

Why most security teams are ahead of you... better to own up and document!!

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i also go a couple of blu-rays, i need to find something to do them

I've got some Blu-rays that I wouldn't mind ripping but my Superdrive will only do DVDs and CDs, what do you use?

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by billford:

A good sysadmin always knows how to cover his tracks

Why most security teams are ahead of you... better to own up and document!!

In my case it was over 3 decades ago and we had no connection to the Internet. It was also the unix workstation I personally used for development and support so whilst annoying it was relatively low impact.

In reply to a post by ian72:

In my case it was over 3 decades ago and we had no connection to the Internet. It was also the unix workstation I personally used for development and support so whilst annoying it was relatively low impact.

My experience was 25 years ago, and also no internet connection, we did have remote syslog. I also was entrusted with root, and backups, so quickly went to the fire safe.

Making errors and fixing them is a great way of learning, and also makes you think.... 😊

In reply to a post by billford:

According to their website (here), MakeMKV will handle Blu-Rays, but I haven't tried it on those so can't comment.

I tried it with a starwars Blu-ray and it comes up with Error 'Scsi error - NOT READY:MEDIUM NOT PRESENT

Not sure why, I will have a muck around tomorrow again.

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i also go a couple of blu-rays, i need to find something to do them

I've got some Blu-rays that I wouldn't mind ripping but my Superdrive will only do DVDs and CDs, what do you use?

i have a Asus SBW-06D5H-U, it seems a bit cheap looking as tyhey all are these days, but works, apart from ripping blu-ray, tried using MakeMKV to rip a blu-ray disk and got Scsi error - NOT READY:MEDIUM NOT PRESENT, which is strange.

Maybe i should use the PC.

I have spent a good two and a Half hours or more trying to rip a disk. mucked around with MakeMKV, but found out it needs a change of firmware on the drive, something to do with something called Libre drive. found out my USB drive can;t be updated to down graded. so I had a muck around on the PC as it has a internal LG drive. could not get the software to do the firmware to work.

So i gave up on that, then I remembered about a libdvdcss, installed that and tried to get Handbreak to work with, but nothing. This was back on the mac.

Anyway, I found some software called Free Blu-ray ripper, but it is not free as it is very limited if you don;t pay for it, trying it out ripping at a low resulution and so far it is working. It is $37 or $18 if you pay with in a certain amount of time.
I don't mind paying if it works, I would pay via paypal.

https://www.bluraycopys.com/

Now i am going to bed, I will leave the drive to do it's thing I forgot to put on hardware acceleration, but I doubt that will work with the free one.


No, forget that, it is a mothly thing. Oh good grief.

will have a look again when I get up, it is now 24.15, the latest I have been awake for a long time

Edited by zyborg47 (Wed 07-Oct-26 00:15:54)

That's not good

I did a bit of googling around about the Asus drive- seems it's pot luck whose hardware you get inside the box, so I think I'll steer clear of that. It's a bit more than I wanted to pay anyway; I've only got a couple of dozen discs I want to rip and then I'll probably never use it again..

Found a better link than the one I gave earlier (here), they've got a user forum so I'll see if I can find out anything relating to best drives to use (and any other issues). But probably not today, I'm a bit busy atm and there's a lot of posts!

Edited by billford (Wed 07-Oct-26 08:39:36)

PIONEER BDR-US03 in mine, the problem is, not many companies are making them now.
I did find a few but they all looked the same with different names, like DumboFab, $45 for a lifetime licence on one mac. Which is fine if it is going to be used a lot, but i don;t have many blu-rays and i am not sure if I am going to buy any more.

I got the unit as i have a fair disks with back ups on and files, which i want to read, I suppose i could have llinked the PC drive via the network, but it would mean having the PC on as well.
I also do still use Blu-ray to back up files. But you are right, about the price, it may not be worth it.

I will have a look at that link later, I have to pop out in a bit. cheers.

If it comes to the crunch then I will muck about with Windows and see if i can get it working on that.

The internal drive of the PC is getting old, I thought it had gone belly up a few months agao, but seems to be okay again and i can't find the cable for the Asus as it needs a dual usb cable on the PC as no USB c on it, well there is, but it is on the back of the machine.


We will have a look later, cheers.

Found some time to do a bit of reading, both in the MakeMKV forum and elsewhere, about ripping Blu-rays… seems most drives need a firmware change to enable that sort of access and not all can be re-flashed

Considering that:

a) it’s very much “it would be nice if…” rather than “I need…” and

b) it’s a one-off for a small number of discs

I’ve pretty much gone off the whole idea

It was only sparked off by the need to re-rip a few DVDs whose iTunes files had somehow got corrupted; I’ll keep half an eye open for ideas, but I won’t actively pursue it any further.

In reply to a post by billford:

Found some time to do a bit of reading, both in the MakeMKV forum and elsewhere, about ripping Blu-rays… seems most drives need a firmware change to enable that sort of access and not all can be re-flashed

Considering that:

a) it’s very much “it would be nice if…” rather than “I need…” and

b) it’s a one-off for a small number of discs

I’ve pretty much gone off the whole idea

It was only sparked off by the need to re-rip a few DVDs whose iTunes files had somehow got corrupted; I’ll keep half an eye open for ideas, but I won’t actively pursue it any further.

Yep, it was just a thought to save taking disks out when i want to watch them.
I tried to rip a DVD from my Naked gun trilogy and that failed.,