We showed you how to switch on Power Nap on your Mountain Lion-running, SSD-equipped Mac, but just what does this new feature do?
We know that you Mac enters a kind of robotic REM sleep, where it’s brain activity spikes and the network connections power up to download various bits of data, just like Newsstand on iOS. But a new Apple Knowledge Base article outlines the surprising number of tasks which are going on under the sleepy-lidded hood.
Sometimes, it’s just fun to compare scores with your friends. Without the urge to compete, we wouldn’t have sports, national videogame competitions, or reality television. Now there’s a new way to measure up against those around you – Solid State Drive (SSD) speed.
Ok, so it’s not really a thing, but here’s how you can benchmark your own SSD to compare it with other SSD devices, if you need to know how much faster one computer you own is than another. In fact, it’s a ton of fun to compare the speed of an SSD, say in this here Macbook Air, and that of a hard drive, like in my Mac Mini. Here’s how.
There’s no way to be nice about it: Microsoft is not cool. Their products aren’t cool (sans Xbox!). Their logo isn’t cool. And then there’s their dancing, prancing, screaming, bear of a man slash CEO: Steve Ballmer. And on our brand new CultCast, we have to ask: could Microsoft bring their sexy back with a CEO who isn’t the official jester of the tech community?
And then, don’t miss our discussion on how one simple hardware upgrade can transform your aged Macbook Pro into an unholy speed demon! That’s right, you don’t need a Retina Macbook, just $200 and ten minutes can bring you a renewed computing power that would make even Tim Cook’s glasses start to fog!
Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new episodes right on your iPhone or iPad with Apple’s brand new Podcasts App.
Apple is clearly working towards making solid-state storage a standard for its MacBook line, which means our notebook computers have never been speedier. The only problem is, the flash storage Apple uses is still pretty expensive, and so most of us have to settle for less of it when we’re buying a new MacBook.
That means we either need to come up with ways to decrease our data consumption, or add cheaper external storage for things like our iTunes libraries and torrent archives. If you’re going for the latter (the easier option) then you need the Nifty MiniDrive, an SD card specifically designed for MacBooks that you’ll hardly ever notice.
Should businesses consider SSD options for Macs running OS X Server like the Mac mini Server?
Mac and iOS users are strangers to NAND flash storage. After all, Apple has been using flash as a storage medium for years now. iPods, iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, and some MacBooks all rely on NAND flash as a storage medium of choice. The success of those products has led Apple to be world’s biggest buyer of NAND chips and was no doubt a factor to mention the company’s purchase of Israeli flash memory firm Anobit.
Solid state storage based on NAND flash isn’t Apple-specific. Plenty of other companies offer flash storage in an array of form factors for a huge variety of uses including smartphones and mobile devices. Solid state drives (SSD) drives are available as options for a range of PCs. They’re also becoming common options for servers and network devices. For businesses looking to implement Lion or Mountain Lion, SSDs can be an attractive option. They can also be an expensive prospect, and there may be better ways to spend your business dollars.
Save a small fortune on your new Apple notebook buy ordering from Best Buy.
It’s been just three weeks since Apple issued refreshes to its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, and already they’re on sale at Best Buy, with up to $140 off the MSRP. That means you can pick up the base model MacBook Pro with Retina display — with a 2.3GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD — for $2,089.
Recycle your MacBook Air’s old SSD module into an external drive.
If you’re planning to upgrade the flash storage in your 2010 or 2011 MacBook Air, don’t just discard your old module or let it go for pennies on eBay. With the Aurora Envoy enclosure from Other World Computing, you can turn that old flash storage into an external drive that’s designed to match your MacBook Air perfectly.
Amazing: I just liberated 10GB of space on my MacBook Pro’s harddrive that was being held prisoner by backups of iDevices I used to own, but had long since gone. And frankly, I’m not sure I would have found and freed up the space without the $10 DaisyDisk app.
SSDs are great! They make your computer run as if they were filled with greased lightning. That spinning beach ball stops spinning quite so much, and those apps struggling to load quit doing so much bouncing. Your computer gains instant-on functionality, better battery life, and ridiculously quick boot times. Win-win!
There’s only one problems: SSDs (like those found in the Retina MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPhone or iPad) don’t have the same high capacity as physical spinning drives. That’s a problem if you’re the kind of user who carries around a terrabyte of media with him at all times. Luckily, it looks like SSDs limitations when it comes to capacity sizes is about to change.
If your Mac doesn’t already have one of these, now’s a good time to make the upgrade.
Forget RAM, forget a faster CPU, forget a beefier graphics card. If you are still running a Mac with a spinning, physical hard drive, the best upgrade you can possibly make is to drop a solid-state flash drive into the machine. The immediate effect on perceived performance is stunning: it’s the difference between seeing a spinning beach ball every hour and not seeing one for months at a time.
Unfortunately, for a long time, what has kept most people from making this update to their older Macs has been price. SSDs are more expensive than physical HDDs. That’s still true, by the way, but it’s less so now than it ever has been, making this a perfect time to finally take the plunge.
![Find Out How Fast Your SSD Or Hard Drive Really Is [OS X Tips]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/SSD-Benchmark.jpg)
![The Nifty MiniDrive Is An SD Card Designed To Go Unnoticed In Your MacBook [Kickstarter]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ccf441f70a8210e225f226c6e7cb986b_large.jpg "Nifty-MiniDrive")
![Make Your HD Bigger with DaisyDisk for Mac [Review]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/daisydisk-icon.jpg "daisydisk-icon"){kind=icon}
