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News & Opinion
Analyst: MacBook Air Will Continue to Dominate
Ultrabook Market
Cnet's Lance Whitney reports that according to a new report from
market analysis firm JP Morgan's Mark Moskowitz, Apple's MacBook Air will continue
generating huge sales and retain its dominant market share despite the
growing challenge from Intel's PC ultrabooks - at least for now.
Whitney notes that most ultrabooks have been priced above $1,000
with only a few around $900, and Moskowitz doesn't think that's low
enough to make a dent in MacBook Air sales, commenting in an investor's
note released Monday that "Ultrabooks are not a competitive threat,
yet," adding that "In general, we think that ultrabooks are highly
discretionary devices, and pricing on competitive offerings must fall
below $800 before posing a viable threat to Apple's MacBook Air," which
he thinks will continue to attract Apple enthusiasts and other
users.
"In contrast," he's quoted observing that "we think that the first
round of ultrabook offerings lacks the right blend of features and
attractive price points to grab market share from Apple."
Link: Apple's MacBook
Air to Dominate Ultrabook Market, Says Analyst
MacBook Air a Potential $7B Business
Who would've thought back when Apple rolled out the poky,
compromised, and port-challenged original MacBook Air at the
Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008, that four years
later the Air would become the anchor, sales leader, and halo product
of Apple Mac lineup?
Barrons' Tech Trader Daily cites JP Morgan's Mark Moskowitz writing
that Apple's much improved second generation MacBook Air may turn out
have much higher sales than had initially been anticipated, observing
that while in previous reports the MacBook Air had been projected as a
potential $2-3 billion-plus revenue opportunity, based on the continued
momentum of the product and conversations with industry participants,
JP Morgan's expectations have become even more positive, and that over
the next 12 months, the firm believes that the average quarterly run
rate could reach 1.6M units and result in a $7.36 billion annualized
revenue profile.
Link: Apple:
MacBook Air a $7B Business, Says JP Morgan
Death of a MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air that
Replaced It
iSource's Alex Jordan says that his MacBook Pro bit the
dust on the evening of December 8th, after a little over two years of
heavy use. He notes that up until then, it had been a good machine, the
fastest he'd ever owned.
Warning clouds had gathered a few weeks earlier when the laptop
failed to recognize one of the two after-market 2 GB memory
modules Jordan had installed, but then a kernel panic on wake-up
(although he'd noticed having more kernel panics under OS X 10.7 Lion than any other Mac
OS version he'd run in the past). He tried a hard reset but was greeted
by the dreaded blinking folder icon with a question mark in the center
of it.
Initially suspecting a hard drive failure, Jordan bought a new
drive, but the MacBook couldn't find the new drive either. He belatedly
checked both drives in an external drive enclosure, and they both
worked, so he was left to deduce that the logic board was dead.
Time for a new computer, with Jordan prudently determining that a
logic board replacement on a two-year-old laptop would be a false
economy.
Instead, he decided to get a new 13.3" MacBook Air, the high-end
$1,599 model with a 256 GB SSD, which he says is by far the fastest
traditional computer he's ever owned and that the speed alone was worth
the price.
Jordan notes that the biggest aggravation in making the transition
was migrating his data from his backup to his new Air, a process
bottlenecked by USB data transmission speeds.
On the other hand, Jordan is understandably very disappointed that a
$1,000+ computer only lasted a little more than two years, having been
physically was very careful with it and allowing that there's no excuse
for internals to fail in that period of time.
However, Jordan says he highly recommends the MacBook Air,
describing it as lightning fast and a joy to use. Very sporting, under
the circumstances.
Link: The Death of a
MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air that Replaced It
Rumor Roundup
MacBook Pro with Retina Display in 2012?
DigiTimes' Yenting Chen and Steve Shen report that Apple is likely
to launch a new MacBook Pro lineup with a display resolution of 2880 x
1800 in the second quarter of 2012, which, if it comes to pass, would
set up a new round of competition for screen resolution specifications
in the notebook industry, according to DigiTimes' anonymous sources in
the upstream OEM supply chain.
Chen and Shen note that while current MacBook Pro models have
displays with resolutions ranging from 1680 x 1050 on the 17-incher to
a modest 1280 x 800 for the 13" Pro, ultrahigh resolution for the next
generation MacBook Pro will further differentiate Apple's products from
other laptop brands.
They say that Acer and Asustek Computer also plan to launch high-end
Ultrabook models with a display resolution of 1920 x 1080 in the first
half of 2012, a substantial upgrade from the 1366 x 768 displays
typically found in Ultrabooks.
Link: Apple May Launch
New MacBook Pro with 2880 by 1800 Display Resolution, Say Sources
(subscription required)
Reviews
2nd Gen Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid Drive vs.
