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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…

Mac-Compatible SandForce Updater Now Available

Thursday, September 1st, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

We know you’ve been asking for it and we’ve been hard at work on it. Now, we can proudly say that OWC has the industry’s first (and only)Mac-compatible firmware updater for SandForce Driven Solid State Drives. It’s available for download from our site for use with select OWC Mercury SSDs manufactured after January 2010.

While we’ve offered firmware updates since Spring 2010 to recently, they’ve only been offered via a Windows-based uploader and required a Boot Camp installation to work properly with your Mac. Now, though, that dependency is gone. All you need to do is download the updater from our site, burn it to a DVD, and boot from that DVD to launch the point-and-click interface. Right now, this utility is only for our 3G SSDs which utilize the SF1200 series processor. We should have an updater for our Mercury 6G series (SF 2200 series processor) in a few weeks. Article Continues…

OWC Introduces First ‘Apple/Mac Friendly’ Firmware Update Solution For SandForce Driven Solid State Drives

Thursday, September 1st, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing announced today the industry’s first and only Apple/Mac compatible firmware updater for SandForce Driven Solid State Drives. The fully Mac bootable updater is freely available from OWC for use exclusively with select OWC Mercury Solid State Drive models manufactured since January 2010. This new Mac compatible firmware updater is in addition to firmware update support OWC previously made available for Macintosh computers via the use of Bootcamp, as well as for PCs running the Windows OS. Article Continues…

The End Of An Era … Steve Jobs Resigns As Apple’s CEO

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 | Author: OWC Michael

After years of being the singular most influential driving force in the computing industry, Steve Jobs resigned today from his post as CEO of Apple Inc. and recommended Tim Cook as his successor.

Mr. Jobs published this letter to Apple:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee. Article Continues…

OWC 8GB Memory Modules ‘Supercharge’ 2011 Apple MacBook Pro and Mac mini with 16GB RAM…Double The Factory Maximum Memory

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing announced today that its in-house MaxRAM tested and verified compatible OWC DDR3 1333MHz 16GB Memory Upgrade Kit ‘supercharges’ 2011 Apple MacBook Pro and Mac mini models by doubling the Factory maximum offered memory. The OWC 16GB Memory Upgrade Kit, now priced at $929.99, joins existing popular OWC memory upgrade kits for MacBook Pro and Mac mini models including the 8GB Memory Upgrade Kit priced at $71.99, which offers savings up to 70% compared to the same sized Factory installed 8GB option. Article Continues…

Category: Press Releases

New Instructional Videos!

Friday, August 12th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

It’s been a while since we really drew attention to new additions to our Instructional Series of videos, but considering the requests we’ve been getting lately, we figured you may be interested.

We’ve added a total of six new videos to our DIY section, showing you how to upgrade the memory and storage on the 2011 mini and mini Server, as well as showing you how to install the Mercury Aura Pro Express in the 2011 MacBook Airs.

You can check out these new videos (and all out other ones, too) in our Tech Center, on our YouTube Channel, or in iTunes.