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Tag-Archive for » MacBook Pro «

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…

This post has 56 comments.
Category: New @ OWC, Product Spotlight, Tech Tips
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Bye-Bye MacBook.

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Amongst all the hardware refreshes and OS updates, a small little detail may have been overlooked by some; the MacBook has been quietly removed from the listings on Apple’s Web site, leaving the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air as Apple’s only portable options.

Apple confirmed this with Engadget earlier today.

Hardware-wise, this isn’t much of a loss; the specs on the last version of the MacBook were fairly similar to the low-end model of 13” MacBook Pro released at the same time: same processor, same bus speed, same battery capacity, same screen size, same graphics card, and same maximum amount of RAM. The main differences were the cases (white polycarbonate vs aluminum), number of expansion options (The MacBook Pro added an SD slot and a FW800 port to the MacBook’s offerings) and the price (about $200 more for the MacBook Pro).

It’s that last one that’s going to affect a lot of people. At $999, the MacBook sat as an affordable laptop with a decent screen size, balance of features, and general usability. At that price point, Apple now only has the 11-inch MacBook Air. So for the same money, you get a smaller screen, a weaker video card, less storage and seemingly no upgrade options.

On the plus side, at least the entry model 2011 MacBook Pro 13” is only $200 more at $1199, which makes it the better buy overall, if just for the ability to upgrade memory, upgrade to a super-fast SSD, or even add a second drive.

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Category: Fresh from Apple
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Target Display Mode And Thunderbolt

Friday, July 1st, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Target Display Mode on the Late 2009 and 2010 iMacs was a pretty neat trick; you connected the iMac to another Mac via the Mini Display Port connector and the iMac’s display became a second monitor for the first mac while the system ran “headless” underneath it. When you unplugged the cable, the iMac’s display reverted back to the iMac itself.

The Thunderbolt port in the 2011 iMacs adds a couple of twists to this setup. First, when using Thunderbolt-equipped iMac as a display, you need to hit Command-F2 to switch the display between the iMac and the other Mac. This, however, is a relatively minor inconvenience or even a benefit, depending on how you generally use your iMac.

Another wrinkle comes in the form of what computer can connect to which iMac with which cable. To determine this we Article Continues…

This post has 19 comments.
Category: Benchmarking/Performance, Fresh from Apple, Tech Tips
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Give Me My Eject Key Back!

Thursday, June 30th, 2011 | Author: OWC Erik

A couple of months ago, I visited the OWC offices and took advantage of OWC Jamie’s workbench skills and had him perform some “OWC Love” on my 2011 MacBook Pro by removing the optical drive and replacing it with an OWC Data Doubler + 750GB HDD – to compliment the 480GB SSD I already have inside as my start-up disk.

This is my first system with an SSD and while I love the blazing fast boot time and application loading speed it offers, I wanted some additional storage for editing my home movies and housing my music library.  After the additional drive was installed, I formatted it into two partitions so I could have a dedicated Carbon Copy Cloner backup of my iPhoto library from the SDD on the HDD as well.  Preserving my family photos is my #1 priority and since my MacBook Pro is not always connected to my home network, I can’t always be sure that it is backing up to my external drives like my iMac, so this extra internal drive gives me some piece of mind.

With the optical drive removed, I started thinking about how the Eject key was now totally useless, and I thought that maybe there might be some way to re-purpose it to do something useful.  Article Continues…

This post has 5 comments.
Category: Tech Tips
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10.6.8: The Little Update That Didn’t

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Apple released the OS X 10.6.8 update last week. According to the Knowledge Base article on this update:

The 10.6.8 update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes that:

  • Enhance the Mac App Store to get your Mac ready to upgrade to Mac OS X Lion
  • Resolve an issue that may cause Preview to unexpectedly quit
  • Improve support for IPv6
  • Improve VPN reliability
  • Identify and remove known variants of Mac Defender

According to a post on MacRumors, there are a couple of other additions, as well. First is the enabling of TRIM support for Apple-branded SSDs. The other unannounced addition seems to be a boost in graphics performance nearly across the board.

While it’s great to see that Apple is moving towards the future with many aspects of its OS, there are several items they have not addressed yet, specifically on the 2011 MacBook Pros. Article Continues…

This post has 18 comments.
Category: Fresh from Apple, Tech Tips
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MacBook Pro 2011 Models and SATA 3.0 (6.0Gb/s) – Update – 5/27/2011

Friday, May 27th, 2011 | Author: OWC Larry

Since we first looked at a potential fix for problems with SATA 3.0 operation in the main bay of the 2011 MacBook Pros on April 15, we’ve learned much more.

It’s not so sweet at this point, but I will at least try to keep it as short as possible.

Before going any further, I do want to be clear that, while I believe the issues noted should be and will be resolved, Apple makes no advertisement—in specification or otherwise—that creates any obligation for them to fix the issues noted. Again, I do believe they will… I also believe it is in everyone’s best interest that they do fix it, with respect to the incredible performance that our SSDs unleash in these fantastic MacBook Pro 2011 models. If we’re lucky, it will be a fix handled via some software update; it would seem more likely to require a hardware adjustment, but we’ll see. FWIW, our shielding kit does make a difference for some, but not all, as there is just significant enough variability in the issue which means it ultimately needs to be resolved by Apple themselves.

Ok… To the details… Article Continues…

This post has 197 comments.
Category: Benchmarking/Performance
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What Can An OWC SSD Do For You?

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 | Author: OWC Ryan

Hey guys and gals out there… I work at OWC, but I’m just a warehouse guy. I’m certainly no “power user”, but luckily for me, the powers that be decided to let me test drive an OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD in a 2.0GHz 2011 MacBook Pro for them anyway…and all I can say is WOW!

My work consists of very frequent use of browsers, database applications, PDFs, spreadsheets, and the like. I usually have 5-12 apps running at any given time, and am always switching frequently between them.

Folks told me I “wouldn’t really” benefit from the additional speed the OWC Pro 6G SSD offered. All I can say is… well… “Wrong!” Article Continues…

This post has 5 comments.
Category: Product Spotlight, Random Thoughts & Topics
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NewerTech Introduces NuPower High Capacity Replacement Battery For 2008/2009 15″ Apple MacBook Pro ‘Unibody’ Computers

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Newer Technology, Inc. announced today the NuPower 52 Watt-Hour High Capacity Replacement Battery for Late 2008/Early 2009 15″ Apple MacBook Pro ‘Unibody’ notebook computers that offers up to 4% greater capacity over the factory original battery for longer runtimes. With a $99.00 MSRP, the NuPower 52 Watt-Hour battery offers a 23% lower cost than the replacement battery available from Apple.

The NewerTech NuPower 52 Watt-Hour High Capacity Replacement Battery is available immediately at $99.00 MSRP from NewerTech’s exclusive distributor, Other World Computing, as well as through the retail channel. Article Continues…

This post has 7 comments.
Category: New @ OWC, Press Releases, Product Spotlight
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