25Dec/110

Rumors of Apple iPad 3 to be released on February 24 2012

FocusTaiwan reports (via 9to5Mac) that Apple pushing its manufacturing partners to meet deadlines that would allow the company to launch the iPad on Steve Jobs' birthday, February 24th.

According to the report, workers at several iPad component suppliers as well as manufacturing partner Foxconn will have limited time off during the usual Lunar New Year holiday. The Lunar New Year holiday itself falls on January 23rd next year, with workers generally receiving a number of other days off from work around that date.


Sources have been reporting a variety of rumored dates for an iPad 3 introduction, with some claiming a debut in the March-April timeframe while others have pointed to a February launch being in the works.

Apple last year launched new MacBook Pro models on Jobs' birthday, although that unusual Thursday introduction was likely a convenient coincidence driven by the debut taking place during the Presidents Day holiday week.

[original via macrumors.com]

22Dec/110

kernel[0]: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero – A never-ending story about Adobe failing to get their Flash Player and Adobe Air Plugin to work on Mac OSX in a “normal” way.

kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero
kernel[0]: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero

With Mac OSX Lion 10.7.0, a message was repeatedly showing up in the Console.app, so the logfiles would grow in size - sometimes around 100 MB per minute. This is especially bad for SSD owners. While the issue was reported over 6 Months ago, and Flash Player 11 solved the amount of errors in the console, still the message appears and slows down OSX 10.7 systems.

At least the release of Adobe's Flash Player 11 solved the system freezes - but the Log message still is filling the kernel.log, so any debugging or search for errors is quite hard with that amount of data to read through.

If you are experiencing the same issues, please write your concerns to the Adobe Forums in the existing thread and alternatively also in the Apple Discussion Thread.

Nanofunk reported about this issue in july 2011, and we got over 60.000 unique visits to this post - so this is not a rare case, this is a serious bug with Adobe Flash and Adobe Air. We will post any updates to the situation to this blog, make sure to bookmark our feed.

See also:
* macrumors forum about kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero
* nanofunk: Mac OSX Lion 10.7 System Freezes: kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero (console message)

 

[Update] I posted to the Adobe Bugbase with a bug description. Hope they will respond now.

19Dec/111

OSX Lion: “Can’t download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X” SOLUTION

Apple Mac OSX Lion 10.7
Since I had this problem several times when installing Mac OSX Lion 10.7.2, here is the simple solution: remove any RAM over 4GB. Keeping only 4GB RAM in the Mac (in my case a MacBook Pro) made the installer run flawlessly. It's as simple as that.

8Dec/111

OCZ Vertex 3 Fail: “Runtime corruption detected on SSD” and why SSD drives are not safe yet.

After almost 9 months with the OCZ Vertex 3 SATA-6GBPs (read about my OptiBay two-drive setup) and mostly no issues, the drive died on me. Starting with several GSOD (Grey Screens of Death) on my OSX Lion MacBook Pro, the drive became more and more unreliable.

Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: FindNextLeafNode: Error from hfs_swap_BTNode (node 9852)
Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs_swap_HFSPlusBTInternalNode: catalog key #54 too big
Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: Runtime corruption detected on SSD, fsck will be forced on next mount.
Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: FindNextLeafNode: Error from hfs_swap_BTNode (node 10370)
Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs_swap_HFSPlusBTInternalNode: catalog record #22 keyLength=32 expected=65568
Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: node=10965 fileID=4 volume=SSD device=/dev/disk0s2
Nov 28 18:30:43 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: Runtime corruption detected on SSD, fsck will be forced on next mount.
Nov 28 18:30:43 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: FindNextLeafNode: Error from hfs_swap_BTNode (node 14503)
Nov 28 18:30:43 mbp kernel[0]: hfs_swap_BTNode: record #55 invalid offset (0x9B46)

It was getting slower and slower, reporting tons of errors in the Console.app. Then, it did not reboot anymore. Even in an external USB drive enclosure the drive did not mount anymore. Contacting OCZ about this issue, they sent me an RMA number right away and told me they will replace the drive. Does this mean our data is not safe in SSD? What can we learn from this?