Regular Hard Drives and SSD
Bare Feats' rob-ART Morgan says Seagate is shipping the 2nd
generation Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Hard Drive. and Bare Feats
wanted to know if it was faster than the 1st generation drive. They
also wanted to know how it compares to a "normal" hard drive as well as
a pure solid state drive (SSD), so they tested all four permutations
using both Thunderbolt and 6 Gbps eSATA interfaces, finding that
although slightly faster than a "plain" hard drive, the Seagate
Momentus XT can't hold a candle to a pure SSD.
Link: Shootout: Seagate's Gen 2 Hybrid
HDD versus Gen 1 Hybrid HDD versus HDD and SSD
Tech Trends
PC Sales Forecast Slashed Due to Hard Drive Crisis,
Sputtering Economy, and Tablet Fever
The Register's Paul Kunert reports that market research firm IHS has
slashed PC sales forecasts for 2012 because of weakening demand, tablet
popularity, and the ongoing disk drive crisis due to catastrophic
flooding in Thailand, with projections slashed by 3.8 million unit for
Q1 2012, with the slowdown expected to continue throughout the year
diminished from the previous forecast of 399 million unit sales to 376
million, with the notebook category most heavily most impacted by the
HDD issue.
Link: PC Sales Forecast
Slashed on Back of Disk Drive Crisis
All Notebooks Expected to Adopt HD Webcams in the
Second Half of 2012
DigiTimes' Erica Yen and Joseph Tsai report that notebook players
are expected to adopt high definition (HD) quality webcams into
notebook models across the board in the second half of 2012 as
Microsoft launches Windows 8, which is expected to start a new wave of
competition among upstream optical camera module players, according to
insider sources.
Yen and Tsai say that due to Microsoft's plans to have Windows 8
mainly support HD quality images, if the plan does not change, the
sources expect many of the notebook brand vendors will start launching
notebook models that adopt HD quality webcams in the second and third
quarter of 2012.
They also project that the standard specification of rear-side
cameras in smartphones and tablet PCs is quickly rising from 5 MP
(megapixels) to 8 MP (such as the iPhone 4S) as demand for
frontside cameras to deliver high quality results has risen, resulting
in upstream players including Largan Precision, Newmax, and Ability
Opto-Electronics Technology all aggressively working to upgrade their
VGA quality hardware to HD quality while simultaneously addressing
demand to make even smaller products.
Publisher's note: We've come a long way from the first commercial
webcam, the Connectix
QuickCam introduced in 1994, a low resolution external devices with 320
x 240 resolution and either 16 shades of gray at 60 fps or 256 shades
at 15 fps. Apple's original external iSight webcam upped the ante with
a VGA resolution 640 x 480 resolution and autofocus, and built-in
iSight cameras eventually reached 1280 x 1024 resolution. Since
switching to FaceTime HD cameras earlier this year, Apple specifies its
webcam a bit more vaguely as "high
definition", which usually means 1280 x 720 (720p) resolution.
dk
Link: Notebooks Expected
to Fully Adopt HD Quality Webcams in the Second Half of 2012
(subscription required)
How Low Can Ultrabooks Go? Toshiba Briefly Drops to
$699
Cnet's Brooke Crothers reports that Toshiba is setting the pace for
Ultrabook pricing so far, noting that after debuting at $799 last
month, the Toshiba Portegé Z835 is now selling for $699 at Best
Buy (after a $200 instant rebate) - a price point that could be
expected to give the $999
entry-level MacBook Air some grief if it held. However, Crothers
points out that the $799 price only lasted for about a week when
Toshiba introduced the Z835 in November, and for the most part, the
machine has been priced at $899, with Acer's Aspire S3 and
Hewlett-Packard's Folio 13 also priced at just under $900 at Best
Buy.
However, for $100 less than a base Core i5 11" MacBook Air, you get
a Core i3, 4 GB of memory (vs. the $999 Air's 2 GB), a larger
13.3" LED-backlit 1366 x 768 display, a 128 GB solid state drive, three
USB ports including one USB 3.0 port, and a backlit keyboard. Toshiba's
Z835 weighs 2.5 pounds, measures 0.6" thick, and has a magnesium alloy
enclosure.
Editor's note: It's not a Mac, of course, but with Windows 8 coming
and the changes in OS X 10.7 Lion proving underwhelming to some of us,
a $900 13" Ultrabook begins to look more attractive. cm
Link: How Low Can
Ultrabooks Go? Toshiba Drops to $699
Products & Services
New 2.5" Octane SSDs Combine 3-6 Gbps SATA Speed
with Up to 1 GB of Storage
PR: High-performance SSDs leverage the Indilinx Everest
platform to deliver superior performance and endurance for a wide range
of workloads
OCZ Technology
Group, Inc. have launched the Indilinx Everest-based Octane SATA 3.0
(6 Gbps) and SATA 2.0 (3 Gbps) SSD series, striking the ideal
balance between capacity, physical size, and speed. In addition to
being the world's first SSD to achieve up to a 1 TB capacity in a
compact 2.5" format, OCZ's Octane SSD series combines high-speed data
transfer rates with record-breaking access times to provide a superior
user experience and improved application performance.
