Major and sincere thanks to all our Veterans! Words can hardly express as we honor and recognize your service today and every day.

OWC is proud to have several veterans among its ranks and have several whose loved ones have served in the armed forces. The dedication and service to the founding principles of our country is an overwhelming example to all.

OWC recognizes that today’s would be a different one without the service and sacrifices of all our service men and women. Many thanks to all those who have served the United States.

Also, a happy 234th ‘birthday’ to the United States Marine Corps.

I for one think its about time that the Apple remote received a bit of a facelift.  While most of the Apple line went from white to Aluminum, the apple remote itself remained white.  Until now.

The play/pause button has been relocated on the remote to the lower right next to the menu button, making it a bit easier to press than the center button on the previous model.  I for one kept accidentally turning down my volume while trying to use the functions of that button.

While functionally the same as its predecessor, the new look to match the MacBook Pro, iMac, and outer edge of the Mac mini is a welcome change.  It is even compatible with all the Apple products that the prior remote is compatible with, so no issues with backwards compatibility.

This morning, the online Apple Store has been taken down temporarily stating “We are busy updating the store for you and will be back shortly.” This action usually indicates a new product being released.

Is Apple updating the iMac lineup?  Is Apple TV getting a facelift?  Perhaps the Mac mini will be getting a power boost?

We’ll have the details for you here on the OWC Blog as soon as we know.  Stay tuned.

The NewerTech miniStack FireWire+USB2 Combo solutions provide reliable, high-performance storage capacity up to 2.0TB with built in powered hubs, making it easy to connect additional USB2 and FireWire devices in a most efficient and organized manner. Since its introduction, the miniStack v2.5 has well earned high marks in many reviews including ‘Top Product’ by Macworld Magazine. Fast, Reliable, and feature laden; and all this in a compact 6.5″ x 6.5″ x 1.5″ profile.

Key Features:

• Oxford 934 performance chipset
• FireWire 400 Connecting Port + Two FireWire Hub Ports (one back port, one on side)
• FireWire 800 to 400 cable included for easy connection to Macs with only FireWire 800 port
• USB 2.0 Connecting Port + Three USB 2.0 Hub Ports (two back ports, one on side)
• Up to 32MB Data Buffer
• Performance 7200RPM Drive Speed
• Intelligent Thermal Monitoring
• Auto Power On/Off with manual override
• Intech HD Speedtools performance Utility Suite included
• Industry leading 3 Year NewerTech Solution Warranty

In addition to the standard hardware and accessories included, all of these solutions are bundled with a $200+ retail software set that includes Prosoft DataBackup 3 (for Mac OS X), NovaStor NovaBACKUP® (for Windows), Intech HD Speedtools (for Mac OS 8.6-10.5.x), and Carbon Copy Cloner (for Mac OS X). All of these application sets are complete, fully functional versions without feature restrictions. Great software that makes great hardware even better!

New, Reduced Pricing:

80GB 7200RPM w/ 8MB Buffer – $89.99
160GB 7200RPM w/ 8MB Buffer – $109.99
250GB 7200RPM w/ 8MB Buffer – $114.99
320GB 7200RPM w/16MB Buffer – $115.99
500GB 7200RPM w/16MB Buffer – $124.99
750GB 7200PRM w/32MB Buffer – $149.99
1.0TB 7200RPM w/16MB Buffer – $167.99
1.0TB 7200PRM w/32MB Buffer – $169.99
1.5TB 7200PRM w/32MB Buffer – $207.99
2.0TB 7200RPM w/32MB Buffer – $295.99 (a $102 price drop!)
Solutions are fully bootable on systems supporting FireWire and/or USB2 boot. Perfect for Audio/Video, Backup, General Data needs, Music, Photography, and more. Plug & Play ready for Apple’s Time Machine.

The NewerTech miniStack is also available without a hard drive:
0GB-Add Your Own Hard Drive Kit, including options including Prosoft DataBackup III & InTech HD Speedtools are available from $49.99.

