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Apple Previews OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: The iOS-ification Continues

Friday, February 17th, 2012 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Yesterday, Apple released a preview of the upcoming iteration of OS X, code-named Mountain Lion. It was real tempting to slip a “cougar” joke in here somewhere (they’re the same animal), but in the interest of giving a more serious look at the OS, it’s probably best if we forego it.

As it’s still early in the process (at least from the end-user side of things) the only things really talked about are new features, most ported over from iOS. Rather than re-hash them all here, you can see them for yourself at Apple’s Web site.

In all, though, it continues the trend for blurring the lines between the mobile and the desktop environments. However, while Lion’s iOS-inpired additions went from the sublime (Lion’s Mail app and full-screen apps – provided you only have one screen) to the ridiculous (does anybody actually use Launchpad to open apps?) and everywhere in between (Mission Control replacing Spaces, “natural” scrolling and gestures”) these additions seem to be focused on the “app” side of things.

Thoughts on What’s Been Announced Article Continues…

Apple Big in Business News

Friday, January 27th, 2012 | Author: OWC Chris S.

If you happen to follow the stock market (or even if you don’t) you may have heard that Apple posted record-level quarterly financial results on Tuesday. Analysts have pointed to a combination of the release of the wildly popular iPhone 4S and the holiday season as the source of the extra performance. However, this is just the cherry on top of the sundae. Apple’s growth has been meteoric these last few years, largely on the back of the iPhone and the iPad.

But most of the numbers you see really don’t mean much to your everyday person. A market cap of $416 billion? Okay, that’s a lot. But how much is it?

The Wall Street Journal had a great infographic the other day breaking it down. Here are couple of highlights. Article Continues…

Category: Apple News

Yes Virginia, Being UL Listed Does Really Matter

Friday, December 16th, 2011 | Author: OWC Grant

While I edit many posts behind the scenes, I haven’t flexed my writing chops here in a while. The introduction of the Power2U™ AC/USB wall outlet yesterday provided the impetus for me to return in a very visible way. And the time of season certainly provides the theme for a post headline. ;-)

You see, I’ve been a part of the development of this product for the past two years so I’m feeling like a proud papa. Heck, I even christened it…it offers two different ways to power/charge & has two USB ports. Get it?

The reason it took this ship take so long to sail is we realized beyond all the product’s functionality, convenience, and downright coolness, there was one key element that could not be comprised: your safety. Article Continues…

When is an iPad not an iPad? When you’re in China.

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Lately, when you hear about Apple filing a lawsuit, it usually involves them fighting with Samsung over the uncanny resemblance some of their tablets and phones have to the iPhone and iPad.

This latest suit, though, has made a bit of a left turn into the Twilight Zone. Apple has lost a trademark dispute in China—over the use of the “iPad” trademark.

Yes, you read that correctly.

A Chinese court has ruled that Proview Technology has owned the “iPad” name for use in China since about 2000. Apple thought it had secured the trademark from Proview’s Taiwan arm of the company, but a Chinese court says that the Shenzhen arm of the company is the proper owner of the name. That means the deal Apple made with Proview (Taiwan)–or, more accurately the UK company that bought the rights from them—didn’t mean anything and now Proview (Shenzhen) is seeking over one billion dollars in “compensation” from Apple.

We’ll have to see where this ends up, but all things considered, the irony is overpowering…

 

Category: Apple News

Apple Hits 5 Percent of Computer Market

Monday, November 21st, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Those of you who follow these sorts of things will be happy to know that, after hovering around the 2-3 percent mark for about 15 years, Apple now has 5 percent share of the world computer market, according to analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham & Co.

Most of that growth has been due to a recent jump in enterprise sales as well as explosive growth in Asia. During the September quarter, Mac shipments grew 24.6 percent while the rest of the market only grew about 5.3 percent, making it the 22nd consecutive quarter where Apple’s growth outpaced the computer market as a whole.

Much of this has been due to its growth in the business market, where it saw a 43.8 percent increase over the 4.8 percent the rest of the market saw. The home market had similar (if less dramatic) numbers, showing a 25.6 percent increase to the the total growth of four percent. In fact, the only place where it seemed to fall short of the industry as a whole was in its traditional stronghold of the “education” sector, where Apple’s 2.9 percent growth is considerably lower than the 16.9 percent for the market in general.

Both the business and home user gains seem to be due to the iPad and iPhone. While the iPad, with its simpler interface, seems to be eating into Mac sales  (as well as other computers) in the education market, iDevice “halo effect” in businesses and homes has users buying the computer these devices were originally designed to work with.

Can Apple keep up this monumental growth streak? We’ll see.

 

Category: Apple News

Apple and Exxon Fighting for #1

Thursday, August 11th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Unless you tend to follow the stock market, you may have missed out on this one – I know I did. Looks like Apple Inc, has been volleying back and forth with Exxon Mobil for the title of “Most Valuable Company in the World” over the last few days. And as of 1:08PM Central Daylight Time on August 11, 2011, Apple is sitting in the top slot with a value of $346.61 billion versus Exxon Mobil’s paltry $346.38 billion. Of course, with the effects of market volatility, the financial situations in Europe and the US, and quite possibly Lex Luthor’s mind control ray, that can all change in moments, but right now Cupertino is on top.

I suppose there’s some bragging rights in there somewhere, but that’s something that a market analyst, a financial advisor or maybe Gordon Gekko could probably explain the intricacies of better than I could. All I know is that all of us long-time Mac users finally get to run around screaming “WHOOOOO!!!! We’re Number One!” to each other while swigging from large bottles of champagne and waiting by the mailbox to receive the free Mac minis that Apple is sending out in celebration.

(What?… They’re not sending out free Mac minis?… How about those large bottles of champagne?… No?… Then what’s in it for me?…) Article Continues…

That’s Outta This World

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 | Author: OWC Mike H.

 

Aurora Australis From Space

Image Credit: NASA

One of the pictures of the day over at nasa.gov has piqued our space imaginations over here at OWC. The picture shows a very cool pic of the Aurora Australis from space, similar to the Northern Lights known in the northern hemisphere.

Get the full size image at nasa.gov

2011 iMac Benchmark Testing With the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD

Thursday, May 5th, 2011 | Author: OWC Michael

What a whirlwind of information these new iMacs have been creating. Just a few hours after the machines were released, we had five out of the six base models unboxed and going through our gamut of tests.

We were shocked when we installed our new OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSDs only to find that Apple had essentially throttled the internal SATA connections on the latest Z68 chipset from Intel to 3Gb/s speeds when the Z68 chipset itself could accommodate up to two SATA Revision 3.0 (6Gb/s) ports and up to four SATA Revision 2.0 (3Gb/s) ports. News of this travesty rocked the Mac community - even one of our Twitter followers heard the news and tweeted Phil Schiller directly.

Shortly after the news spread far and wide, Apple released iMac EFI Update 1.6 and two SATA Revision 3.0 (6Gb/s) ports were available on the latest iMac and all was right in the world again.

We fired up the machines, installed the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD and started our testing again. As promised, here is a glimpse of our initial benchmark testing… Article Continues…