First of all, it is a myth that SSDs are more reliable than hard drives. Secondly, they are not even fully supported on OSX yet (see Should I use Trim Enabler on Lion for the OCZ Vertex 3? No!) - at least if you install the drives yourself (which is also what I would suggest, since Apple does not offer any decent SATA 6GBPs drives yet).

So where is the proof, you ask?

Proof #1: The Hot/Crazy Solid State Drive Scale (via Coding Horror)

Super Talent 32 GB SSD, failed after 137 days
OCZ Vertex 1 250 GB SSD, failed after 512 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 251 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 276 days
Crucial 64 GB SSD, failed after 350 days
OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD, failed after 72 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 15 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 206 days

As a commenter put it: "Average life of SSD = 227.375 days (based on Wills' data)" - which is also what I can confirm.

SOLUTION: Backup early, backup often. Don't rely on the SSD and make two local backups plus one backup in the cloud.

Proof #2: long-term study of SSD failure rates (via Tomshardware)

SSD vs HDD Failure Chart

SOLUTION: Buy drives that come with a very long warranty. Be prepared to let your drive replace for several times.

I am still waiting for my replacement OCZ Vertex and I will benchmark how fast it will die again. Since OCZ told me, it can take up to three weeks for my replacement to arrive, I bought myself a Seagate ST750LX003 750 GB SATA 600, Momentus XT, 8 GB SLC - it's a hybrid 750GB HDD with an 8GB SLC cache. The drive shifts data that is used often in the 8GB SLC SSD space automatically. While the SSD part of this hybrid drive can also fail, the data won't be lost and it will suffer just some minor speed loss (if it fails, since SLC is said to be more reliable than MLC chips). While this disk is now my main startup disk, i will go back to using the OCZ Vertex 3 again, once the replacement arrives. I just need to backup regularly - the speed gain is really worth the trouble.

11Nov/110

iPhone 5 Prototype Hands-On: Fake or Real?

(via macrumors) Business Insider now reports that it has received word from a source who has claimed to have had access to an iPhone 5 prototype and offered some details on the device. We've been told this by an industry source who has been right about future Apple products in the past.

It has not been verified yet, but there are some leaked details, which are of course just rumors:

- 4-inch screen
- Aluminum back
- Capacitive home button
- "Flatter" form factor
- Much faster than current hardware, but poor battery life
- 10-megapixel rear camera
- Siri prototype known as "Assistant", which had been the rumored name for the feature until its introduction

There are quite some good deals on the Apple iPhone 4S on ebay, an introduction of the iPhone 5 would let the price of the "older" models drop significantly (talking about the Osborne Effect)

19Oct/111

iPhone 4S / Canon 5d MKII Side by Side Comparison

***You can download the full 1080p version of this video for a more accurate presentation.

Here's a "fair" test between the iPhone 4S and the Canon 5D MK II. I made a little rig that allowed me to shoot both cameras at the same time side by side. All scenes are perfectly synced together so you can pause and scrutinize the frames! See photo of the makeshift rig in the photo area.

Exposure, shutter speed, frame rate and picture style were matched as close as possible between the two cameras. (I used the Zacuto Z-finder to help me adjust exposure for both iPhone and 5D)

This test shows that the tiny F2.4 lens and sensor on the iPhone are pretty nice. It even got a little depth of field!

I did not overlay the exact ISO and Stops 5D settings per shot. It was too much to keep track for this simple test. To be fair I matched 5D exposure to the iPhone so no "Cinestyle" / 24p here.

Here are the settings:

iPhone 4S

- AE.AF locked. That's all you have!

Canon 5D MKII

- Canon 50mm 1.4
- ISO 160 ~ 640 (varied per shot to match the iPhone)
- F 7~22 (varied per shot to match the iPhone)
- Shutter 1/60th
- Auto WB
- Standard Picture Style
- 1080p 30

(Source: vimeo.com)

17Oct/110

Apple Wild West UI Design (HaHa)


hahaha: gizmodo is totally right when stating "Yeee-haw, Apple buckaroos! Whooz ready for some good timin', multitaskin'? Who wants their iPhone served up with a hot bucket'a grits? HOOOOOOOOOOO BOY. Jonny Ive's deep in the hooch pan again? Saddle up, grab yer partner, and let's make some truck-ugly apps!"

What happened to the GUI design guidelines of Apple? Why do we have to use western-style user interfaces - and why can't we change the looks to something uhm less contemporary?