Since we’ve started with the price dropping blog posts around here, we’ve never before seen a product win the “Triple Crown” of price reductions.  On June 25th, we watched as the 4.0TB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID FireWire 800/400+USB2 storage solution triumphantly crossed the finish line with a $70 price drop.  On August 27th, we marveled as this same 4.0TB unit gave an impressive victory with an additional $100 knocked off the price.  Now, we’re pleased to report that one more $60 price drop today will have earned this product a $230 total reduction in price since Summer!

Quality, Performance, Reliability.

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID FireWire 800/400+USB2 storage solutions utilize the latest high-performance, custom Oxford based bridge coupled with the latest Serial-ATA HDD technology to provide overall superior reliability and performance. These solutions are further backed with an industry leading 3 Year Full Solution Warranty.

Now available with up to 4.0TB (4000GB) of capacity, Elite-AL Pro RAID is a sleek and compact Aluminum design of only 9.3″ Long x 2.8″ Wide x 5.6″ High. These Elites are Fully A/V Certified as well as EMC Retrospect Backup Certified for all your Audio/Video, Backup(Time Machine Ready), Graphics, Music, General Data needs and more! With 2 x FW800 Ports, 1 x FW400 Port, 1 x USB 2.0/1.1 Port – solutions are also fully Bootable and provide excellent data accessibility via any of the available interface ports, whichever best/desired interface is available on the system(s) it’s being connected to with complete interoperability of read/write functionality and accessibility.

Current OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FW800/400+USB2 RAID prices:

• 640GB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – remains at $179.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer - remains at $199.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – was $254.99, now $249.99 $5 Drop
• 2.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – remains at $269.99
• 2.0TB 7200RPM with 64MB Data Buffer – $287.99, now $279.99 $8 Drop
• 2.0TB “Enterprise Class” 7200RPM w/64MB Buffer – remains at $379.99
• 3.0TB 7200RPM with 64MB of Data Buffer – was $379.99, now $349.99 (a $30 price drop!)
• 4.0TB GreenPower w/64MB of Data Buffer – was $579.99, now $519.99 (a $60 price drop!)
• OWC Elite-AL Pro RAID SATA HD x 2 enclosure kits are also available without drives as ‘Add Your Own Hard Drives Kits’ starting from $107.99, and have user configurable options for different RAID and non-RAID modes.

See the complete line up here.

Solutions all include the full retail version of Prosoft DataBackup III ($59 retail value) for OS X and NovaStor NovaBackup ($49 retail value) for Windows. Also included in the complete Intech HD Speedtools performance suite and Carbon Copy Cloner. None of these applications are required to use the Elite, but excellent applications to have in your utilities library & the DataBackup can hardly be beat. FireWire 800 connecting cable, FireWire 400 connecting cable, USB connecting cable, and 3 Year Warranty also included.

As with any major sporting event, there is always a prize over and above the satisfaction of winning.  In this case, we give the extra prize to you, our customer…

Special Offer:   OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Solutions qualify for Prosoft Drive Genius OWC Exclusive Offer!

Buy Drive Genius now for s low as $25 with purchase of a qualifying storage product – That’s up to 74% off retail price, up to 37% off OWC’s lowest normal selling price! Details online here: http://eshop.macsales.com/special_offer/prosoft_Drive_Genius

Elgato has released the EyeTV app for iPhone and iPod touch, available starting today on the App Store.

With the EyeTV app, you can watch, record, and enjoy live and recorded TV on your iPhone or iPod touch. At last, you don‘t have to leave all your great TV shows at home; the EyeTV app puts the power of award-winning EyeTV in the palm of your hand.

The EyeTV app accesses EyeTV running on your Mac at home to deliver these great features to your iPhone:

• Watch live TV and change channels anywhere (Wi-Fi connection required)
• Watch your EyeTV recordings
• Browse the comprehensive Program Guide
• Start recordings back home on your Mac immediately or schedule them for later
• View and edit your recording schedules

The EyeTV running on your Mac converts live TV to the correct format for streaming to the iPhone, ensuring optimal picture quality. With the EyeTV app, EyeTV users can watch live TV and recordings on an iPhone and browse the detailed program guide. They can also use the iPhone to start recording TV shows back home on a Mac immediately, or to schedule them to record later. The EyeTV app connects to any Mac running the latest version of Elgato’s award-winning TV software, EyeTV 3.2, and can automatically find a Mac on the local network using Bonjour. The EyeTV app can also find and access a remote Mac via “My EyeTV”, a free locator utility introduced today as part of EyeTV 3.2.

