Archive for » September, 2011 «

Play Blu-ray Movies on Your Mac Without Converting Them First.

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris H.

Lots of people want to watch Blu-ray movies on their Macs. Until now, though, doing so required ripping the movies to your hard drive and playing them that way. Mac Blu-ray Player from Macgo is a movie player that plays back Blu-ray movies from the original source discs.

How does it work?

First you need a Blu-ray drive. Fortunately, OWC just happens to sell some. ;-)

Download & install the Mac Blu-ray Player application from Macgo.

After inserting a Blu-ray disc and launching the Mac Blu-ray Player application, you will be prompted to select your disc or a backed up .iso image. You must be connected to the Internet for the application to decrypt the disc for watching (a point brought up when this was discussed in OWC Radio, Episode #57). After the application scans the disc, it begins playback. Article Continues…

This post has 9 comments.

Category: App Review

Tags: BD, Blu-ray, disc, home theater, Mac, MacGo, movie, playback, player, video

Drive Adapters Galore—Which Is The Right One?

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

I think that by now, we’ve established just how amazing our line of Solid State Drives are - from in-house benchmarking to glowing reviews and even the amazing response to our firmware updater tool all indicate just how popular and reliable our SSDs are.

In fact, the only reason they’re not even more popular is their form factor. Since the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 3G, Mercury Electra 6G and Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G all have the same 2.5″ form factor commonly found in laptops, many people assume that they won’t work in machines that use the larger 3.5″ drives.

Fortunately, that’s not quite true. While these drives don’t “naturally” fit in a 3.5″ drive bay, they work wonderfully when installed with the use of an adapter. That, of course, is where things may get a little confusing.

You know that phrase about there being “more than one way to skin a cat”? It applies to adapting a 2.5″ drive to fit a larger bay, too.

In fact, between OWC and NewerTech, we’ve got five different ways to adapt our SSDs for a larger drive bay. Which one is the “right” one? It all Article Continues…

Comment on this post.

Category: Product Spotlight

Tags: 2.5", 3.5", 5.25", adapter, bay, drive, Electra, extreme, fit, hard drive, install, SSD, upgrade

NewerTech Announces NuGuard Keyboard Covers For Protecting And Personalizing 2010-2011 Apple MacBook Air

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Newer Technology, Inc. announced today its NuGuard Keyboard Cover for 11″ and 13″ 2010-2011 MacBook Air notebooks. Available now for $11.99 from Other World Computing.

Protects Against Wear And Damage

NuGuard Keyboard Covers feature a silky smooth silicone surface to provide the fastest touch-typing possible. The form-fitting sheet is molded to cover each key and the space between each key for protection against key wear, food/drink spills, and dust/hair clogging. MacBook Air users can customize the look of their notebook with four stylish color choices: black, white, pink or red.

“The NuGuard Keyboard Covers are a great way to add personal flair to a MacBook Air while protecting the keyboard from wear and tear as well as the machine from damage,” said Grant Dahlke, Brand Manager, Newer Technology Inc. “They’re smooth to the touch for fast typing and easily peel off for simple cleanup to keep your MacBook Air looking and working like new.”

This post has 5 comments.

Category: New @ OWC, Press Releases

Tags: air, black, cover, custom, Keyboard, macbook, Newer Technology, NewerTech, overlay, OWC, pink, press, protect, red, release, spill, white

OWC Customer Reviews his OWC-Upgraded iMac

Monday, September 19th, 2011 | Author: Guest Blogger

[Editor’s Note: Due to its very nature, it’s been somewhat difficult to get a professional media review of our Turnkey Upgrade Program for the 2011 iMac, so we’re posting a customer testimonial, instead. If you’re a reviewer and want to review the upgrade program, please contact us.]

Why I Chose the OWC Turnkey Upgrade Program for the 2011 iMac.

by Ken H., OWC Customer

In January, I had a 2TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro RAID hard drive that wouldn’t mount. Since none of the data on the drive was backed up, I started to look into data recovery and found out how expensive it was. Fortunately, OWC Tech Support helped me determine that that the problem was simply a power adapter problem and not a drive failure.

