From 9to5Toys.com:
Amazon today has a big sale on storage with notable deals on Transcend storage products. Whether you are adding an SD Card or USB stick to your Mac for some extra sneakernet or backup space, or using it for a camera or peripheral, pretty much any size and speed is covered here.
Standouts include the 64GB and 32GB Jetflash USB2 Flash Drives for $27.99 and $13.99 respectively.
Apple just finished unveiling its all-new iMac design that we previously unveiled leading up to the event. We told you at the time that Apple is shipping two refreshed models of its 21-inch and 27-inch iMacs, but we would unfortunately likely see delays on at least some models. Apple decided to take the wraps off its refreshed iMacs today, but as we predicted, the models will not ship right away.
Apple did not confirm during the unveiling, but it has now listed the new iMacs on its website with availability dates listed as November for the 21-inch model and December for the 27-inch model. You will no longer be able to get your hands on the last-generation iMac, except through Apple’s refurbished section. Hopefully Apple can get enough of these out before the holidays, especially the 27-inch model that will not ship until weeks before.
Also of note for the new iMacs is the fact that the 21-inch model comes with no user accessible RAM slots, while the 27-inch model has 4 slots accessible from the back of the machine. The 21-inch model is configurable up to 16GB through Apple, but the 4 slots on the 27-inch can handle up to 32GB:
The 21.5-inch iMac comes with 8GB of memory and can be configured online with 16GB. On the 27-inchiMac, 8GB of memory comes standard, and you can upgrade to 16GB or 32GB. Configure and buy your iMac at the Apple Online Store and it will arrive with the memory already installed. Or add more memory to the 27-inch model yourself by popping open the easy-to-access memory panel on the back.
You can get full details on the all-new iMacs in our full coverage of the unveiling here.
From 9to5Toys.com:
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The very same Samsung 830 SSDs that Apple uses in its new MacBook Pro/Airs, the Samsung 830s, are on sale today only at Amazon. At $69.99 for 128GB and $154.99 for 256GB with free shipping, these are the lowest prices we’ve seen for these SSDs which feature read speeds of up to 520MB/s and write speeds of up to 400MB/s.
Update: The deal is over but hit up their big SSD sale
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From 9to5Toys.com:
Amazon has the Transcend 64GB Jetflash Retractable USB Flash Drive for $29.99 with free shipping.. That’s the lowest price we’ve ever seen on a 64GB flash drive from a reputable brand/store. The drive reads 19 MByte/s and writes 7 MByte/s and ships in Amazon frustration-free packaging. These deals don’t usually last long.
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It feels like consumer PC hardware can now be defined thusly: “Make something as close as possible to an Apple product without getting sued.”
HP’s Spectre One comes with accessories that look and act almost identical to Apple counterparts including the wireless keyboard, trackpad and mouse. The screen looks like a Cinema Display with HP pasted over the Apple. The only difference is the back (which few will see).
Perhaps manufacturers are learning the wrong lesson from Samsung. Although Engadget did not notice (or mention) any resemblance beyond the “Magic Trackpad style,” just about every commenter did. Update: Engadget Editor Tim Stevens says it was too obvious to mention:
[tweet https://twitter.com/tim_stevens/status/245136336883965952]
[tweet https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/245118820098920448]
What say you? Homage or Rip-off? (Also: What is Kirf?)
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ZAGG, perhaps best known for its invisibleShield screen protector, is adding two new additions to its also popular lineup of keyboards and cases tonight with the unveiling of two super-thin Bluetooth keyboards designed specifically for iPad. The keyboards, ZAGGKeys PRO for $99 and PRO Plus for $129, feature the usual iOS specific functions such as media playback and volume controls, copy and paste keys, as well as keys for the Home button, search, etc.
Think the backlighting might drain the battery? HA! If you use the keyboard for eight hours a day, you will get up to three weeks of normal use…and remember that is the backlit model! The keyboard will come in English, French, and German models at launch.
We got our hands on the new keyboards tonight at the ShowStoppers IFA press event and were quiet impressed with the overall build quality. They do not feel cheap (the opposite), which is not too surprising given ZAGG’s reputation of building military grade screen protectors and other quality protective accessories.
The two models are identical to one another, including a magnetic closure that allows it to act as a screen protector when not in use. However, an extra $20 will upgrade you to the Pro Plus model with a backlit keyboard, which is a feature that has noticeably been missing from the go-to iPad keyboards currently on the market.
Will Zagg leapfrog our current favorite ultrathin iPad keyboard from Logitech?
NYC Resistor recently found an old Macintosh SE on a Brooklyn street and noticed an interesting easter egg buried in the ROMs after doing some digital digging.
According to NYC Resistor:
- While digging through dumps generated from the Apple Mac SE ROM images we noticed that there was a large amount of non-code, non-audio data. Adam Mayer tested different stride widths and found that at 67 bytes (536 pixels across) there appeared to be some sort of image data that clearly was a picture of people. The rest of the image was skewed and distorted, so we knew that it wasn’t stored as an uncompressed bitmap.