5Oct/110

New Apple iPhone 4S – mainly lens improvements, but: great optics indeed! (plus: Siri A.I.)

Everyone's talking about the new iPhone 4S that was announced by Apple recently. But is there more to it than improved optics? Even if not, the camera is a huge improvement over the previous model: 1080p video recording, 8 Megapixel photo sensor, f/2.4 aperture.

Behind all the updates, the most interesting is HSDPA support. In countries such as Austria or Japan, where HSDPA is widespread, this is a very welcome hardware upgrade. Still, why is there no HSPA+ support? In cities with a weak broadband coverage (everything above a few MB upstream) - such as Vienna, this is really akward. We still have to fall back to the Samsung Galaxy S2 i9100, which offers HSPA+ among other great features. So the "only" killer feature of the Apple iPhone 4S remains the greatly improved Camera - which is to question, concerning the price of such a gadget. An Amazon Search for the iPhone 4S yields no results, obviously, since the device is said to be available from mid October.

Our recommendations: wait for the iPhone 5 and get some real gear instead.

1) Get a Canon PowerShot S100 for Photo and Video
2) Get a SONIM XP5300 3G FORCE if you need a phone that actually works.

16Aug/110

Apple Releases OS X 10.7.1 with Fixes for Video in Safari, Audio Out, Wi-Fi and More

Apple released Mac OSX Lion 10.7.1 updates today, with the following release notes:

The 10.7.1 update is recommended for all users running OS X Lion and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability and compatibility of your Mac, including fixes that:

- Address an issue that may cause the system to become unresponsive when playing a video in Safari
- Resolve an issue that may cause system audio to stop working when using HDMI or optical audio out
- Improve the reliability of Wi-Fi connections
- Resolve an issue that prevents transfer of your data, settings, and compatible applications to a new Mac running OS X Lion

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4764.

There is not much fixed, at least not for the reported issues such as SSD TRIM support for non-apple SSDs and the well known flash issues.
Still, Seems more stable. There is a seperate update for 10.7.1 Server and another update specific to the latest MacBook Air and Mac mini models, adding a few additional fixes. (via macrumors)

7Aug/111

Should I use Trim Enabler on Lion for the OCZ Vertex (3)? No! (Benchmarks inside)

We recently blogged, after purchasing two OCZ Vertex SATA3 Drives (240GB) and inserting them with an Optibay setting (2 Drives in one MacBook Pro; see our previous post: 2011 Macbook Pro and SATA III 6Gbps, Optibay: two HD drives – setup explained).

We also blogged that enabling TRIM is a good thing, although it seems that it seems to be not necessary on Sandforce based chipsets.

Since we still were experiencing freezes and Sandballs on our Mac OSX Lion 10.7 SSD Setup that were actually not related to TRIM, also the system did not feel as snappy anymore.

Conclusion: don't use TRIM on OSX Lion 10.7, if you are using a Sandforce based SSD. Revert to the original driver and not only the Beachballs will go away, but also the system feels snappy again. See the below Benchmarks for real-life results (since AJA System Test does not work on internal drives, we can recommend using XBENCH to verify the figures for you).

XBENCH Screenshot with TRIM Enabled (using TRIM Enabler for OSX 10.7 Lion)
Screen Shot 2011 08 07 at 16 00 30

Screenshot of XBENCH without TRIM Enabler (Restored to original setting)

Screen Shot 2011 08 07 at 16 06 39

UPDATE: Grant Pannell (digitaldj.net) reports on how to restore to the original settings.

28Jul/116

Excessive Logging on Mac OSX 10.7 Lion: Repair the Keychain to solve the issues. ( deny file-read-data )

Lots of people complain about slow Mac OSX Lion performance, mostly caused by thousands of Log-Messages being written to the system log files. As Chief Tarun points out at the Apple Support Forums

I opened up the console app, and there were hundreds, if not thousands of logs just in the past 2 hours. And when I say 'get info' on Macintosh HD the used disk space is increasing every 5 to 10 seconds. This is the only concerning bug/glitch of noticed in Lion since upgrading.

