External hard drives: super handy, but oh-so-slow, especially since Apple put a bullet in the back of FireWire’s head. Thankfully, Western Digital has once again come to the rescue with a neat new addition to its My Passport line of portable drives: The Edge.
These new versions not only look way more high-tech than the previous curvy plastic models, they also support MacBook-friendly USB 3.0.
FileWave’s new free app makes deploying Lion/Mountain Lion incredibly easy.
FileWave launched a new free app called Lightning this week. The new app makes quick and easy work of deploying Mountain Lion (and Lion) to multiple Macs, particularly recent Macs with Thunderbolt. It can be used to roll out existing master images that a business or school has already created as well as a base OS X install that can be customized with a range of files and applications.
Finally — you can now use your FireWire drives with your Thunderbolt Mac.
After a short will they/won’t they moment last week, Apple has finally made the Thumderbolt to FireWire adapter officially official. Despite last week’s hesitations, you can now buy the adapter for – you guessed it – $29.
Early this morning, Apple put up a product page for a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter cable on the online Apple Store. Selling for $29.00, the cable would allow Mac owners to run their old Firewire accessories through Apple’s new Thunderbolt standard.
It appears, however, that Apple wasn’t ready for this product to be announced quite yet, as after the new product broke, the page was quietly pulled for unknown reasons. It also doesn’t show up in store search results.
It’s probably a matter of one of Apple’s web monkeys pushing the “go live” button a few hours prematurely, but we’ll let you know when the Thunderbolt to Firewire cable goes back on sale.
It’s time for me to sign off my tipster post here at Cult of Mac. For my final tip, here’s one of my absolute favorites from my book. It describes how to turn any USB memory stick or storage device into an ultra-secure filestore. When inserted into any Mac, a password prompt will appear, just like with expensive ‘government grade secure’ memory sticks, and the contents will be as equally inaccessible to anybody else.
As we’re probably all aware by now, Apple’s Thunderbolt I/O debuted earlier this year with the new generation of MacBook Pros and threatened to make all other interfaces, like USB and FireWire, seem like stone-age relics — and at the same time, make obsolescent all current external HDDs. All, that is, except Seagate’s line of GoFlex drives.
Intel was quick to clarify reports yesterday that Apple had secretly filed for the Thunderbolt trademark in Jamaica a year before the chipmaker unveiled their next-gen technology, and in doing so, have put some fears to ease: Thunderbolt is not another FireWire.