Because many businesses close early on Good Friday,
and because Low End Mac's 15th birthday is Saturday, we're posting our
news roundups a day early this week. Come back on Friday as we look
back at our first 15 years - and thanks for visiting Low End Mac. -
Dan Knight, publisher
General Apple and Mac desktop news is covered in Mac News Review. iPad, iPod, iPhone, and
Apple TV news is covered in iOS News
Review. All prices are in US dollars unless otherwise noted.
News & Opinion
Top Stories in This Week's Mac News Review
Rumor Roundup
Tech Trends
Software
News & Opinion
New iPad Didn't Cut Into March Notebook
Shipments
The notebook industry, which has been suffering a downturn, appears
to have turned a corner and headed back toward recovery in March.
That's according to Joanne Chien, senior analyst at DigiTimes Research.
Ms. Chien notes that the hard drive shortage caused by last fall's
flooding in Thailand has largely been resolved, and consumer demand is
also rising, and Apple's New iPad,
which launched in mid-March, did not create the negative impact on
notebook shipments that some had been anticipating. Consequently, she
says, indications point to an optimistic shipment forecast for
notebooks in the future.
Ms Chien also reports that Apple, which initiated the ultrathin
notebook market with its MacBook Air, is also planning to adopt
ultrathin designs for its MacBook Pro product line and is set to start
mass producing a 15" MacBook Pro in mid-April with initial monthly
shipments of 200,000 units, followed by ramping up mass production of a
redesigned 13" Pro model in June with initial monthly shipments of
300,000-400,000 units.
Link: DigiTimes Research:
New iPad Did Not Impact Notebook Shipments in March (subscription
required)
Use the MacBook Air SuperDrive with Almost Any
Mac
TUAW's TJ Luoma says that while the MacBook Air SuperDrive is only
officially supported on the MacBook Air or Mac mini, it turns out you
can make it work with other Macs simply by editing one text file and
then rebooting.
He notes that Lukas Zeller had posted instructions on "How to make
the MacBook Air SuperDrive work with any Mac," but his workaround
involved editing a binary with a hex editor, a practice that could be
fraught with problems - possibly serious ones. However, he says that
Lukas subsequently found an easier way that only requires editing one
line in one text file, details of which are included in the
article.
Luoma says he couldn't believe it could be that easy, but he edited
the file, hooked up his MacBook Air SuperDrive to his MacBook Pro,
rebooted, and it worked, as it also did with his Black MacBook.
He cautions that it's still possible that there's some good reason
Apple chose to restrict use of the MacBook Air SuperDrive to just the
MacBook Air and the Mac mini, but it's also possible that it was just
an arbitrary restriction that Apple will eventually lift as the
internal SuperDrive is removed from the rest of the MacBook line, as
widely anticipated.
Link: Use the MacBook
Air SuperDrive with (Almost) Any Mac
Make a DIY External MacBook Battery
The Verge's Evan Rodgers says if you want to be a road warrior with
your 13" MacBook/Pro or MacBook Air, HyperMac will be happy to sell you
an external battery, but it'll cost you $250. Alternatively if you're
like him and don't mind getting down and dirty with a soldering iron,
you can make one yourself after collecting the following materials and
tools:
- 2 - 12v CCTV Batteries
- 3rd party MacBook car charger
- Soldering Iron
- Flux (optional)
- Solder
- Heat Shrink Tubing
- 5x Blocking Diode
The accompanying video shows Rodgers using just one CCTV battery,
which he says works, but because of voltage drop on the battery the car
charger will power off after about half of the battery is depleted. He
says this is a good thing, since it prevents strain on the voltage
regulator, which, if this fail safe were not present, could overheat
the regulator. However, a more elegant solution is to attach two CCTV
batteries in parallel with a diode between each battery will allow for
a much higher current draw before the voltage droop takes effect. The
blocking diode prevents current from traveling back into the battery.
This could happen if you were to use one charged battery and one
depleted battery.
He estimates this will provide over 6 hours of battery life for his
MacBook.
Link: Create a DIY
MacBook Battery
Link: Revised Ivy Bridge
Launch Schedule Confirmed
New 13" MBP and MBA Waiting Until June?
Hardmac's Lionel deduces that CPU World's Ivy Bridge release
timeline (below) would dovetail nicely with an iMac
refresh announcement on May 1st, 2nd, or 8th, but new MacBook Pro
models will have to wait for appropriate CPUs to become available,
especially for the 13" model. Lionel suggests that Apple is probably
upset with Intel's Ivy Bridge release delays, since notebooks account
for a strong majority of its Mac sales.
Link: Ivy Bridge CPUs
Release Dates: New 13" MBP and MBA to Come Only in June!?
Rumor Roundup
Ivy Bridge MacBook Pro to Begin Mass Production
This Month
DeviceMag's Sanjeev Ramachandran says that notwithstanding our
having entered the post-PC era, there is still a world of laptops and
desktops "where parties are thrown when much anticipated devices are
launched."
Ramachandran says he's hearing that one of the most anticipated such
devices is ramping up towards mass production, with Apple's new MacBook
Pro laptop moving faster toward the point where speculation about
design and features are confirmed with only assembly remaining. With
Intel launching the Ivy Bridge class of its new generation processor
chips in April (see below), the Ivy Bridge powered
new generation portable from Apple will also hit mass production lines
at Apple's upstream manufacturing partners in April. Rumor has it that
the first new MacBook Pro model will be a 15" display unit with a
thinner and sleeker form factor than the current machine.
