Mac mini Server (Late 2012)

The 2011 Mac mini Server was a normal Mac mini with two hard drives, a quad-core i7 CPU (vs. dual-core CPUs in regular Minis), and OS X Server installed. The 2012 Server is essentially the same as the top-end consumer model, but with OS X Server installed and two hard drives instead of one. You […]

Mac mini (Late 2012)

“Way more power” is Apple’s claim for the Late 2012 Mac mini, and that’s certainly true for the top-end quad-core i7-based model. It has the highest Geekbench score yet for a Mini at 10642 (vs. 6741 for last year’s 2.7 GHz dual-core i7 model), which is an impressive 58% better. However, at the entry level, […]

11″ MacBook Air (Mid 2012)

For the first time, Apple has Macs with built-in USB 3.0 support. The improved USB specification is over 10x as fast as USB 2.0 and has half the bandwidth of Thunderbolt. There are already a lot of USB 3.0 drives on the market, and they are far more affordable than Thunderbolt drives. Best of all, […]

13″ MacBook Air (Mid 2012)

For the first time, Apple has Macs with built-in USB 3.0 support. The improved USB specification is over 10x as fast as USB 2.0 and has half the bandwidth of Thunderbolt. There are already a lot of USB 3.0 drives on the market, and they are far more affordable than Thunderbolt drives. Best of all, […]

Mac mini Server (Mid 2011)

Last year’s Mac mini Server was just a 2010 Mac mini with two hard drives and no SuperDrive. This year’s Server is actually a much more powerful computer with a quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU, twice the number of cores found in the consumer Mini. The 2011 Server ships with OS X 10.7 Lion Server […]

Mac mini (Mid 2011)

For the first time since the original G4 Mac mini was introduced in January 2005, there’s no optical drive in the Mac mini, which also helped Apple trim $100 from its base price – and $200 from the faster version. The 2011 Mac mini can use the same $79 USB SuperDrive as the MacBook Air. […]

iMac (Mid 2011)

For 2011, the entire iMac line goes quad-core with Core i5 CPUs (and even faster i7 build-to-order options), moves to Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset, gets Turbo Boost 2.0 technology, adopts the next generation of AMD Radeon HD graphics processors, and gains the Thunderbolt technology introduced with the Early 2011 MacBook Pro models. The 27″ iMac […]

Cutting Through SATA Naming Confusion

I’ve been suffering from Product Confusion Fatigue (PCF). It happens a lot in the world of computing. You want to upgrade something simple like a hard drive. Instead of just looking for the best price, you find a half-dozen different product descriptions – and now you don’t know which one is compatible with your computer.