I had exactly the same issue, checking my Console.app messages that told

"WebProcess(225) deny file-read-data /Users/foobert/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AIR/ELS/com.adobe.amp.4875E02D9FB21EE389F73B8D1702B320485DF8CE.1/ PrivateEncryptedDatak"

While one would think that uninstalling Adobe AIR would fix the issue, the problem resides at another point.

Solution:

1) Open "Keychain.app"
2) Go To "Keychain Access -> Keychain First Aid" to repair your Keychain.

Now the console messages disappeared and the system runs in "silent mode" again.

28Jul/1125

Mac OSX Lion 10.7 System Freezes: kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero (console message)

Some people experience system freezes on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, but also on Snow Leopard: kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero.
The Error is visible with Console.app ("All Messages" respectively "kernel.log")

To reproduce the issue:
1) click on "Clear Display" in Console.app
2) go to http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ and the error will show up in the console.

The error must be Flash related. Sometimes, the whole System is unresponsive, freezing everything but the mouse. There is no official response from Adobe or from Apple, so we can only hope and wait. Please check your Console.app for this error and respond to any of the existing discussions.

Screen Shot 2011 07 28 at 11 52 25

[Update] the error message also seems to have surfaced in 10.6.4 already, as visible in the Apple Discussion Forums

[Update] installing the Adobe Flash Player 11.0 from Adobe Labs seems to at least minimize the freezes, but still the console messages appear.

[Update] i posted a poll on insanelymac to see which browsers and systems are affected. please also post your results there!

[Update] the new Beta 2 11.0.d1.98 of the flash player is out (thanks JP Hansen)

[Update] The Flash Player 11 is officially released. It seems though, that not all issues are resolved with Mac OSX Lion compatibility.

[Update 23.12.2011] more than 6 months after the issue was reported, (and we have Apple Mac OS X 10.7.2 and 10.7.3 in beta) there is still no update on this issue from Adobe. Please write your concerns to the Adobe Forums in the existing thread to have them fix the issues! Especially for SSD owners this is unacceptable!

Existing Discussions:

* Nanofunk.net discussion thread in the Adobe Flash Player Forums
* Thread in the Apple Support Communities Forum
* Thread on MacRumors Forums regarding Lion Freezes with kernel: IOSurface

[Update] I posted to the Adobe Bugbase with a bug description. Hope they will respond now.

22Jul/113

Mac OSX 10.7 Lion updating annoyances: Scolling, Versioning and no TRIM!

While Apple's 10.7 Lion OS looks much more like GNOME like any other previous version of OSX, is comes with lots of annoyances. People using an SSD drive might have to update, since it finally supports the TRIM command, there are also lots of annoying features you might want to get rid of:

1) No TRIM support out of the box if you are using your own SSD (not Apple's)

Screen Shot 2011 07 22 at 10 36 06

This is ridicolous: TRIM only seems to work for Apple buit-in SSDs. There is a tool by groths.org that will do the trick: TRIM Enabler, which works for Lion and for Snow Leopard as well. You might want to consider enabling this feature, since TRIM will make your Solid State Drive last longer, due to less writes to the cells.

2) Mouse scrolling direction got reversed: how to revert

Apple decided to reverse the mouse scolling on 10.7 Lion, meaning you have to scroll your mousewheel up to actually move the on-screen content down. Here is a screenshot from System Preferences, where you can change that "feature" to the way it was before: simply uncheck the box left to "Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating".

Screen Shot 2011 07 22 at 10 30 53

3) Disabling the "Resume" feature

The "Resume" Feature in Mac OS X Lion restores the state of the application windows, when re-opening an application. Since I definitely do not need this feature, here is a way to turn it off: just uncheck the left box next to "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps" in System Preferences -> General

Screen Shot 2011 07 22 at 10 58 34

4) Disabling "Versions" feature in Mac OSX 10.7 Lion

Versions should't be a problem unless you are using Time Machine. MacRumors has a forum post on disabling that features.

5) Other (small) annoyances

Google Chrome does not get moved with an update ( Chrome vanishes with Lion 10.7 Update)

This is also very strange: the Google Chrome Browser did not get moved on my Lion update. I had to re-download Google Chrome.app. At least the Application Support files got moved, so I did not lose any browsing history or bookmarks.

