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Archive for June 12th, 2012

Not a Lot of Options for MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 | Author: OWC Chris S.

We finally got our hands on the new MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display and took a look inside and have taken it for a quick spin around the park.

Is it super thin? Yep.

Do photos and text look good on it? Indubitably.

Is there really considerably less glare on the screen? Surprisingly, yes.

Is it upgradable? Well…

As it turns out, the internals of the new Retina Display MBP have more in common with the 2012 MacBook Air than it does with the MacBook Pro:

  • same non-upgradable, soldered-in memory
  • similar/same SSD connection, which is completely different from the 2010/2011 MacBook Air
  • same lack of an internal optical drive

Yeah… that kind of limits our upgrade options. As of this minute (about 3:45 CDT, 6/12/12), no, there aren’t any upgrades available for the MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display. That said, though, we’re working on it. The Retina MBP’s SSD, though shorter and wider, looks to have the same connection as the SSD inside the 2012 MacBook Air. Whether we’ll come up with a special Aura Express for each model, or whether we develop a “unified” SSD we have yet to determine, but our Development team is on it like cat hair on dress pants.

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Category: Apple News
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2012 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display Unboxing

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 | Author: OWC Michael

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Category: Fresh from Apple
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Expand the 2012 MacBook Pros with an OWC Data Doubler.

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

While the both the new Macbook Airs and the MacBook Pro with Retina Display have new, custom connectors for their SSDs, the updated 2012 13” and 15” MacBook Pros continue to use industry standard SATA drives for their storage. That’s great news for upgrading; it means you can install an OWC Mercury Electra 6G or Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD in the main drive bay and get the amazing performance boost that comes from an OWC Solid State Drive.

There’s also an optical drive in these models. It’s obvious Apple is moving away from the optical drive as a media source; they’ve removed it completely from both the Air and now the 2012 MBP Retina models. You can do the same with the standard MacBook Pros, except you can put something even more useful in its place: more storage! The OWC Data Doubler, allows you install any 9mm or narrower 2.5” SSD or platter-based drive in the optical bay, and fits without issue in the 2012 MacBook Pros.

You may recall the problems people had using 6Gb/s SSDs in the optical bay of some 2011 MacBook Pros, so we did some preliminary tests this time around, too. We’re happy to say that the 15” model can take a 6Gb/s drive in either bay. Unfortunately, we can’t recommend using a 6Gb/s drive in the optical bay of the 13” model at this time. In our testing, we found the 6Gb/s performance of the bay to be very poor. The 3Gb/s models work with no problems, though, so you can still put a high-capacity drive in the optical bay and put the super-fast 6G SSD in the main drive bay, where it’ll work just fine.

We will be reviewing options to resolve the problem in the 13″ 6Gb/s optical bay , just as we are continue to do so with the similar issue affecting the 2011 MacBook Pro 15″/17″ models.

Speaking of new Macs and what can/can’t be upgraded, stay tuned for our coverage on the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

ADDENDUM: Independent sources confirm Data Doubler and our 6G Extreme as offering incredible dual drive performance: http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20120708_2-MacBookPro15-dual-6G-ports.html

UPDATE – 9/20/2012

Good News! Apple released EFI Update 2.9 for MacBook Pro (Mid 2012), which appears to have resolved this issue! We’re locking down the comments here. All the coverage and comments are now concentrated here.

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Category: Product Spotlight
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New 2012 Macs Means New OWC SSD Designs

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 | Author: OWC Grant

In my earlier post, I mentioned that the new 2012 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 15″ Retina machines are now using two new, different SSD slot designs/connectors not used previously. Here’s a few pictures of the new connectors, compared to the one previously used.

 

While our current Aura Pro Express SSDs are NOT compatible with these new machines, we ARE full steam ahead on bringing new models to market that will feature these new connectors.

Of course, the other new MacBook Pros announced yesterday, the 13″ and 15″ non-Retina Display models, will continue to utilize traditional 2.5″ SATA SSDs like our Mercury Electra 6G and Mercury Extreme Pro 6G. You can also install a couple of hard disk drives using the OWC Data Doubler (up to 1TB each) for a 2TB total…and if that’s your magic capacity number….here’s a future product teaser….with the OWC Data Doubler, you’ll  soon be able to hit that level of internal storage capacity with OWC SSDs!

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Category: Apple News
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Apple Now Using SandForce-based SSDs in 2012 MacBook Air

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 | Author: OWC Grant

An old saying goes, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

It seems as though Apple has decided to follow our lead and base the Solid State Drives in the new 2012 MacBook Air models (model ID MacBookAir5,1 and MacBookAir5,2) on the SandForce 2281 processor.

As you may know, our Aura Pro Express was the first aftermarket SSD available for 2010-2011 MacBook Air machines (and still the only one offered for the 2010 MBA models) and our Aura Pro MBA joined that first of its kind status for the 2008-2009 MacBook Airs.

Unfortunately though, the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 15″ Retina Display models use a new SSD slot connector design, thus making our Aura Pro Express not compatible.

From the very first OWC Mercury SSD we built two plus years ago, SandForce was the only processor we considered worthy to represent our brand. We’re pleased to see Apple has finally adopted what we have found to be the best SSD controller for our own drives.

While that unofficial endorsement of our decision to only use SandForce controllers is gratifying, we’re more excited about what that kind of support from Apple should mean in terms of new developments from SandForce.

The future of Mac-focused SSDs just got brighter for sure.

On that note, be sure to check back soon as we’ll have more posts regarding SSD developments.

UPDATE 6/12/12 

Apparently, the shine could be a bit off on this apple, so to speak. We just received an image from an industry associate who bought a new 2012 11″ MacBook Air and it shows a Samsung controller-based SSD. That’s a bit reminiscent of a similar issue with the 2011 machines; if you got the Toshiba-based SSD, you got slower performance than the Samsung. There was no way to specify or otherwise ensure you would get the higher performing Samsung SSD, so it was like playing the lottery.

Stay tuned to the blog as we’ll work on getting both the new 2012 MacBook Air SSDs and do some benchmarking to see if there is any performance difference like there was in past.

 

 

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Category: Apple News
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