Do you have an Apple aficionado that’s notoriously hard to buy for? Do you have an extra $50,000 burning a hole in your pocket? Well, you can do a number of things…

• Max out the memory in 40 Mac Pros.
• Buy 62 256GB Mercury On-The-Go SSD Triple Interface portable drives – 15.5TB of solid state storage is nothing to sneeze at.
• Buy 5000 single layer, recordable Blu-ray Discs, for over of 122.0TB of recordable storage space
• Buy 31 entry-level Modbooks – get a tablet that’s a real Mac, not just a big iPhone.
• Buy and drink 30,381 cans of Brain Toniq – at 2 cans a day, it would take approximately  41½ years.

All of these are great gifts (even in considerably smaller quantities) but for the ultimate in Apple fandom, you may want to rotate your eyeballs on over to eBay, where someone is selling an Apple I computer, complete with original invoice, shipping box, and letter signed by His Steveness, himself. There’s no bids on it as of this writing, and the starting bid is at fifty grand, so get your checkbooks out for this ultimate in Apple collectibles.

You can ship it to me care of OWC if the holiday spirit is upon you. ;-)

Today we completed the benchmarking of the last two iMac computers that Apple introduced last month: The 2.66GHz iMac Intel Core i5 and the 2.8GHz iMac Intel Core i7.

With the ability to simultaneously run 4 cores and 8 cores respectively, these machines are quite the powerhouses of processing power.

It’s interesting to note that even with faster starting times than the other iMacs in this series, the RAM Hog II test (which simulates powerhouse usage where 80% of the machine’s resources are busy with other processes) was rendered satisfied after 12GB of memory was installed.

Not to say that 16GB didn’t show significant results in its own right. The After Effects Render Test (which spawns subprocesses for each core processor) showed steady improvement in times as more and more memory was added to the computer.

And speaking of that 16GB upgrade, to put a spotlight on the results, the i5 model was up to 44% faster in that RAM Hog II test with the maximum memory installed.

As always, what level to upgrade your Mac is a personal choice. You can check out all the Late 2009 iMac memory and hard drive upgrade options and decide if you want to go mild or wild.

We just got our first 2.66GHz Quad-Core 27″ iMac i5 machine within the last hour and I really wanted to share our excitement with you.  So we took photos of our unboxing of this unit.

The box itself is sturdy and strong with a comfortable enough handle to lug this baby with it’s monster screen wherever you need:

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If you upgrade a Mac to an SSD drive – having good management of your files is important where you use an additional drive or drives to have capacity for your photo, music, video libraries, etc.  With the relatively small sizes of SSD drives, they can fill up with data fast; but the performance benefits of SSD are undeniable.

If you’ve been following our blog since the beginning, we’ve given several tips on relocating these types of files off your internal storage on onto external storage solutions. Today’s modern operating systems make this pretty easy.

For those audiophiles out there, an iTunes library can quickly become an overwhelming size.  Back in March, we showed you how to move your iTunes library to an external hard drive such as the Mercury On-the-Go Pro.

Photography enthusiasts will also find their pictures taking up more and more hard drive space.  You can also move your iPhoto library to an external drive to keep your primary drive lean and operating at top speeds.

My basic rule of thumb to follow is to keep the Operating System and your applications themselves on the main, internal hard drive while storing the files, documents, pictures, movies, music, etc. on the separate drive.  By doing so, you can even use a 64GB SSD for boot and application performance benefits WHILE maintaining access to extensive file libraries that can’t all fit onto an SSD.

Check out OWC’s full selection of SSD Drives and External Hard Drive Solutions to find the fit that’s right for you.

Creating a new homepage look can either be met with cheers or yawns depending on how personally invested you are in the site. We get pretty excited here about many products and often can’t help ourselves from “getting our geek on” and wanting to tell you about all the cool stuff we carry…whether it be our own OWC branded products, the products from NewerTech for which we are an exclusive distributor, or a great deal on one of the many other leading brand names in our over 2,500 item on-line catalog.

Realizing that might be a bit much and overwhelm you like a kid in a candy store, we redesigned macsales.com homepage to have a kinder, gentler look. Adding to this fresh approach is a caricature of OWC Larry himself calling your attention to products he gives a hearty thumbs up to.