Dropbox needs to be reinstalled: special Lion build

The dropbox right-click features dissappear when updating to Lion. Download the Latest Forum Build of Dropbox that is Lion compatible (1.2.16 at the time of writing this entry)

 

Other interesting reviews about Mac OSX 10.7 Lion can be found here:

* Time Magazine on OSX Lion: "With OS X Lion, Apple's Macs Enter the iPad Era"
* Engadget: "Apple OS X Lion (10.7) review"

11Jul/110

Apple to Release Updated MacBook Air and Mac Pro & Mac OSX Lion 10.7 on July, 14th

According to 9 to 5 Mac and Macrumors, the "reliable tipster 'Mr. X'" has revealed that Apple will be releasing new MacBook Air and Mac Pro models this week alongside OS X Lion. While Mr. X has not offered a specific release date, it appears that Apple may be targeting this Thursday, July 14th for the hardware launch alongside OS X Lion.

Macbook air mac pro lion 1

New hardware also means new kexts for the hackintosh community and possibly also price drops on refurbished Mac Pro systems and refurbished MacBook Air models.

10Jul/110

Install Mac OS X Lion 10.7 on PC Hackintosh

Its now possible to Install Mac OS X 10.7 Lion on your PC with the standard Hackintosh techniques. That means, everything stays the same to get your hackintosh up and running, no worries. More information on the geeknizer blog entry or alternatively, watch the video below:

Steps to install OSX Lion:
1. Get the "GM" (Golden Master) of Lion via torrent
2. Get an EFI Boot Loader
3. Get a decent 8GB USB thumb drive and install the Golden Master on there.
4. Install using iBoot.

You can get detailed information on installing Mac OSX Lion 10.7 by reading the geeknizer blog howto.

[UPDATE] tonymacx86 showed how to Install OS X 10.7 Lion on any Supported Intel Core 2 or Core i based PC with xMove + MultiBeast. Furthermore, there is a Mac OSX Lion v10.7.2-HOTiSO that should also boot from any PC. Don't forget that you need to buy Apple Mac OS X Lion from the App Store to legally use it.

10Jul/110

Cheapest Hackintosh configuration: 235$ (145$ without monitor!)

We compiled a list of the cheapest hackintosh configuration with the cheapest currently available Hackintosh compatible hardware to date.

This is the configuration that makes most sense if you have a small budget. Graphics are Intel GMA 950 and the set is complete with monitor, mouse and keyboard. The drive is a 7200RPM 500GB HD. Here is the URL to the complete list: The cheapest Hackintosh shopping-list.

19.99$ Kingston ValueRAM 2 GB 667MHz PC2-5300 DDR2 DIMM Desktop Memory (KVR667D2N5/2G)
29.99$ GIGABYTE GA-8I945GZME-RH Intel 945GZ Socket 775 micro-ATX Motherboard w/Video, Audio & Gigabit LAN
89.99$ HP L2045w - LCD display - TFT - 20.1" - widescreen - 1680 x 1050 / 60 Hz - 300 cd/m2 - 600:1 - 5 ms - 0.258 mm DVI-D, VGA (Refurbished)
  9.99$ SilenX IXM-2014 IXTREMA Pro 200W MicroATX Power Supply
32.99$ Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 HDP725050GLA360 - Hard drive - 500 GB - internal - 3.5" - SATA-300 - 7200 rpm - buffer: 16 MB
16.00$ Lite-On Super AllWrite 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive - Bulk - IHAS124-04 (Black)
  4.80$ Masscool 90mm CPU Cooler for Intel Socket LGA775
14.99$ Processor - 1 x Intel Celeron D 330J / 2.66 GHz ( 533 MHz ) - LGA775 Socket - L2 256 KB - OEM
14.50$ ATX Mid Tower Aluminum Desktop Computer Case
  1.99$ I Concepts PC Trio Kit

The price for the complete set is 235$ (145$ without monitor!). We don't think you will find a cheaper Hackintosh configuration out there.
Ah, one more thing: a very cheap mobile hackintosh notebook costs 229.99$: the Asus Eee PC 900A WFBB01 Refurbished Netbook.