EyeTV is available from the iTunes Store at a price of $4.99

We’ve certainly been impressed with their products, and for information and insight on their hardware, be sure to check out this blog post on the hybrid model and this one on the Turbo.264 HD!

Can’t always get what you want…

In an earlier post, we discussed the removal of the ExpressCard/34 slot from the 15″ MacBook Pro and the implications of that loss:http://blog.macsales.com/1391-apple-giveth-apple-taketh-away

As music production becomes more commonplace outside of the studio walls, musicians have become more and more dependent on the power and portability of the notebook.  It’s this need for a high performance machine that has made the MacBook Pro a staple for creative professionals.  Up until recently, increased features have been packed into these machines.  However, it seems that some of the features we’ve all come to know and love have been taken away from the most recent additions of the MBP product line -namely the second FireWire bus and expansion capabilities of the ExpressCard slot.  So, before we start crying “the sky is falling,” we need to answer three very important questions:

1. What have we lost?
2. What do we need?
3. What do we have?

We’ve lost expandability, we need sufficient bandwidth for our work flow, and we DO in fact have just that.

…but if you try sometimes…

All we have to do is re-assess our storage and interface requirements.  When recording music, you have to remember that audio data is substantially smaller than video.  Therefore, the bandwidth provided by FireWire 400 or USB 2.0 speeds is more than sufficient for most.  So what’s the bottom line?  You have two practical configurations for your new 15″ MacBook Pro:

1. USB 2.0 Audio Interface and FW 800 (or 400) External HD
2. FireWire 400 Audio Interface and FireWire 400 External HD (daisy chained)

…you get what you need.

In looking at the two configurations above, there is a method to the madness.  Option #1 gives you more bandwidth for your external hard drive, which can be useful for projects utilizing MIDI & virtual instrument libraries that require more resources for disk streaming.  Being a musician myself, I completely understand the hesitation involved when “USB” is mentioned.  In the past, USB has always been considered “the slow interface.” It’s because of this that I will mention that the new MBP’s have been bench-marked having much higher “real world” throughput than earlier models.  Therefore, you will see little to no performance loss when using a USB audio interface as opposed to FireWire.  So, you can think of Option #1 as your “MIDI Workstation” scenario.

Option #2 allows you to still keep a useful FW400 speed for your external HD, while using a FW400 audio interface (note: when daisy chaining a FW400 device with a FW800 device, both devices will be functioning at a FW400 speed). Currently, most audio interfaces that utilize a FireWire connection are FW400 so you’re not losing any performance on that end.  The benefit of these interfaces are that they are typically built to  handle more simultaneous audio input for multi-tracking than their USB counterparts.  You can think of Option #2 as your “portable live audio recording scenario.”

This takes care of our USB and FireWire issues, but what about the loss of other potential ExpressCard expansions?  Some companies have developed ExpressCard upgrades for audio professionals that use their laptops in a production setting.  Are these upgrades and expansions worthless now?  Absolutely not!  However, if you need to utilize these professional additions you’ll need to purchase the new 17″ MacBook Pro which still provides the user with an ExpressCard slot.  For those of you that don’t want to lug a monstrous 17″ notebook around, your only other alternative is to purchase an earlier version of the MacBook Pro which are still incredibly viable machines for audio/music professionals.

Mr. Jobs and the gang threw us quite a curve ball with this recent feature loss, but have no fear!  OWC is here to light the way through these murky waters of change to help you audio professionals get the most out of your hardware.  You can still make music without an ExpressCard!

Welcome External Storage Fans to the lovely Other World Computing Blog in beautiful Woodstock, Illinois. For today’s title fight, we have a three-round, knock down, blow-out cage match. In the far corner weighing in at 3.85lbs. we have the G-RAID2 Triple Interface Dual-Drive RAID Solution hailing from G-Technology, a recently acquired division of Hitachi. In the home corner, hailing from Other World Computing and weighing in at approximately 3.0 lbs. the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM External RAID Triple Interface Solution is ready for action.

