News tagged ‘SSD’

Rumors suggest that updated MacBook Pros appear later this week, most likely on Thursday. The new MacBook Pros will feature larger glass trackpads than those found on current models for greater flexibility and perhaps for more complex gestures. The lower-end models will have 8GB-16GB solid-state drives to house Mac OS X system files, and will also come equipped with a regular hard drive. This will offer the benefits of SSDs - instant on and super fast performance - while also providing lots of room for heavy users’ files. The idea of separate flash-based storage for system files is not a new one. Intel's "Turbo Memory", in 2006, offered similar functionality. The new machines will be up to a half-pound lighter than current models and there will be five different SKUs.

According to AppleInsider, which in turn cited a person familiar with the matter, Apple will introduce its new MacBook Pro lineup in the next two weeks. Such a delay is caused by the design flaw in Intel's Sandy Bridge processors used in the new laptops.

This information supports previous rumor by Danish blog KennethLund.dk, which on Tuesday identified that March, 1st is the release date for new MacBooks. Though both reports point on Wednesday, history shows Apple may slightly move the date of product launch due to unexpected anomalies in the company's supply chain or manufacturing.

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Several sources claim that the stock for the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pros is beginning to run low. Some resellers have suggested that Apple might be planning to update the product line.

The 17″ MacBook Pro generally appears to be in the shortest supply at the moment, with Amazon quoting a shipment window of 1-2 months for the base Core i5 model. For its part, Apple continues to show “within 24-hour” availability of all MacBook Pro models in its online stores, suggesting that the company may be prioritizing remaining stock to serve its customers directly.

The updated MacBook Pros might receive Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, internal Solid State Drives, thinner design and implemented USB 3.0 or Intel’s Light Peak.

As far as we know, Apple pushes out a refreshed iMac every 8 months and a major update every 27 months. The last major update was in October 2009 and the last refresh was in July 2010. So, the iMac lineup is due for a refresh this March.  The update will up-to-date the iMac, prepare it for Mac OS X Lion. Moreover, Apple is expected to start bringing the MacBook Air Solid State Drive (SSD) modules to the rest of the Mac family, will add the new Intel’s microarchitecture Sandy bridge to improve graphics and resolution on the 21.5" and 27" displays. Adding this option to the iMacs will improve the readability. Perhaps, Apple will also add an anti-glare option to their iMac display offerings. This will be a minor update, with a major one expected sometime around January 2012.

Apple seems to have grate plans for 2011. So, we’d summarized all rumors and official statement, and formed the following list, which shows Apple's plans for the new year:

• Lion OS;
• Mac App Store;
• iPad 2
• Implementing of Light Peak optical interconnect technology developed by Intel to replace such things like USB, DisplayPort and HDMI. In future, the technology has the potential to reach speeds of 100Gbps. it is also requires smaller connections and thinner cables;
• New model of MacBook Pro notebooks equipped with Intel's Light Peak, 512 GB of SSD storage, without an optical drive. These MacBook Pro's will last longer, run quieter and be lighter and more power-efficient;
• Apple-branded Blu-ray player/burning device which is also capable of burning standard optical media such as DVD or CD;
• Subscription service via iTunes, which would be focused on video services.

Today Toshiba started selling Blade X-gale Solid state drives for mass market, the same that are used in the new MacBook Airs. That was confirmed by MacRumors, which compared Toshiba's part numbers with the numbers of the components found in the latest Apple's notebooks.

Here are the short specs of the SSDs:

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Yesterday iFixit posted some pictures of 11.6-inch MacBook Air teardown. Here are results of this disassembling:

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Few hours ago Steve Jobs presented two new MacBook Airs, which became the result of hooking up the iPad and a MacBook (according to his words). They have neither hard nor optical drive, as they keep all the data on the solid state drive. Here is how Steve Jobs explained such an innovation:

"MacBook Air is the first of a new generation of notebooks that leaves behind mechanical rotating storage in favor of solid state flash storage. We’ve taken what we have learned with the iPad—solid state storage, instant-on, amazing battery standby time, miniaturization and lightweight construction, to create the new MacBook Air. With its amazing responsiveness and mobility, it will change the way we think about notebooks."

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John Coyne, who is a CEO at Western Digital, revealed yesterday that tablet devices like Apple's iPad are negatively affecting on the hard drive business. Talking in numbers, iPad may reduce shipments of low-end netbooks and laptops on 10-20 percent over the next few quarters. But Coyne tried to reassure investors the business will be still profitable:

"What I would say to investors is to look at the long-term demand for storage, the fact is the most appropriate solution for mass volume storage is hard drives and to look at the long-term progress the industry has made over the last 10 years".

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Cult of Mac’s sources in Apple provide a new portion of information about a next-gen MacBook Air, which is expected to be released during the Apple's media event on Wednesday. Here is a short summary:

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Last week Engadget posts a single shot of a prototype MacBook Air. The prototype device is labeled "K18". On the picture they found USB plugs on the left and right sides of device, Mini DisplayPort and an SD card reader on the left, and a power plug on the right. The prototype on the picture is the same size and style, has the same "large single mouse button", same 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo SL9400 processor and 2GB of RAM as the current model of MacBook Air. Engadget’s source claims that the shot was made early in April. Moreover, а new SSD Card storage is rumored to be installed in upcoming MacBook Air. It's possible that such SSD Cards will resemble a stick of RAM.

Patently Apple reports that Apple filed for the 'magic trackpad' trademark. US Patent & Trademark Office published application on February 26, 2010. 'Magic Trackpad' likely refers to an external peripheral device for desktop computers or laptops plugged into external displays. There has been speculation about some sort of multi-touch "trackpad gadget" from Apple. Maybe Apple will provide desktop users a way to take advantage of some external multi-touch system.

The application requests registration in International Class 009 under a number of categories relating to computer hardware and software, as well as several types of peripheral devices:

International Class 009: Computers; computer software; computer operating system software; computer utility software; computer hardware; computer peripherals; scanners; touchscreens; keyboards; computer mice; trackballs; trackpads; touchpads; light pens; joysticks; game controllers; graphics tablets; digitizers; cables and connectors; flash memory drives; USB drives; solid state storage devices; barcode readers.

In this last post we'll tell you about new Drivesavers instructive app, virtual iPhone planetarium, papershow tool for making presentations, Inklet software to turn Mac multi-touch trackpad into a drawing tablet and a tool for creating your own iPhone apps.

Free DriveSavers Hard Drive Disk-aster Simulator app for the iPod Touch and iPhone is a new way to study how a hard disk works. It teaches in interactive fashion about all the things that may crash a drive, what happens during a seized motor, clicker failure, SSD failures, contamination and head crashes. Also you’ll learn how the data recovery gets done and see the inside of a hard disk. That looks pretty instructive.

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Box.net finally presented its services to iPhone users, Other World Computing created the fastest SSD on the market, HyperMac offers a new line of batteries for Apple devices, and Blue Mikey Microphone is a new recording sound solution for iPhone.

Box.net presented an iPhone app that connects to their services and allows quick accessing to all your stored files. Now you can also connect to the Box.net service with QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite (US 9.99$). We can only imagine how comfortable it will be to use on iPad.

Other World Computing presented a few of their new products – USB 3.0 drive, new portable RAID array and (attention!) the fastest SSD on the market! It’s called OWC Mercury Extreme Enterprise SSD and loads Adobe CS4 applications in seconds, which looks really amazing compared to slow 5400 rpm hard disks.

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