8Jul/110

Free To Play: Apple Mac Games that are free in Steam

The Apple Macintosh (MAC OSX) Platform is catching up with Windows regarding gaming - while this for sure is attributable to the Steam platform by Valve (which are responsible for great Games such as Portal 2), the latest (and cheapest) way to play quality games on Macintosh are to make use of the "free to play" feature of Steam:

Those games are free to download and free to play. Valve makes money if you are ordering additional items such as weapons, mods and so on. On the example of Team Fortress 2: if you ever spent a dime on the game (or would buy it now) you would get premium features: more Items, full "trading" (sell and exchange virtual goods), gifting, etc.

Team fortress 2

While this is a new approach to capitalizing games, this can be seen as a positive path, the gaming industry is taking. Why? Because the games have to be maintained longer and the communities around the games can emerge. This means: addons, mods, hacks and whatnot, resulting in "ludic artefacts" (as outlined in the german book "Gaming 2.0"). Also, the ludic artefacts of Team Fortress 2 on eBay are increasing daily.

Currently, the only two Mac compatible games are Team Fortress 2 and Spiral Knights. On Windows, there are much more titles available: Global Agenda, Spiral Knights, Alliance of Valiant Arms, Champions Online, Forsaken World, Team Fortress 2.

To play those Windows-only games on your Macintosh, you currently have two choices: either use Apple Bootcamp or use Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac. I can totally recomment Parallels Desktop, since the Version 6 has a very fast GPU and game performace (cf. Arstechnica about Parallels Desktop 6 Gaming Performance).

Happy gaming!

29Apr/111

MacBook Pro Early 2011 freezes and kernel panics: revert to 32bit to have a stable system

As we already blogged some time ago, we had severe overheating issues and frequent kernel panics with our early 2011 models of the MacBook Pro Core-i7 quad. Still, after the updates there are crashes from time to time - the early 2011 models are far away from being stable machines to use for serious work.

After days of trying to figure out what is really the issue, we found that most of the times device drivers or other third party apps are mostly causing the crashes - but also CPU-intensive apps such as games sometimes bring the system down. Solution? Yes, there is one: change your system to a 32bit Kernel.

1) The bootup way (temporary solution, great for testing)

If you just want to test if changing to 32bit changes anything, you can reboot your mac and hold down the "3" and "2" keys as soon as you hit the power button. This boots up your Apple in 32bit mode temporarily. If the system

2) The Terminal Way (see the Apple Support Document for more information)

sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture i386

if you need to change your system back to normal for any case, you can enter the following command into Terminal.app:

sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture x86_64

Just to make it clear: your applications will still run in 64bit mode, you can make sure this is the case by hitting cmd+i on the application icon and see if "Open in 32-bit mode" is checked. See this article from simplehelp with details and images on 32-bit mode. So why should I care then, you might ask: since drivers and 3rd party apps and extensions that are loaded on startup are most of the time the issue with system freezes and hangs, changing to a 32bit kernel did the trick for us and now we have a stable 2011 MBP quad-core system.

[UPDATE] 10.6.8 seems to work with 64bit kernel much more stable than 10.6.7. Still, to be on the safe side we are using the 32bit kernel and had no freezes yet.

31Mar/110

2011 Macbook Pro and SATA III 6Gbps, Optibay: two HD drives – setup explained

Since we recently purchased two 2011 MacBook Pros (with lots of issues, as previously reported) we were wondering if SATA III 6Gbps drives would be supported. The short answer is YES, the longer answer is: only on the original Hard Drive port. Here are recommendations on which drive setup is best  suited for getting the maximum out of the 2011 Apple machines.

Which type are you?

  • the collector: two 750GB SATAII Drives
  • fast, but not furious: 256GB SSD SATAIII drive + 750GB HDD in the optical drive slot
  • the caretaker: 256GB SSD SATAIII drive + 500GB SATAII hybrid drive in the optical drive slot
  • speed enthusiast: 256GB SSD SATAIII drive + 256GB SSD SATAII drive in the optical drive slot
  • humongous and rich: 512GB SSD SATAIII drive + 512GB SSD SATAII drive in the optical drive slot

The recommended steps are to select your setup, get an OptiBay, choose an external casing for your optical drive and get your hands dirty. Read our recommendations and tell us which type you are!

The new MCE OptiBay was created for users who want as much hard drive capacity as possible inside their MacBook Pro, MacBook, PowerBook G4, iMac, or Mac mini. Period

21Mar/110

Save Money with replica Apple Hardware: the good and the bad.