These two heavyweights of the Data Storage world match up toe to toe in so many categories.  Both have the sleek, stylish, brushed aluminum look to compliment your Mac Pro or G5 tower. Both units offer an amazing array of connection options including USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800. Both are built around two high-quality, brand name hard drive mechanisms. Both are configured as RAID-0 (Striped) for high performance data transfers – yet offer Plug and Play setup simplicity. Both are backed by a hefty 3 Year Manufacturer’s Warranty. So, let’s get this matchup underway…

Round One:

These two contenders are fast, but just how fast is fast? For matching up speed, FW800 has the fastest theoretical transfer rate available. As each contender reaches into its box of accessories, both find a 36″ FW800 9-pin to 9-pin cable to begin streaming their data through industry best Oxford 934 chipsets (tests shown were completed independently by their respective manufacturers):

POW!

OOMPH!

Whoosh!

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

For my money, that was close!  Real world transfer speeds approaching the 80MB/s theoretical limit is pretty amazing!  While the OWC contender has a slight edge in write speeds and the G-Tech competitor edged out in read speeds –  I’m going to have to call this one a tie.  (Testing protocol and which test running can make a difference to overall results)

Round 2

Reaching for the next cable down in speed, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro pulls out the 36″ FW400 6-pin to 6-pin cable included in its packaging.  The G-RAID2 comes up empty, the only cable listed on their packaging is the FW800 cable.  The OWC contender has the USB 2.0 cable included as well.  As the G-RAID2 bobs and weaves to avoid the jabs there is one last small feature the Mercury Elite-AL Pro comes forth with.  The Mercury Elite-AL is constructed with drive mount shock protectors adding extra protection between the drive mechanism and the enclosure itself.  The G-RAID2 does not.

Ding! Ding!
Ding! Ding!

Wow, the match is getting a bit exciting now!  The Mercury Elite-AL Pro is staring to land some solid blows and the competitor is wobbling.

Round 3

These two Titans are at it for the third and final round.  The options and price round.

G-RAID2 thows out a 1.0TB unit, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro counters with the same.
G-RAID2 thows out a 1.5TB unit, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro counters with the same.
G-RAID2 throws out a 2.0TB unit, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro counters with the same.

However, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro fires off a volley of two more 2.0TB units (one with Enterprise Class drive mechanisms, the other with a 64MB cache option).

With the competitor up against the ropes, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro pulls out a 640GB option, a 3.0TB option, and a double the competitor’s biggest capacity…a 4.0TB option.

In the option category, the Mercury Elite is giving some pretty hard pummeling right now…and a look to the pricing…..

A 1.0TB unit from G-RAID2 $249.99  and the Mercury Elite-AL Price…… $199.99 – a $50 savings!
A 1.5TB unit from G-RAID2 $339.99  and the Mercury Elite-AL Price…… $257.99 – a $82 savings!
A 2.0TB unit from G-RAID2 $429.99  and the Mercury Elite-AL Price…… $259.99 – a $170 savings!

In fact, for under $429 of the G-RAID2, you could get the Mercury Elite-AL 3.0TB unit and still have money left over for the pay-per-view charges of the fight!

There are some subtle differences…however, there’s nothing subtle about saving money in today’s world. In this epic matchup, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM External RAID Triple Interface Solution wins by a decisive knockout!

I was working with my MacBook 1.83GHz over the weekend (ok, not really “working” more like playing) and went to use the built in iSight via the PhotoBooth application when I noticed the camera wouldn’t come on!  No green light indicating it was on.  No picture of myself staring back at me.  PhotoBooth was just mocking me with a little icon of a camera in the middle of that window.  I started searching out every tech blog I could find to see who else was in my predicament and what they did to correct it.

After an hour of searching and empathizing with those that had posted before me, resigned that I would have to wait till I got into work today to hand my beloved MacBook off to one of our laptop experts, I realized I hadn’t performed the golden rule of tech support – “when in doubt, reboot first.”

And, wouldn’t ya know it – voila! The iSight camera started working.  It really is amazing how sometimes the most simple of fixes are just that – fixes!