So what about the name? Sanjeev Ramachandran observes that if we go
by the iPad 3 example, the new gen
professional laptop could simply end up being called "New MacBook Pro,"
right?
Link: Apple MacBook Pro
with Ivy Bridge Chips to Go in for Mass Production in April
New, Thinner MacBook Pros to Get Retina
Displays?
Wall Street Cheat Sheet's Diallah Haidar weighs in on rumors that
Apple will unveil lighter, skinnier MacBook Pros this year, citing a
report from CPU Central saying that Intel will launch its new chipset
and Ivy Bridge Core i processor family in April (below) - with Apple to follow with a new MacBook Pro
borrowing heavily from the MacBook Air form factor.
Haidar deduces that the new MacBook Pro's will drop the internal
optical drive and feature ultra high resolution Retina displays sourced
from Sharp.
The timeline projected by CPU Central would have Apple rolling out
both new 15" MacBook Pro and 15" MacBook Air models, although
speculation persists that the Air and Pro lineups could be merged or at
least rationalized.
Haidar observes that Apple's central focus has been on the iPad
lately, while more or less ignoring its notebook line, save for
discontinuing the white plastic MacBooks, but even with an inevitable
Post-PC era looming over the market, a Retina Display just might
restore consumer interest in conventional PCs and attract more users to
the Mac, possibly delivering a devastating blow to competing PC makers
like Dell and desktop OS hegemon Microsoft.
The article advises Apple to consider incorporating the new iPad's
dictation feature and increasing battery power on its notebooks, noting
that a smaller, lighter laptop with MacBook Pro capabilities and the
portability of the MacBook Air would give Apple an edge over
competitors, and successfully incorporating the best of both worlds
might even re-cannibalize some iPad sales and help Apple win a larger
share of the PC market. However, those respective qualities could prove
elusively difficult to incorporate in a single machine given physics
limitations.
Link: Apple's
Double-Edged Sword: MacBook vs. iPad
Tech Trends
Revised Ivy Bridge Launch Schedule
Revised Ivy Bridge Launch Schedule
CPU World's Gennadiy Shvets notes that Intel's Ivy Bridge launch has
been delayed twice, first pushed back from Q1 to Q2 2012, then delayed
another two weeks. Shvets reports that the currently targeted launch
date for quad-core desktop Ivy Bridge CPUs is April 29, and while the
rollout timeline for the new generation mobile processors has been
rumored to be delayed until June, the latest desktop and mobile
roadmaps confirm that both desktop and mobile Ivy Bridge chips will be
released at the same time, the first wave to come April 8, and another
announcement to follow somewhere between April 22 and April 28. That
one will include only quad-core models including mobile Core i7 and
Core i5 families, with the announced chips to be available to customers
April 29. Moving along, more Core i5 desktop and Core i5 dual-core
mobile microprocessors will be introduced on June 3rd, and while there
was a rumor that the Core i3 mobile chips would not be transitioned to
Ivy Bridge, CPU World believes that Core i3 mobiles will be released
after all.
Shvets has posted tables (right) showing specifications and prices
of the new processor lines.
Dell XPS Laptop to Feature Gorilla Glass?
Hardmac's Lionel notes that according to Dutch tech site
Tweakers.net, Dell is considering using Gorilla Glass, a special kind
of hardened glass developed way back in the 1960s by Corning Glass and
used in the iPhone and iPad (as well as almost every other tablet or
smartphone), to cover the display of its new XPS laptop
The XPS will reportedly feature a 15.6" display with a 1920 x 1080
resolution (by comparison, the optional high resolution display of the
15" MacBook Pro has a 1680 x 1050 resolution) and will of course run an
Ivy Bridge processor. Overall thickness of this laptop is reported to
be 24.2 mm - 0.1 mm thicker than the Late 2008 vintage unibody design
of the current 15" MacBook Pro.
Link: Dell to Feature
Gorilla Glass in a Laptop
Software
Eltima Connector Lets Macs Share USB Devices over
Network
PR: Eltima Software has announced the release of its USB to
Ethernet Connector 1.0 for Mac, claimed to be the only software
solution offering this kind of Mac OS X support. USB to Ethernet
Connector lets your computer work with remote USB devices over
Internet/LAN/WAN as if those devices were connected directly to the
computer. You can share a USB device with remote computers no matter
how far they are and let people all over the world use them, over
networks between Macs, Windows, and Linux computers, the USB to
Ethernet Connector being completely cross-platform now.
USB to Ethernet Connector allows access to a printer, scanner,
webcam, USB dongle, or any other supported device from anywhere any
time.
With USB to Ethernet Connector for Mac one can:
- Connect remote devices to a Mac over Ethernet, Internet, LAN,
WAN
- Share a USB device among multiple computers
- Use USB devices on virtual machines & blade servers
- Share your device with anyone at any spot on the globe
- Access USB devices over WiFi or RDP
USB to Ethernet Connector runs on Mac OS 10.6 and 10.7 and costs
$89.95 for Single License for 1 shared USB device. Note that USB to
Ethernet Connector by Eltima is licensed according to the number of
shared USB devices. Every server computer requires a separate license.
Client modules of USB to Ethernet Connector are free.
Publisher's note: Mac OS X supports printer, scanner, and file
sharing, but this could be useful for accessing a webcam, USB
registration dongle, or perhaps even a USB floppy drive or Apple's
MacBook Air SuperDrive over your ethernet network. dk
Link: USB to Ethernet
Connector for Mac
Bargain 'Books
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