Apple original Hardware is very pricy. There are some items which can be bought as replica and are (almost) the same as their original counterparts. But which items should be bought as rebuilt?Good idea: Replica Apple Power Adapters (for MacBook, MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPad). Bad idea: Lithium-ion polymer battery packs.

We recently had bad experiences with non-Apple battery packs, so we can definitely not recommend getting them from another vendor. Good news: if your Battery is less than 300 cycles and lower than 80% of the battery health, they will replace it for you (if you have Apple Care or are within your 1 Year warranty). If not, stay tuned, we will post a guide on this very soon.

Apple replica/ rebuilt Hardware that actually makes sense to buy

1. Apple Magsafe Power Adapters (and G4/G3 Adapters as well)

Apple Magsafe Power Adapter Replica. Cheaper than the original, same quality.

The cheapest versions are EUR 27,98 for a AC Power Adapter für Apple MacBook Pro MagSafe 85W ( even cheaper in the USA: $25.56!) and EUR 21,99 for a 60W Power adapter for Apple MacBook ( only $19.27 in the US!)

2. Apple USB Power Adapters for iPhone and iPod

The Apple original USB Adapter sells for $29 on the Apple Store, while a Multicharger Set (Car, Wall and USB) sells for €4.50 in Europe and $5.47 in the USA. Be careful! I selected items that we already ordered and tested before, there are "bad" replicas as well out there (see this example and read the comments on Amazon).

 

 

Apple Replica Keyboard. WTF is that a windows key?

Apple Replica Keyboard. WTF is that a windows key?

 

I will post my experiences with Apple replicas here if I have any news. Currenty, we can NOT recommend the following list of items as replicas:

  • Apple Replica Batteries. They mostly died on us too fast. (we will post a specific Apple Batteries Guide in some days)
  • Apple Replica Keyboard (not tested) - is this really available somewhere? WTF is this windows key? Although the Macally USB Slim Keyboard - ICEKEY has some good reviews, i like my keyboard to be an original. [UPDATE] the Macally Keyboard has severe driver issues. Not Recommended!
  • Apple Mouse Replicas: we ended up going hi-tech with the Apple Magic Mouse which is $67.99 - or just using the Logitech Value Optical Mouse which is $4.99, but can not be really considered a "replica", since the Apple Magic Mouse has soo much more features (wireless, swipe, better optical resolution).
20Mar/110

Best Cases and Casemods for your Hackintosh

Having a hackintosh can be a good experience, once you get it up and running. According to the geekbench result browser, there are some fast ass-kicking machines out there. Unfortunately, one thing not benchmarked by geekbench still sucks big time: the case. How to find the perfect case for hackintosh computers?

1. Get an original Apple Mac Pro Case (Enclosure/ Chassis) or alternatively: an Apple Power Mac G5 Case to tinker with

You can find Apple Mac Pro Cases (case only) via ebay, although they might be quite pricy. Another option is to search for Apple Power Mac G5 Cases instead, which are sometimes selling for a few bucks (most of the people interested are searching for "Mac Pro" and not for "Power Macintosh"). So while there might be some tinkering required, still the Apple Power Macintosh G5 Case is a very fine piece of casing. (see a howto for G5 Casemodding on Youtube)

 

2. Almost as good as the "original": Lian Li PC-V1000 computer case

You might get lucky and find the Lian Li PC-V1000 computer case on ebay - unfortunately I did not find any other ways of ordering this awesome case somewhere else.

 

 

 

3. DIY your own.

There are some impressive CaseMods out in the wild (e.g. the Hackintosh Jr. Case Mod). While this might be a lot of work, you will earn lots of (digital) street creds for your "almost impossible mod". Enter hardforum.com if you are brave.

12Mar/1113

Apple MacBook Pro Quad Core (early 2011) i7: fast powerhorse with design flaws and hardware issues

Apple gets sloppy: too much thermal paste on the early 2011 MacBook Pro

While the new Apple MacBook Pro Machines are really fast desktop-like speed packed monsters, it seems like they also have severe hardware design faults as outlined by zdnet and ifixit. With a geekbench score over 10.000 the new MacBook Pro (early 2011) beats the Mac Pro (Early 2009) Intel Xeon W5590 3.33 GHz (4 cores). All the good talk and benchmarks cannot make up for the current problems Apple users are facing with their brand new machines:

Come on Apple, wake up and fix those machine fast, as lots of us could benefit from a stable quad-core laptop solution (talking audio plugs and realtime audio performance).

