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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…

Final Cut Pro X is released. OWC can help get your Mac up to the task.

Friday, June 24th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Apple released Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor on Tuesday. If you follow that sort of thing, you’ve probably already seen plenty of reviews and walkthroughs of the new features, new layout and overall performance enhancements of Apple’s “professional” video editing suite.

The new, lower price point (a total of $400 for all three apps versus about $1000 for Final Cut Studio 4), brings it much closer to the “prosumer” market that was formerly served by Final Cut Express. However, users of Express (as well as those using FCS 4 on older Macs) looking to upgrade may find that their current hardware may not support the new software.

So let’s take a look at the listed requirements for Final Cut Pro X and friends and see where things sit.

Final Cut Pro X $299.99:

  • Memory: 2.0GB minimum, 4.0GB recommended
  • Graphics: OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later and 256MB VRAM
  • Display: 1280 x 768 resolution or higher
  • Disk Space for install: 2.4GB of disk space

Motion 5 $49.99:

  • Memory: 2.0GB minimum, 4.0GB recommended
  • Graphics: OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later and 256MB VRAM
  • Display: 1280 x 768 resolution or higher
  • Disk Space for install: 2.0GB

Compressor $49.99:

  • Memory: 2.0GB minimum, 4.0GB recommended
  • Graphics: OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later and 256MB VRAM
  • Display: 1280 x 768 resolution or higher
  • Disk Space for install: 685MB

Of course, those are just the Apple “recommendations.” Let’s take a look at what you can do to upgrade your Macs to run FCP X the best. This may be old hat for you Final Cut professionals, but those moving up from iMovie or Express, you may need to do some upgrading. Article Continues…

Blu-ray and Macs? With OWC, Yes!

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

While fairly common on many Windows boxes, Mac OS X does not support playback of Blu-ray movies on your Mac, and it’s not likely to do so any time soon. That means that if you’ve added a Mac mini to your home-theater system, want to watch HD movies on the road, or even if you just don’t have a lot of space for a TV and a computer, you’ve got to copy and convert the data from the discs in order to play them back and that’s impossible without a drive capable of reading Blu-ray discs.

Unfortunately, this Mac/Blu-ray gap also goes the other way too; the HD home movies that you’ve edited together in iMovie, Final Cut, or even Adobe Premiere are all HD, but how are you going to get them to your (or perhaps your mother in law’s) television to take advantage of the larger screen and/or the better sound quality? Sure, iDVD will get them to a disc playable anywhere, but you’ll lose that wonderful HD quality. For widest HD support, you need to be able to burn a Blu-ray movie to disc.

In both these scenarios, the lack of a Blu-ray drive is the main problem. Though you can’t play the movies themselves back, OS X will mount Blu-ray discs on the desktop; you can rip them using a program such as Handbrake. On the other side of the coin, programs like Roxio Toast Titanium can burn Blu-ray discs that will play in any home Blu-ray player. You just need a drive that can read and burn Blu-ray discs. Article Continues…

NVIDIA Quadro 4000 For Mac Benchmarked

Friday, June 3rd, 2011 | Author: OWC Michael

Our friends over at Bare Feats are at it again, benchmarking away. In a post today, they’ve found the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 for Mac helps speed things up while running Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve.

Added to their performance findings from February while benchmarking with Kronos, Squeeze, Color, and Colorista II; the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 for Mac is a clear favorite for professional video and graphics design.

For the complete details, visit www.barefeats.com

OWC YouTube Channel Reaches 1 Million Views

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

The OWC YouTube channel, where you can find all our instructional videos, SSD shootouts, promotional pieces and other bits of video goodness, topped over one million views late Monday. Of course, that number doesn’t include views from our Tech Center or from iTunes. If you take those two into account as well, we’re probably already closing in on the two million mark.

Our Instructional Series shows you, step-by-step, how to install the most popular upgrades in most modern Macs. Also popular are our SSD shootouts where we show how much an OWC SSD can improve your computer’s performance. They’re just one way we try to make upgrading with OWC the best experience possible.

We’re not resting on our laurels, though. We’ve got more great content in the pipeline, including:

  • in-depth looks at some of our products
  • more shootouts showing performance gains from upgrading
  • more of our highly-acclaimed Instructional Series of videos
  • various other fun little tidbits from the OWC Video Staff

To get the latest, join the over 1000 subscribers to our YouTube channel and keep an eye here on the OWC Blog!

OWC Mercury Aura SSDs still raking in the praise.

Friday, February 11th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

It’s been about a month from their debut, yet the OWC Mercury Aura SSD family is still collecting accolades like kids collect… well… whatever the current collectible craze is.

This time around, we’ve got a great review from ZDNet on the OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD for the 2010 MacBook Air. They liked that there was finally an option that increased the capacity of the MacBook Air enough that it could be used as a primary machine. I think this quote from the article says it best:

“…it’s the best upgrade that you can get for the MacBook Air.”

You can find the full review on the ZDNet site.

Next up, the folks over at StorageReview.com took a look at the Mercury Aura Pro 1.8” SSD, which is primarily for the netbook and ultraportable market. However, it is also nearly identical to the OWC Mercury Aura Pro MBA (the main difference being the MBA version’s custom connection cable), so owners of a 2008-2009 Air may also find it interesting.

They put the Aura through a battery of tests and benchmarks and came away plenty impressed. They were so impressed, in fact, they gave the Mercury Aura Pro 1.8″ their Editor’s Choice award.

You can see the full battery of tests and read the full analysis at the StorageReview.com site.

Article Continues…

OWC Radio #52 – Education, Publication, Vibration

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

Has Apple become the Big Brother they rebelled against in 1984? How large should the role of tech be in education? Has internet privacy gone the way of the dodo? Join us as we shake out the answers to these and other burning questions in this month’s episode.

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

Installation videos for the 2010 minis!

Friday, December 10th, 2010 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Look out, radio stars, because with the number of our highly-acclaimed Instructional Series of videos we’ve been putting up lately, things may be a little hazardous for you.

This time around, we’ve got a few videos that a lot of people have been asking for. We show you how to upgrade the memory in both the 2010 Mac mini and the 2010 Mac mini Server. mini Server owners also get a one-two bonus in that we also show you how to replace both hard drives in that model.

Don’t worry if you have the plain, single-drive Mac mini that you want to drop a faster or bigger drive in; we’ve got that video slated to come out early next week.

As always, you can find the new videos (and all the other ones, too) both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

Category: New @ OWC