- After some investigation, we were able to decode the scrambled mess above and turn it into the full image with a hidden message from “Thu, Nov 20, 1986“:
So…an Apple team apparently hid four of its own images in the Motorola 68000-era Macintosh nearly 26 years ago. Cool. NYC Resistor is now calling upon readers to identify the mystery employees. Go to the hacker blog to also learn more about the discovery’s engineering-side.
Chief Executive Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer are live on Apple’s Q3 2012 call to give opening remarks, and the execs just revealed Apple saw its best quarter ever for U.S. education institution Mac sales. Rutherford County, N.C., for instance, purchased 6,000 MacBook Airs.
Other education-related statistics:
Oppenheimer said the iPad 2 price drop to $399 helped in education—sold twice as many iPads to U.S. schools as Macs during the quarter. About 11,000 iPads, for instance, were bought in Mansfield, Texas for students and teachers.
Regarding the iPad in education, Cook later added: “We have been very aggressive in this space, and I don’t see changing that.” The chief also noted the sales of the iPad in education are something he has “never seen.” He then addressed the education system’s typically “conservative spending,” but he explained Apple is “not seeing that at all with the iPad.”
Cook further mentioned he saw “hundreds of tablets come to market in the last year and have yet to see any of them gain traction.”
Apple’s financial results conference call to discuss Q3 2012 earnings is now underway, and 9to5Mac is live-blogging as company execs readily detail figures for the quarter. The call’s audio webcast and earnings release are available on Apple’s Investor Relations website.
[slideshow]
Algoriddim released its highly anticipated Vjay app for iPad [iTunes $9.99] today following up on the popular Djay app.
As of this writing, every review is 5 stars. The downside is that it does not work on the original iPad.
From 9to5Toys.com:
Today only, Best Buy offers the Slingbox Solo for $99 with free shipping. That’s the best price we’ve ever seen on this media place shifter with iOS app
Also, Best Buy today has the Transcend 32 GB SD Card for $22.99. That’s the lowest price we’ve seen on a Class 10 20MB/sec SDHC card.
From 9to5Toys.com:
Buy.com offers the SanDisk Ultra 64GB Class 10 Secure Digital High-Capacity SDXC Card, model no. SDSDU-064G-A11, for $46.99 with free shipping. That’s $0.73/GB and tied as the best price we’ve seen for a 64GB Class 10 SDHC card. (It’s a current price low by $10.) It features read speeds up to 30MB/sec.
With almost every Mac now shipping with a built in SDXC card slot, these speedy, huge capacity Flash storage cards are like microscopic external hard drives. They are great for storing music and movies or even portable backups. If you are looking to hook up your iOS device, SD card readers start at around $5 at Amazon.
For those of us still with pre-Thunderbolt Mac Pros or Xserves (or Hackintoshes), there are not a lot of inexpensive choices for getting super fast data access onto our machines. Sure, you can buy a SATA 3 hard drive like my favorite Samsung 830 series, but the built in SATA 2 on these old machines is a bottleneck that will “only” yield 250 MB/second read speeds.
Along comes OWC last month with its first-ever Mercury Accelsior Mac-bootable PCI SSD card that is actually a PCI-to-striped RAID SATA array. The two SATA3 cards you see above actually look like (but aren’t – don’t try it) the same super high-speed Sandforce 3 drives that OWC sells as MacBook Air updates.
By the way, the cards are a snap to install and configure. If you have ever added a PCI video card, this is the same thing. Even better, there are no drivers to install, and the drive automatically shows up as a mounted disk that can (and should!) be booted from.
How did they compare to the single MacBook Air SSDs?
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Good ‘ole Walt Mossberg from The Wall Street Journal warned readers today about not buying a new laptop this spring:
Apple is overdue for redesigned laptops, especially in its MacBook Pro line, and it is a good bet that new, possibly heavily redesigned, models will begin appearing later this year. Current Macs will likely be upgradable to Mountain Lion, but if you buy now, you’ll miss out on the likely new hardware.
Check out what else he predicted in the video above, or go read his full-length WSJ post.
From 9to5Toys.com:
Today only, MacConnection has the Mac Mini base configuration for $529.95 with free shipping. That’s $70 off retail and the lowest price we’ve seen (refurb is $519 at Apple).
Add 8GB of Corsair RAM from Amazon for $41.99 and you are still $30 below Apple’s original retail price.
Get a little tricky by adding a super speedy Samsung 830 SSD (review) via iFixit’s second drive kit.
We have other Mac Desktops at lowest available prices here.
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From 9to5Toys.com:
Amazon has the highly rated SanDisk Cruzer 32 GB USB Flash Drive for $22.99 with free shipping on orders over $25 or with Amazon Prime. This drive is ruggedized and features a slide out USB interface.