We can recommend to tell apple to send the replacements before they pick up the faulty machines, so it is easier to transfer the data already on it. (apple care even suggested it this way)

[UPDATE] Gregg Keizer from Computerworld also writes about quality concerns regarding the new Apple Notebooks and there is also a discussion about actual "Overheating" going on in the Apple Forums. Well, I can confirm the issue exists and the current MacBook Pro Models freeze a lot. If it is a hardware, software or firmware issue remains unclear.

[UPDATE] There is a macrumors forum thread discussing that there were issues with the 2010 MBPs as well when they came out. Another thread at macrumors forum tries to sort out if it is a hardware or software issue.
Some people suspect it is related to internal graphics switching, but there really seems to be something going on since also reports on the apple discussion forums are increasing.

[UPDATE] as of 2011/03/14 macrumors suggest in their forum to "go 2010 or wait for ivy bridge". The early 2011 version of the MacBook Pro das 45W TDP vs. last generation's 35w. That's a big increase which automatically makes the whole series go louder and more hot than the 2010 model.

[UPDATE] 2011/03/21: Macrumors posted a story: "2011 MacBook Pros Crashing Under Load?"

[UPDATE] 2011/03/21: Mac OSX 10.6.7 Update was just announced by Apple. Unfortunately, on the two machines we have here, the update does not fix anything related to CPU temperature. Still there are frequent freezes as well.

[UPDATE] 2011/03/22: dailytech confirms that New MacBook Pros Freezing When Stressed, Update Adds More Problems

[UPDATE] 2011/03/28: we received our two replacement MacBook Pros. They don't seem to have any issues and also still did not freeze on us! Also the fans are not spinning like crazy anymore! For all people affected by any of the issues reported above: get your Notebooks replaced! Apple is aware of the issues and replaces faulty hardware (we had to wait for two weeks though).

[UPDATE] 2011/04/23: the current Systems freeze 2-3 times a day. Not all the issues seem to be solved! You should definitely get a late 2010 model, if you need a highly stable system!

[UPDATE] 2011/11/01: Apple replaced one of our 15-inch MBP MC721LL/A machine and the freezes are not appearing anymore. Reports from other users that bought an early 2011 model are positive, so currently the advice would be to get a refurbished Apple MacBook Pro MC721LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop even before getting a MD318LL/A 15.4-Inch (late 2011) version, not only because of saving some bucks, but also since the Apple MacBook Pro early 2011 performs better in most of the situations compared to the late 2011 version.

Besides the heating issues, there are also reported "intermittent flickering, brief blackouts and other periodic but noticeable flaws" reported in the Apple Discussion Forums. We are getting replacement Machines - let's see if there is any improvement after the first round of shipping!

2Mar/114

hackintosh: XPC Bootloader Can Boot Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

"lion is booting with some old xpc version" ~ Netkas

Some people are claiming to boot the recent Mac OSX 10.7 Lion with the XPC Bootloader project. More and more voices are popping up, so I am just pointing in the right direction, since "Any and all information about downloading and installing Lion, as well as any details are under Non-Disclosure Agreement from Apple.". You probably find updates on Netkas' Blog as well.

UPDATE: see a posting/ short guide on a popular board as well: Mac OS X 10.7 Lion [Beta/HowTo]

22Nov/090

8Bitone and Vocoder Synthesizer SV-5 for iPhone

8bitone_iphone_retro_synthesizer.png

via wiretotheear: going 8bit with yudo iphone apps

8Bitone is a combination of a nonlinear audio editor and a chiptunes synthesizer. Vocoder SV-5
8Bitone (iTunes link) and Vocoder Synthesizer SV-5 (iTunes link) look like very nice and compact audio tools for the go. There so many other junk iPhone apps out there that actually something retro-fresh like those two apps really make my day. Together with the Nintendo DS I can build a minimal space sound studio soon ;)

see also:
* 8bitone on myspace
* creativeapplications.net - a closer look
* matrixsynth: behind the mask
* 8bitone review on macworld.co.uk