So we hope this redesign (and our ongoing efforts to come) is met with cheers from you and improves your site experience with us. As always, keep your feedback coming and thank you for your trust in us as your source for your Mac, PC, iPod, and iPhone technology needs.

During the course of a normal day here, I see/hear/read a lot of customer correspondence. The majority of it is very complimentary which is very gratifying and really pumps up the team morale here. Sometimes one comes by though that is a bit unique in nature/subject and I dive into those with much curiosity. Such was the case yesterday when I saw an exchange between a customer and none other than OWC Larry…the CEO here for you newbies. Now before you say, “well sure, probably a long time customer who has spent gazillions with OWC!”, what sealed the deal for me was that this customer was two years new to us.

It turns out Scott A. from Saint Paul, MN, was looking for a bigger Cinema Display for a legacy MacBook Pro. He had stopped by an Apple store and was told to contact us. While we didn’t have anything that Scott could purchase, OWC Larry researched it enough to refer Scott directly to another source as his best option and provided a link to the exact listings.

And while Scott summed up his appreciation for this action as:

“You guys are a great source of expert, practical,  helpful information about Mac products…you must be if the Genius Bar at the Apple Store recommends you.”

the entire interaction got me thinking that truly is one of the OWC Differences…we aren’t about selling products as really anyone can create a storefront and do that. We do, from every corner in our LEED Platinum designed building, truly exist to serve you. Is that a “Genius” approach to running a successful business? I dare say it’s surely better, and more soul fulfilling, than putting the bottom line on a pedestal. And I think the man in the poster looking over my shoulder in my office would agree.

We’ve received four configurations of the 21.5″ and four configurations of the 27″ machines so far.  The quad core i5 and i7 machines aren’t due out till later this month.  Between the advancements in Snow Leopard and adding additional memory to these computers, they sure can go fast!

In fact – we found up to a 46% performance boost by installing the OWC 16GB Memory Upgrade Kit versus the factory installed 4GB.

We’ve run the machines through a rigorous battery of benchmark tests to test not only the pure processing speed of these machines, but also show what adding OWC memory to the setup can do.  Additionally, the different video card options have also been pitted against each other, so if you haven’t purchased your iMac yet, we now offer a definitive tool for making an informed decision on which graphics card to order.  Both of the Radeon HD options prove to generate twice the gaming frame rates than the Nvidia equipped model.  Not too shabby!

Unlike the prior generation of iMacs, these models have a total of four DDR3 memory slots. You can add an additional 4GB kit and have 8GB total or an 8GB kit and have 12GB total without removing  the standard factory 4GB.

Should you want to max the memory up to 16GB, you will need to take out those original modules. While Apple officially supports up to 16GB in all the new iMac models, they only offer up to 8GB in the 21.5″ model. Not only does OWC offer you the options for up to 16GB total, but even if you just need an additional 4GB, we’ll save you 50% compared to the same installed by Apple.

The results make our company mantra ring true.  ”More Memory = Faster Mac!”

As additional machines are run through the same tests, they will appear on the same page as our overall goal is to have every Snow Leopard compatible machine tested using the same process.

Sometimes even the best educated guesses can be thrown for a loop when an unforeseen “X-Factor” comes into play. Such is the case with the Late 2009 iMacs.

As we were getting information together for the new iMac instructional videos, we came across a little tidbit that, apparently, hasn’t been covered anywhere else: Apple has switched the iMac’s method of hard drive temperature sensing. They’ve gone from an external sensor that attached to the outside surface of the drive to a connector that seems to use the drive’s internal sensors. more…

About a year ago, OWC CEO Larry O’Connor revisited a recurring topic in his Tips n’ Deals Newsletter and OWC Chris covered that in a post on how the Rules of Upgrading rarely change.

Both of them explored five different ways you can upgrade your Mac to extend its useful life. Since some time has transpired, some new machines were released by Apple, and Snow Leopard has now become a reality, it’s time we take a fresh look at some “old” rules of upgrading:

#1 – Upgrade Your Memory
I think we’ve lost count of how many times we’ve talked about how upgrading your memory gives you the best performance boost for the investment. Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 is a 64-bit (along with its applications) which allows each application to address more than 4GB of RAM at a time. OSX’s memory management now is a lot more flexible in keeping its cached instructions, lessening the need for a hard drive hit.

The bottom line is simple: Your OS and Applications can certainly run on the minimum memory, but having more memory installed makes for a whole lot more enjoyable and productive experience, all for a low investment. With upgrades ranging from $44.97 for a 2GB module for a MacBook, through 16GB of RAM for an iMac, up to a full 32GB of memory priced at $27.25 per GB to max out your Mac Pro, a memory upgrade is dollar-for-dollar the best investment you can make for your Mac.

You can find memory (and other upgrades) for nearly every Mac produced over the past two decades with our easy online upgrade guide. In addition to the instructions you’ll find in just about any Apple computer manual, we’ve got easy-to-follow free installation videos that further illustrate how easy it is for you to get that memory into your Mac. And if you need further help, it is just a click a way in our online tech center.

#2 – Upgrade Your Storage.
The big news for 2009 was the rapid pace of developments in storage capacity, speed, and overall performance. Now we’re talking up to 2.0TB for 3.5″ drives, up to 1.0TB for 2.5″ drives, and SSDs have truly emerged as a legitimate consideration. Since we promised SSD benchmarks in our last coverage of this upgrade, we’re going to focus on them here. I did a comparison of how SSDs measured up to hard drives and SSDs were the speed, reliability, and quiet running champs. Just how much faster are SSDs? Check it out: more…

Back in August ,when Apple updated their MacBook Pro line of laptops, the ExpressCard slot was replaced with an SD cardslot.  Here in October, Apple again has added this feature to the entire iMac lineup. It’s located just beneath the optical drive on each machine.

This would be a good time to revisit my prior article: What good is the MacBook Pro SD card slot anyway? to learn how to make the most out of this added feature.  It goes into detail on making a boot drive out of an SD card as well as an emergency startup disk.

Additionally, the widescreen form factor of the new iMac lends to using the machines for multimedia displays.  An SD card makes a great medium for transferring your multimedia data between computers.  A DVD quality movie takes up about 2GB per hour of playtime.  With SD cards ranging from 2GB to 32GB currently, one could store up to 16 hours of footage on a single card.  More exciting is the introduction of the SDXC format which as early as 2010 could have us storing from 64GB up to 2.0TB on a single card.

I for one wouldn’t be surprised to see movies, TV shows and other media being distributed on SD cards just the same as we see CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs currently. Time will tell on that one.

With Apple’s new machine releases, we’re hard at work in the OWC Test Labs seeing just how fast we can make the machines go.

Our first machine that we’re looking at is the October 2009 2.26GHz MacBook.  This machine is pretty tight on the inside – meaning there isn’t much extra unnecessary space inside.  Like the iPod and iPhone, conservation of space seems to be a high-priority of Apple’s design teams.  So even though the machine is lighter and sleeker, it does pose some drawbacks in upgrading.  This Macbook has no problem running either a 5400rpm, 7200rpm or SSD drive for the fastest speeds, however; the physical height of the drive is limited to the 9.5mm form factor.  The 12.5mm drives are too tall to fit in the space provided.

I should reiterate that point.  The drive doesn’t officially fit.  Sure, we were able to cram it in, and screw the cover closed (with a little bowing of the bottom) but we don’t suggest or will support actually running the drive this way.  Too much physical pressure on a drive can certainly contribute to early drive failure – it’s just not worth risking your data or the expense of a warranty compromised drive.

We’re pleased to announce our findings that our OWC brand memory certainly takes the cake in these machines!  While Apple lists 4GB as the maximum amount of installable memory, our 8GB memory kit OWC8566DDR3S8GP is now tested and fully certified for the full 8GB utilization – a real performance benefit for memory intensive application loads. While we were at it, we also tested another brand 8GB memory kit and found it consistently caused kernel panics and non-boot issues. Even though both are the same spec of DDR3 1066MHZ SO-DIMM, sometimes quality does have its result.

Thus, when we talk about how OWC brand memory meets or exceeds all Apple requirements for memory, it’s not just idle chatter or marketing-speak. Our on-premise testing lab enables us to physically confirm this fact for every machine listed in our compatibility charts.  Then, we back our quality assurance with a lifetime warranty.  How can you go wrong?

After last month’s rather disappointing iTunes event, it’s good to see an Apple product announcement with some substance behind it.

This time around, the improvements were made to products that traditionally catered to the “consumer” end: the iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook. There were also a couple of tweaks to the AirPort Extreme Base Station and Time Capsule, though nothing really worth noting. Rounding out the bunch was the introduction of a new multi-touch mouse.

As we get these new models in for testing (and, of course, videos showing you how to upgrade them) we’ll be going over them in a little more detail. For now, though, let’s reflect on what’s been announced and what potential they hold.

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While NASA’s LCROSS mission perhaps fizzled to the naked eye, I did catch some highlights in OWC Larry’s recent Hot Deals Blast that might lift your spirits. And if you aren’t a subscriber to the Blast, you can do so for free by visiting the OWC Resource Center. “What’s a Hot Deals Blast?” you might be asking…well the official description from our site is:

Some deals are of such limited quantity or just simply too hot to wait for our next Tips n’ Deals emailing. The OWC Hot Deals Blast goes out 5-7 times a month and subscribers are sure to have the first shot at new specials we put online. This is the list to be on to make sure you’ve got the first shot at new deals, clearance specials, etc!

That said, two product mentions jumped out at me as being very useful. The first is how you can maintain your Mac like a Genius and perform Recovery like a Pro.

Prosoft Drive Genius should be a standard part of every Mac user’s software library. For $59.99 (vs. $99 retail) or as low as $25 with a qualifying storage solution, it’s a great deal + an application that can pay for itself. This is the same utility that the Apple Store Genuis Bar uses for the ‘Yearly Tune Up’ service that is part of the ProCare service they offer. Instead of paying them to do it, you can keep your Mac running great and right from the comfort of your own home. Already fully updated for Apple OS 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’ – this utility suite includes:

Drive Slim – locates duplicate, identical files and allows these space wasting dupes to be deleted and can put aliases in their place so no problem finding the single file that remains.

DeFrag – Over time, as you write new files, update existing files, delete files – files and file groupings on your hard drive become fragmented. As a result of fragmentation, your hard drive has to move the read/write heads to multiple locations when reading and/or writing and that slows things down. By optimizing your drive with the Defrag utility, best data access performance is then restored.

Repair – fixes minor corruption/file system issues; Shred – DoD compliant erasure of data from unused portion of drive/after file deletion, etc.; Clone – make a bootable clone of your entire drive on another, for backup or when upgrading to a new drive; Integrity check – make sure all systems are ‘go/green’ – identify those that are not; And more!

Prosoft Data Rescue is the utility that can save you big time should a major problem occur. Also available for $59 (vs. $99 retail), this utility is tops for recovering data. From accidental file deletions to catastrophic drive directory corruption and even with a drive that is failing -this is the utility up to the task of bringing back your critical files. Somethings even a backup isn’t going help you with – and before paying the high price for someone else to recover your priceless data, more often than not – as long as the drive is still seen (even if it won’t mount), Data Rescue will save the day.

Keep your Mac tip-top + be prepared – Both Drive Genius + Data Rescue together for $109.99 (vs. $198 Retail)

The second item that caught my eye was how you can power your mobile Mac with genuine Apple MagSafe Power Adapters. We’ve got ‘em used or refurbished, fully tested, and backed by a 90 day OWC Warranty starting at $42.75 in the following models:

Apple Genuine 85 Watt Magsafe AC Power Adapter for all Apple MacBook Pro 15″ and 17″ Models

Apple Genuine 60 Watt Magsafe AC Power Adapter for all Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro 13″ Models

Apple Genuine 45 Watt Magsafe AC Power Adapter for all Apple MacBook Air Models

If you can use a spare adapter, or need a replacement for one gone bad – this saves you over $30 vs. the cost of a new adapter. NOTE: it is important to purchase the adapter model that is correct for the laptop model you have/plan to use it with. Using a lower wattage adapter than correct for your machine will impact charging time while a higher wattage than specified can reduce the lifetime of the battery.