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Apple and its cofounder Steve Jobs certainly helped design and popularize storage devices throughout computing history. For example, the Mac mainstreamed Sony’s 3.5-inch floppy drive in the 1980s, but Apple was working on its own storage devices even before the Mac debuted. One of our buddies discovered this eBay listing advertising for what appears to be a prototype of a previously unknown NISHA hard drive adorned with the colorful Apple logo. It comes in a translucent case, and it could easily be the first Apple product we have seen like this, even though it never shipped. It is neither a Hard Disk 20 drive Apple introduced on Sept. 17, 1985 specifically for use with the Macintosh 512K nor is it a Hard Disk 20SC.
The latter product was the first SCSI drive Apple manufactured and deployed on the Macintosh Plus in 1986, effectively obsolescing the Hard Disk 20 unit. It is a safe bet that this unit represents an early prototype of one of Apple’s hard drives, but it could also be a new hard drive design that never saw the light of day. The seller could not tell either, as the drive did not power up. Eagle-eyed readers are aware that Apple of the past had been designing its own storage devices and the aforementioned Hard Disk 20 serves as an illustrious example of the company’s closed approach to hard drives.
Apple, effective today, ended its buy a Mac, get a $100 off of a printer promotion. The promotion typically runs yearly, so we are not sure why Apple stopped it. Apple sells a few $100 printers, so they typically advertise the promotion as “Buy a Mac, get a free printer.”
Although Apple is putting a stop to the program, they will continue to sell printers in their physical retail stores and online stores, according to the internal memo posted above. Customers who bought a printer within 90 days of Jan. 16 can still claim their $100 rebate from Apple.
Apple still has the rebate page up, below:
The easiest way to upgrade your Mac Pro’s everyday performance is to replace its slow internal hard drive units with pricier and much speedier solid-state storage (SSD), as it typically provides many times faster access times compared to HDDs and way greater sustained transfer rates. The problem is, you can only put flash storage inside the Pro’s hard drive bays that connect to the SATA interface.
Unfortunately, your super-fast SSD is limited to transfer rates of the Mac Pro’s SATA controller.
Enter OWC’s upcoming PCI Express-based SSD solution for Mac Pros, due for release “in the very near future.” Why does it matter? Well, for starters, it is a dream come true for the Hackintosh community. However, there is more to it than meets the eye…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by5C34nldTo]
We love this add-on to the Mac Mini that turns it into more of a pro-device (and a cube!). The business up front is a DVD-R drive (not sure about BluRay) and an SDXC card reader that complements the one on the back of the mini. On the rear, you get a high power USB source for quick-charging an iPad as well as a few USB 3.0 ports that require separate drivers. Also on the back is an eSATA port for fast external peripheral support as well as two Firewire 800 ports. Inside, there is room for up to a 4TB 3.5 inch hard drive which you can order with the Mini Stack Max or you can bring your own.
This is interesting because it is moving the Mini more toward a pro-like setup.
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OWC has not put a price on the Mac Mini Stack Max but expects them to be available in March.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Hfcl1Z_PjfE]
Love this Best Buy commercial but I’m not sure Apple’s Retail division does. Best Buy also undercuts Apple significantly in Mac prices. For instance, they have the 15 and 17-inch MacBook Pros $200 off and $150 off the 13-inch MacBook Pro as well.
They even have $50 iTunes gift cards for $40. (see all discounts)
No offense to our friends at Best Buy, but those price discounts often have a cost: you will almost always get better customer support at an Apple Store.
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From 9to5Toys.com:
Walmart today lists the iPad 2 in all sizes and varieties with a “Starter Accessory” which include previous generation Smart Covers or USB wall chargers (or $50 iTunes Gift Cards when ordered and picked up site-to-store).
If your shopping tastes take you to Target, you can get a $40 Target GiftCard with iPad 2 purchase (or $450 iPad 1 32GB 3G/GPS). They also have various other iTunes/Apple device offers via circular including this 10% off printable coupon, below:
Apple has today updated Thunderbolt (again), printer drivers, and Aperture.
Today’s updates come after yesterday’s MacBook Pro EFI update firmware 2.3.
New MacBook Pros weren’t the only thing updated quietly in the Apple Store this morning. Apple has updated the whole line of Smart Covers for iPad. You’ll notice the Orange Smart Cover is now gone and Apple has added a lovely Dark Gray Polyurethane model. Apple has added “color matched microfiber lining” to the description of the leather products (gone are the gray lining across the board) as you can see in the images below:
Apple has also improved the colors of the Smart Covers as well:
The whole line gets new part numbers but prices have not changed. Notice the subtle color change comparisons below:
As leaked by Mr. X (and it didn’t take until November) Apple quietly updated its MacBook Pro line this morning. There are slight processor speed improvements across the board with updated hard drives and video cards peppered throughout. Compare today’s MacBook Pros, above, with yesterday’s MacBook Pros, below:
