While Apple is finally putting out an M2 Mac Pro even as its powerful Mac Studio machines conquer most hardcore computing tasks, the truth is most users can more than get by with an M1 or M2 Mac mini. That goes for Bill Penhale, who sent us his setup from Shorewood, Illinois, near Chicago.

“I am pretty techy for 70, ha!,” the retired sales director told Cult of Mac. And judging by his M1 Mac mini-powered setup, with a fine 4K external display, solid audio and loads of external storage, that’s certainly true.

Gabriel B., a 13-year-old student and photographer in Baton Rouge, La., sent pics and commentary showcasing and describing his well-equipped MacBook Air-and-dual-display setup to Cult of Mac this week.

He noted his Intel MacBook powers an “army of peripherals,” but it’s not quite up to the work he asks of it. And how has he already filled 3TB of digital storage space, anyway? Well, that’s what heavy photo and video editing will do.

We could all use more space on our devices and a bit more fun and flair for said storage. The Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive combines a massive 2TB of storage with RGB LED lighting, and it’s now on sale for only $69.99 (regularly $104).

Thad K, a 63-year-old project lead and analyst for a U.S. Department of Energy contractor for the past 37 years, recently won an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 2 Bluetooth speaker from Cult of Mac. The little speaker had no idea what a legion of tech equipment it was about to join — 69 pieces of gear in Stockton, California.

Apple could be about to sell back its stake in Toshiba Memory less than a year after acquiring it.

A new report claims Toshiba plans to buy back the shares it sold to Apple, Dell, Kingston, and Seagate after securing billions in loans from Japanese banks. It’s thought Toshiba later plans to become a public company.

Statistics on hard drive reliability just released by data-storage company Backblaze would seem to indicate it’s not a good idea to buy a Seagate hard drive. Of the 104,954 drives it uses, Seagate’s are the least reliable by a wide margin.

On the other side of the coin, this company has found drives made by Western Digital’s HGST to be much more reliable.

One year ago we were given some insight into which hard drives last the longest thanks to Backblaze media’s analysis of the tens of thousands of hard drives in their data center. The company uses regular consumer-grade hard drives due to the cheaper costs to power their unlimited storage offerings for customers, and this year they’re back with a new study revealing which 4TB hard drives are too big to fail.

After spinning 41,213 disk drives in its data center, Backblaze crunched the numbers at the end of 2014 to find that if want a hard drive with the lowest failure rate possible, go with an HGST drive.

When Samsung lost this summer’s $1.05 billion trial against Apple, we knew Samsung would try any means within their power to get the ruling overturned. And who can blame them for wanting to keep a billion dollars in their bank account?

Since the verdict was read, Samsung has learned that the jury foreman, Velvin Hogan, withheld key facts, like how he was sued by Seagate Technology and went bankrupt because of it. Seagate is partly owned by Samsung, so it could have been that Hogan had an axe to grind against them. Samsung thinks Apple knew all about Hogan, so Apple had to disclose everything they know about Hogan and when they knew it.

Judge Lucy Koh has agreed to re-examine the role of jury foreman Velvin Hogan, who found Samsung guilty of patent infringement and awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages earlier this year. Samsung requested a retrial back in October after it became apparent that Hogan failed to disclose details of a lawsuit against Seagate that he was involved in 20 years ago.

Last year, Apple announced that a “small number” of 1TB Seagate hard drives used in 2011 iMacs could fail under certain conditions, and were eligible for a free replacement. Now Apple’s extended that program to all iMacs sold between October 2009 and July 2011.

According to the new support page, if you have a 21.5 or 27-inch iMac with a 1TB Seagate hard drive, Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will replace the hard drive free of charge. They’ve even included a handy little form to figure out if your iMac is affected. (My 2009 27-inch iMac luckily isn’t).

One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t necessarily have to bring your iMac back to the Apple Store: in some areas, if you contact an AppleCare representative, you can take advantage of an in-office or home repair option, so if you are going to get your hard drive replaced and don’t want to lug forty pounds of aluminum and silicon to your local Apple Store, ask about this option.

Source: Apple