After coming so close to losing valuable data, I decided to come up with a backup plan. I bought a 12TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro Qx2 and configured it as RAID 5. I also bought an empty Qx2 and placed the 2TB drives from two 4TB Mercury Elite Pro RAIDs into that for an 8TB RAID 0 drive. That way, I could put all of the videos and photos from several drives onto one large drive and keep a backup of the large drive.

Article Continues…

One Comment

Category: Product Spotlight

Tags: 2011, 3TB, eSATA, imac, memory, Mercury, OWC, Qx2, ram, SSD, Turnkey, upgrade

NewerTech Introduces The Pad Protector 2 Leather Folio For iPad 2

Friday, September 16th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Newer Technology, Inc. announced today The Pad Protector 2, a stylish, lightweight leather folio/carrying case for the Apple iPad 2. Available in choice of rich red, black or cognac top grain leather, The Pad Protector 2 keeps an iPad 2 protected and looking like new while providing enhanced typing/viewing comfort and complete access to all ports and controls.

Combines High Style and Practical Functionality

The Pad Protector 2 features a luxurious leather cover that discreetly fastens with high-powered, slimline magnets that wake the user’s iPad 2 up when the cover is opened and put it to sleep when it is closed. The sleek design includes front and rear camera cutouts for unobstructed images. In addition to supporting vertical and horizontal viewing, the cover also functions like a “kickstand,” providing both comfort and stability when typing. Article Continues…

Comment on this post.

Category: Press Releases

Tags: 2, black, case, cognac, folio, iPad, leather, pad, press, protector, red, release

OWC Announces Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G As Industry’s First 6Gbps Solid-State Drive For 2011 Apple MacBook Air

Thursday, September 15th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing announced today the industry’s first 6G SSD upgrade for the 2011 Apple MacBook Air 11.1″ and 13.3″ models. The new OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G SSDs combine award-winning SandForce technologies and Tier 1/Grade A Toggle Synchronous NAND to deliver data rates that are more than 3x faster and capacities that are up to 4x greater than factory available SSD options. Currently available in two sizes–120GB and 240GB–the new 6Gb/s SATA 3.0 Revision models continue OWC’s position as the only alternative to factory SSD options for the 2010-2011 MacBook Air. 3G speed models from OWC are also available in capacities of up to 480GB. Article Continues…

This post has 20 comments.

Category: New @ OWC, Press Releases

Tags: 2011, 6G, Aura, Express, MacBook Air, Mercury, OWC, press, Pro, release, SATA Revision 3.0

2011 MacBook Pro SATA Problems Resolved!

Thursday, September 15th, 2011 | Author: OWC Larry

If you’ve been reading the OWC Blog for the past few months, you’re probably well aware of the problems that 2011 MacBook Pros were having with 6.0Gb/s SATA performance. If you’re not familiar with it, the short form is that in many 17″ 2011 MacBook Pros (and some 15″ and 13″ as well) had problems with SATA 3.0 Revision SSDs such as the Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G—through no fault of the SSD— resulting in spotty performance, beach ball timeout delays, and even complete failure to recognize SATA 3.0 6Gb/s SSDs at all.

Well, if you ran Software Update this morning, MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.2 appears to be the answer. Nearly seven months after these machines first became available, all indications are that we can now reliably count on taking full advantage of the 6Gb/s capability provided.

Apple has somewhat dodged giving any direct response on the issue itself, but this long awaited solution just happens to be there in this update with the official description on Apple’s support site only mentioning the update as addressing Lion Internet Recovery and Thunderbolt. We are very thankful and excited to see the ‘quiet’ fix for 6Gb/s SATA 3.0 main bay drive reliability as a further benefit of this update. Article Continues…

This post has 279 comments.

Category: Fresh from Apple, Product Spotlight, Tech Tips

Tags: 2011, 6G, 6Gb/s, compatibility, Firmware, MacBook Pro, Mercury Extreme, sata 3, sata III, update