Mac Performance Guide

Thoughts on new Apple MacBook Pro

2012-05-16T00:00:00-08:00

The unofficial details of the new MacBook Pro lineup are all over the web, a controlled leak apparently. There are good details at 9to5mac.com, but these are not official details, and some details might be erroneous. See also the Bloomberg article.

Apple iDevices Destroy Image Quality

2012-05-14T00:00:00-08:00

Read about how Apple’s iPad or iPhone destroy image quality. Yes, including the new iPad with its fancy Retina Display. It’s iOS, so it affects all iDevices.

Example

Loathing for Microsoft — Product Key

2012-05-11T00:00:00-08:00

All I did was to clone my boot drive, then reboot with a different boot drive, as I have done many times before. Apparently that has been eating up licenses.

Mac OS X 10.7.4: Apple Mail Rainbow Beachball

2012-05-11T00:00:00-08:00

With Mac OS X 10.7.4 installed, my Apple Mail now rainbow-beachballs frequently, chewing up an entire CPU for 20-30 seconds at a time when I click on a mailbox, entirely non-responsive. It’s awful— I depend heavily on email and now it’s unusable for any kind of search, or even clicking on a mailbox.

Issue with Mac OS X 10.7.4 and Volume Mounting?

2012-05-11T00:00:00-08:00

Timothy Standing of SoftRAID writes:

We have started to see a number of users (so far 8) whose SoftRAID volumes are no longer mountable after they upgrade to 10.7.4.

Looking through the kernel.log file, there is an error being returned indicating that some call is not supported (the file system isn't supporting it). My estimate is that 2 - 5% of users with SoftRAID or AppleRAID volumes are going to encounter this bug.

There are two interesting points:

1). If the user moves the disks to another Mac running 10.7.4, they often mount and,

2) If they convert their SoftRAID volumes to AppleRAID ones, they often encounter the exact same error.

It might be good for you to advise your users to hold off updating to 10.7.4 until this issue has been resolved. There are also reports of PGP Disk volumes not mounting after upgrading to 10.7.4. I don't know if this is caused by the same bug or a different one.

OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD 240GB vs 480GB + RAID

2012-05-06T00:00:00-08:00

I’ve done an extensive update of my review of the OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD, which now includes Photoshop results from the 480GB model versus the 240GB model, as well as a triple RAID-0 stripe test and more.

OWC Accelsior PCIe SSD Reader Comment

2012-05-05T00:00:00-08:00

Already tested was the 240GB Accelsior PCIe SSD.

Three Web Sites by Lloyd Chambers

2012-05-05T00:00:00-08:00

I’m the worker bee behind three web sites, this one and two more—

Digital photography at diglloyd.com

OWC Mercury Accelsior 240GB / 480GB

2012-05-01T00:00:00-08:00

A few days ago I wrote how much I was enjoying the Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD card for the Mac Pro, and just how well the Accelsior performs.

The Adobe Tax — CS6 Rent vs Upgrade

2012-04-26T00:00:00-08:00

Editor’s note: most taxes go into a black hole, but at least when one buys software or services, the buyer has a choice to buy or not buy, and something desirable is delivered. So “tax” is perhaps a bit of a pejorative here.

OWC Mercury Accelsior and System Feel

2012-04-20T00:00:00-08:00

There is something really striking about the responsiveness of the OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD— certain apps just appear instantly on screen, as if by magic, as if they had already been running. And I already had very fast SSDs in place for my system prior to the Accelsior. While a few apps take a second or two to launch, that is because they do enough computation so that it takes time to start them even if the disk were infinitely fast (CPU speed becomes the bottleneck, the ultimate and ideal result of a system fully optimized for disk I/O and memory).

OWC’s new Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD for Ultra-Fast Photoshop CS6

2012-04-19T00:00:00-08:00

See my multi-page review of the OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD.

Memory Price Trends for MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac Pro, MacMini

2012-04-18T00:00:00-08:00

16GB for MacBook Pro only $206! I just flushed out my 2nd MacBook Pro.

OWC Garage Sale, including 48GB Memory for Mac Pro for $575

2012-04-18T00:00:00-08:00

OWC has a garage sale in progress. Great deals on a bunch of stuff. Supply limited.

OWC’s new Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD for Ultra-Fast Photoshop CS6

2012-04-16T00:00:00-08:00

See my multi-page review of the OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD.

OWC’s new Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD for Blistering-fast Drive Performance

2012-04-15T00:00:00-08:00

My inital multi-page review of the OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD is now published.

Which is the Fastest 2TB (or 1TB or 3TB) Hard Drive?

2012-04-12T00:00:00-08:00

Looking for the fastest hard drive storage you can get?

4TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K4000 Hard Drive in 3-way RAID-0 Stripe

2012-04-11T00:00:00-08:00

Added to my review of the TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K4000 are the results with a 3-way RAID-0 stripe.