One thing to remember on all of the above prices…those are the everyday prices. There are additional savings to be had if you are a Hot Deals Blast subscriber…so join today!

We’re continuing  our diligent work here at the OWC testing lab benchmarking every machine compatible with Snow Leopard and should be ready to start posting some of the results soon.

In the meantime, however, we found some great nuggets of information that we’d like to share!

For our latest test, we took two machines in which the most memory that can be installed was 2GB, maxed out their memory, and checked the performance gains that installing a faster hard drive can provide.  The results were quite impressive!

The Contenders:

The original 2006 MacBook 13″
1.83GHz Core Duo running OS 10.6.1

The 2004 iMac G5 20″
PowerPC 1.8GHz running 10.5.8

Heres what we found:

• The Photoshop Action Test measures the time (in seconds) it takes to execute a custom action script comprising of 47 commonly-used, memory-intensive processes on a 21 megapixel image using Adobe Photoshop CS4. It is designed to represent an average photo editing session of a graphic artist. No other processes are running in the background besides those that keep the machine itself running. This is pure, linear computing where every available resource is on hand for the one test running.  Lower times are better.
• Our Stress Test is a variation on the Photoshop Action Test where the test is performed while iTunes is playing music with the visualizer running. This test adds one additional program to represent that additional light computing we do on the side in real life. With the Visualizer on, the resource draw on the machine is not limited to processor power and memory but to the video card and memory allocated for video as well. Lower times are better.
• The 16 Program Launch test simply measures the time (in seconds) it takes for 16 common programs* from OS X and iLife to open simultaneously.  Lower times are better.
• The Boot Time Test is exactly what it sounds like – the time it takes to boot the machine.  Again, lower times are better.

Considering the investment that a new Apple computer can cost, it makes sense to get all you can out of the machine you have before taking the plunge.  Installing a Solid State Drive can certainly extend the retirement date of your existing Mac for a fraction of the cost of a new computer.

A month ago today, Apple released OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Coincidentally, my MacBook Pro arrived right around that same time. I took advantage of having a “pristine” system and installed Snow Leopard on it immediately.

Looking back on the last month, things went surprisingly well. One by one, I added new apps and utilities to my system, making sure to check their compatibility as I went. Fortunately, most of the programs I use every day were already 10.6-compatible. My only major losses were iStat Menus and iSync compatibility with my Palm Centro. Luckily, iStat was updated soon after the 10.6 release, and I’ve got some good leads for Palm compatibility, so I’m 99% good to go.

Sure, even a month in, there are some mild annoyances – I lost the use of the full drivers for my home printer. Sure, the Gutenprint drivers work, but they just aren’t the same. I haven’t even tried scanning anything, but I’m relatively certain that it will be an exercise in futility. However, as both the printer and the scanner are 7-8 years old, I really can’t complain a whole lot – they have far outlasted my expectations for $20 at a garage sale.

As far as “whiz-bang” new features, there really weren’t any, though adjustments to things like Image Capture, Exposé, Time Machine, QuickTime, drive and file size reporting and a number of other things were welcome changes.  While, normally, simply tweaking the system for better performance/compatibility might be considered as a “service pack,” what the Snow Leopard naysayers seemed to have missed in calling it that is the whole shift in the system’s focus.

This is the first “Intel Only” version of OS X. It cut out a lot of the older, bloated PPC code, resulting in a much smaller installation. On top of that, they’ve added easier implementation of support for multi-processor apps as well making the system 64-bit capable on hardware that supports it. While this may not be all that useful at the present time it certainly opens the door for things becoming faster as applications are rewritten to take advantage of this technology.

So what is all this saying?

Effectively, what I’m saying here is that, despite a few hiccups at the beginning, Snow Leopard is certainly heading in the right direction. There are a few missing pieces here and there, but nothing that I found to be insurmountable. Further updates, both on Apple’s part and those of software developers, will continue to improve the experience.

A month into the process, I’d say that unless you either have a machine that won’t support it or you rely on one of the applications not yet supported, it is an upgrade well worth your time and money.

