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First Garage Sale of the Year!

Monday, January 9th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Well, it’s a busy, busy, busy time of year for us. We’re winding down from the holidays, we’ve got a lot of products being released/announced at CES, and we’re looking forward to Macworld, too. However, we’ve always got time for a great deal, and our Garage Sale Page is chock full of them.

So without any further ado, let’s take a look at what you can find this month:

Act quickly – items are “first come, first served” and of varying limited quantities. Quantities are limited to that which is on hand and items automatically count down and ‘disappear’ as sold out. Sorry… no rain checks.

 

Newer Technology Introduces NuPower High Capacity Replacement Battery for Late 2008 13″ Apple MacBook ‘Unibody’ Aluminum Computers

Thursday, December 29th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Newer Technology announced today the NuPower 45 Watt-Hour Replacement Battery for Late 2008 13″ Apple MacBook ‘Unibody’ aluminum notebook computers. The NuPower 45 watt-hour battery offers a 23% lower cost than the same watt-hour replacement battery available from Apple.

NuPower –Makes Apple Laptops Better Than New

Newer Technology NuPower high capacity replacement batteries are available for nearly every Mac notebook computer model produced from 1998 to 2009 including G3 PowerBooks with up to 87% more capacity, G4 PowerBooks with up to 50% more capacity, and iBooks with up to 67% more capacity. A one year warranty is included with all NuPower replacement batteries. Article Continues…

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

OWC Radio #61 – The “End of the World” Episode

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 | Author: OWC Michael, OWC Grant, OWC Mike H., and OWC Chris S.

The Mayans may have been wrong… We’ve got massive flooding in Thailand causing a world-wide hard drive shortage, asteroids are on the way, Internet Explorer is no longer on top of the web browser food-chain, dinosaurs will soon be roaming the earth while the Mac Pro goes extinct, people are talking to their phones now, the Mac platform is becoming more susceptible to viruses, there are dogs and cats, living together – it’s mass hysteria! Is November 2011 the end of what we know?

OWC Radio is a monthly, forum-based podcast focused on the events and happenings in the Mac community. This week’s hosts are: OWC Grant, OWC Chris S., and OWC Mike H.

Article Continues…

Category: OWC Radio

NewerTech Announces NuStand mini XL Acrylic Riser for Mac mini

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Newer Technology, Inc. announced today the NuStand mini XL riser. The solid, single-piece acrylic riser safely elevates a display over a Mac mini or levels the height of a smaller, secondary monitor connected to a 27″ iMac.

Save Space While Elevating Display Over mini

The NuStand mini XL’s 3.5″ clearance raises a LCD (up to 30″) or CRT (up to 22″) over a Mac mini to an ergonomically proper viewing height. Its open-design offers easy access to all ports and if applicable, the mini’s optical drive slot.

Great For iMac Too

Although the NuStand mini XL is designed for the Mac mini, it offers a display solution for 27″ iMac owners wanting to use a smaller, secondary monitor.  In addition to leveling the height between displays, the NuStand mini XL also provides the ideal location for an Apple Wireless Keyboard, an external hard drive solution, and  other low-profile devices.

NuStand mini XL Features

  • Enables placement of Mac mini with Airport Extreme or Time Capsule, Apple’s Wireless Keyboard and other low-profile devices below a monitor or all-in-one computer like the iMac.
  • Raises display to an ergonomic viewing height
  • Saves valuable desktop space
  • Solid, single-piece acrylic construction
  • No ports or cooling vents are obstructed
  • No Bluetooth or Wi-Fi signal loss

Price, Availability

The Newer Technology NuStand mini XL is available immediately for $49.95 MSRP from NewerTech’s exclusive distributor, Other World Computing (OWC®), and through the retail channel. For more information on the NuStand mini XL and reseller inquiries, visit: http://www.newertech.com/products/nustandxl.php. For more information on NewerTech’s complete line of accessories and upgrades for Macs, PCs, and iOS devices, visit: http://www.newertech.com/products.

 

Category: Press Releases

Upgrade Your 06-08 Mac Pro’s Internal Bays to SATA 3.0

Friday, October 14th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Most of the time, your average Mac has a longer useful life than its PC counterpart. Unfortunately, the fast evolution of technology means that, after a while, that older Mac may seem a little slow and may not be able to take full advantage of current tech.

Such is the case for earlier Mac Pros. As they currently sit, they only move data at SATA 2.0  speeds, roughly three gigabits per second. If you wish to put the drives in to a RAID array, you are limited to either a mirrored RAID 1, losing half your capacity, or a RAID 0, which is faster, but increases the risk of data loss. On top of that, those RAID levels are all software-based, which can reduce overall performance.

Fortunately, if you happen to have a 2006-2008 Mac Pro, you can improve the performance in those bays, with only one small thing to lookout for. Article Continues…

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…

Category: App Review

More on the OWC SSD Updater

Friday, September 2nd, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

We’ve had a number of questions here on the blog and elsewhere regarding our updater. We figured it would be best to simply put it all in one post, to address their concerns, as well as provide a resource for those looking for this information in the future.

First things first, we’d like to note that only customers who purchased their OWC SSD before March 18th, 2011 have any reason to download the current update application. Drives purchased after that date already have the most recent firmware and there is no benefit of an update at this time. Having said that, it is important to know that if/when a firmware update is needed in future, we now have this Mac friendly updater application in addition to the Windows update application we also provide.

This just so happens to be the first Mac-compatible updater for SandForce Powered SSDs, namely OWC’s series of SandForce Powered drives. The bootable disc runs a Linux-based interface that has been customized for our application. It starts up automatically, you point, click, and done.

We truly wanted an updater for our SSDs that would be application specific, Mac friendly, and extremely stable and simple to use. As the screenshots below illustrate, we’ve managed to accomplish that quite well. Article Continues…