"OCZ has reached an important milestone in the development of its
own controller technology," says James E. Bagley, Senior Analyst with
Storage Strategies NOW. "The high sustained performance, even with
compressed files, the rapid boot feature and high access speeds using
SATA 3.0 protocol puts their controller technology in the major
league."
"Until now SSDs have been tailored for specific applications,
forcing users into a product which maximizes performance for a narrow
band of applications, but is significantly lacking in others," explains
Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "The Octane Series solves this
problem by providing the highest level of performance across varied
workloads including mixed file sizes and mixed compressible and
uncompressible data, all while nearly doubling NAND flash
endurance."
The Octane series leverages the cutting-edge Indilinx Everest
platform to deliver up to 560 MBps of bandwidth and 45,000 IOPS and is
optimized for the complete spectrum of file types and sizes. In
particular, the Octane's proprietary page mapping algorithms allow for
steady mixed-workload performance, mirroring real world conditions
across a wide range of applications. The Octane series also includes a
number of advanced features unique to Indilinx, including innovative
latency reduction technology, enabling both read and write access times
as low as 0.06ms and 0.09ms respectively, the lowest of any
commercially available SSD. This enhances application responsiveness
and enables features such as "fast boot" in consumer applications.
Octane SSDs also come equipped with Indilinx's proprietary NDurance
technology, increasing the lifespan of the NAND flash memory, ensuring
the most consistent and reliable performance as well as minimizing
performance degradation even after the drive's storage capacity is
highly utilized. In addition, Octane series drives support AES and
automatic encryption to secure critical data.
Features
- Dual Core CPU
- Up to 512 MB DRAM cache
- 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB models
- High sequential speeds:
- Octane (SATA 3.0) Read: 560 MBps; Write: 400 MBps
- Octane-S2 (SATA 2.0) Read: 275 MBps; Write: 265 MBps
- High transactional performance - Optimized for 4K to 16K compressed
files
- Octane (SATA 3.0) 45,000 random read 4K IOPS
- Octane-S2 (SATA 2.0) 30,000 random read 4K IOPS
- Industry-low latency: Read: 0.06ms; Write: 0.09ms
- Strong performance at low queue depths (QD 1 - 3)
- Up to 8 channels with up to 16-way Interleaving
- Advanced BCH ECC engine enabling more than 70 bits correction
capability per 1 KB of data
- Proprietary NDurance™ Technology: increases NAND life up to
2X of the rated P/E cycles
- Efficient NAND Flash management: Dynamic and static wear-leveling,
and background garbage collection
- Boot time reduction optimizations
- NCQ support up to 32 queue depth
- End-to-end data protection
- TRIM support
- Industry standard SMART reporting
The OCZ Octane SSD Series is available in models ranging from 128 GB
to 1 TB capacities throughout OCZ's global channel.
Link: OCZ
Octane SATA III 2.5" SSD
Link: OCZ
Octane SATA II 2.5" SSD (Amazon.com currently lists the 128
GB SATA II version for $199.99 plus shipping. No other versions are
listed so far.)
Software
Jettison: Close Your MacBook and Go
PR: St. Clair Software has announced the release of Jettison
1.2 for Mac OS X. This update adds the option to choose which types of
drives it ejects, and automatically remounts any drives that are still
connected when you wake your Mac back up.
Jettison is a small, purpose-built application that automatically
ejects external disk drives from your Mac before you put it to
sleep.
Are you ready to close your MacBook and leave your desk? Jettison
eliminates the hassle of manually ejecting Time Machine backup drives,
network server volumes, and flash drives before you put your MacBook to
sleep - just close the lid, and Jettison does it for you! Time Machine
will be stopped and other data safely written to the drives before
they're ejected.
What's New:
- Jettison will now try to remount ejected disks when your Mac wakes
up.
- You can choose which types of disks to eject (Hard disk / DVD /
Disk Image / iDisk / Network server).
System Requirements:
- Mac OS X 10.6 or 10.7 (Lion)
- 0.8 MB
Jettison 1.2 is a free update if you purchased an earlier version.
It is available for $1.99 in the Mac App Store if you don't have it
yet. Please see the St. Clair Software website or the Mac App Store for
a full change log and additional feature information.
Link:
Jettison
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