So often we are asked in reference to our OWC Instructional Series of Videos, “How exactly am I supposed to ‘Use proper anti-static precautions when performing this upgrade’?” The real answer is…it depends.  There are actually several different ways, depending on your situation, that you can help to control static electricity in order to avoid damaging the electronically delicate components found inside your computer.

According to Wikipedia: Static electricity refers to the buildup of electric charge on the surface of objects. The static charges remain on an object until they either bleed off to ground or are quickly neutralized by a discharge. And it’s that discharge that can ‘zap’ or ‘fry’ your computer components, rendering them inoperable.

To give you an idea of how little static electricity needs to be generated to cause harm to your computer components, it takes as little as 5 to 10 volts to cause damage inside your computer.  In order for you to even feel the presence of  static electricity, the level needs to be above 1,500 volts.   You can accumulate an average of 10,000 to 12,000 volts just walking across carpeting.  Rubbing a balloon on dry fur (or hair) generates about 20,000 volts. Did you know the average person can carry up to 25,000 volts of static energy at any given time? So discharging any built up energy before you begin is important.

So, how are we to be safe when working in our precious machines? more…

While there has been quite a debate over Apple’s decision to provide an SD card slot rather than an ExpressCard slot on the MacBook Pro 13″ and 15″ models, the fact of the matter remains that these machines are available and that many of us will be using these laptops. So how do we make the best use of our new port?

The first few suggestions are obvious – use the card reader to read the information from your SD compatible camera, PDA, or cell phone. Also use the SD card for removable storage just as you would use a USB flash drive.

In my overall review of the MacBook Pro at its release, I had gone into detail on the storage capabilities of the SD cards to come. And I touched on the bootability aspect of the SD card slot. But what makes this important? Well the answer is twofold. A trim, clean, uncluttered startup disk boots much faster than one with all your programs and files installed on it. As a laptop typically only comes with one hard drive, we used to be limited to using the internal drive with all our saved data and programs cluttering it up, or carrying around a separate external boot drive such as a Mercury On-The-Go or Express. The SD card is physically so much smaller and an 8GB card has more than enough room to hold a trim, clean version of OS X 10.5 (a 16GB SD card has enough room to hold a full version of the OS).  Just make sure you don’t pull out the SD card while you’re still using it.

Additionally and more importantly, an SD card with the operating system installed can be used as an emergency startup disk. In the case of a corrupted drive directory structure, this can come in very handy if you find yourself unable to boot your MacBook Pro. For more detailed information on restoring a corrupted drive, read OWC Larry’s article “Resolving System Problems”

So, how do you go about making a bootable SD card? It’s actually quite simple.

To install OS X 10.5, you’ll need at least an 8GB card (There should be smaller space requirement for Snow Leopard, but we won’t know for sure until after its release).

Format the SD card using disk utility. Under the “Partition” tab, highlight the SD card you want to format. Set the card for one partition and Format: Mac OS Extended Journaled. Give the volume a name and click on “Options”. You need to choose GUID partition table in order to boot from the card. Click “Apply” and the drive will be erased and formatted correctly.

Once formatted, use your OS X 10.5 install DVD and run the installer. Select the SD card as the destination. Follow the prompts until you get to the “Install Summary” page.

Choose “customize” on the Install Summary page and uncheck Printer Drives, Additional Fonts, Languages, etc. so all you’re left with is the “Essential System Software” checked. Don’t worry, it should be grayed out as an option that you can’t accidentally uncheck. This will cut the installation space in about 6.2GB from 11.6GB. Click install and let it work. When its done installing it is ready to use. Along with the OS, it is also a good idea to keep a few disk utilities on your emergency startup disk. Just a few we suggest are:

TechTool Pro
DiskWarrior
ProSoft Drive Genius
ProSoft Data Rescue II
File Salvage

To boot exclusively from the SD card, set the SD card as the Startup disk in System Preferences>Startup Disk.

Otherwise, insert the card and hold the option key at startup to manually choose the SD card as your Emergency Startup Disk.

Looking to be among the first notified of these special deals and more?  Sign up for OWC Larry’s Tips and Deals Newsletter.