From the OWC Blog. -”“A wide range of testing – by both internal and leading external performance sites – is in progress on our first to market 12GB and 16GB OWC ‘MaxRAM’ memory options for the 2011 MacBook Pro,” said Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO, Other World Computing. “Our initial confirmed results, using the same ‘diglloydMedium’ CS5 testing parameters employed by macperformanceguide.com, reveals a nearly 50% performance improvement with 16GB of RAM installed vs. the factory maximum of 8GB.”

High performance PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz 8GB memory modules are still very expensive. $1599 is required if you are looking to get the most from your new quad-core MacBook Pro.

Apple iPad 2 Official Specs: (Launching on Verizon and ATT Wireless) (March 11th Ship Date)

• Dual-Core A5 CPU
• 9x Faster Graphics
• Rear and Front Facing Cameras
• 33% thinner than 1st Gen iPad (8.8mm thin)
• $499 base model pricing
• HDMI mirrored video output

Have a sneak peak at the newly redesigned “About This Mac” interface for OS X Lion (10.7).

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With quad-core Core i7′s across the board, and the new 10Gbps Thunderbolt interface onboard, this a well received refresh. The entry level 15″ MacBook Pro retains it $1799 price tag, good news there. Still standard is 4GBs of RAM and 500GBs hard drives. The integrated FaceTime cameras got bumped from VGA to HD. Graphics get bumped to new GDDR5 GPUs(256MB/1GB VRAM) from ATI AMD, up from GDDR3 in previous models. My favorite upgrade however, is the new sound system. Stereo speakers with subwoofer!

Get all the details here

Jean-Marc Denis joined Sparrow on Beta 1 and is in charge of Sparrow design. From the application icon to the ‘Send’ button, it’s all him.

We recently had the chance to ask Jean-Marc a few questions regarding his work on the fantastic Sparrow mail app. Below are a summary of the questions and answers.

When first tasked with developing the interface for Sparrow, how did you begin to visualize or plan what you wanted the final project to look like.

“When I joined Sparrow, the team already had a solid interface. I first worked on the design, making all the icons pixel perfect, finding good blendings, etc. I pointed out some elements that was bothering me as a user of the application and what I would love to see in it. For new and basic ideas we sketch with the old pen and paper. After this step, if we want to see it more real, I mockup the idea directly in Photoshop to have a better final feeling.”

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Apple’s A4 chip is starting to show its age as it moves even closer to it’s 2nd birthday. Apple has something new in the works and we will likely see it in the iPhone 5. The new processor, dubbed “A5″ Will essentially be a multi-core version of the existing A4. The A4 processor is actually a re branded ARM Cortex-A8. The upcoming A5 processor is said to be based on the ARM Cortex -A9 CPU, which is a dual 1GHz CPU.

New Grahics Processing Unit as well for iPhone 5. The SGX543 is a GPU upgrade from the existing  SGX535, which can can be found in the iPhone3Gs, iPhone4, and the previous and current gen iPod Touch. This next gen GPU will purportedly also allow for OS X’s OpenCL tech to be introduced into the iOS. This means even better gaming and system performance for all upcoming iOS devices (Think awesome Apple TV and iPad Gaming.)

Also, news has come forth sitting a 8MP OmniVision sensor could power the iPhone 5 camera. The new sensor includes improved hardware that would bump video resolution up to 1080p and offer digital image stabilization and decreased rolling shutter effects as well as 20 percent improvement in peak quantum efficiency in all color channels, a 35 percent improvement in low-light.

I’m impressed overall, is it silly to want a micro-sd card slot too?

Source: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/new-8mp-omnivision-sensor-could-power-iphone-5-camera.ars

It’s not a matter of if your hard drive will fail, It’s a matter of when! Don’t wait until it’s to late. Leave no app behind, back them all up, now!

Let me highlight the key points first so you can decide if you wanna read on. Secure. Offsite. $5 a month. Unlimited backup space. Interested?

So, How exactly does BackBlaze work?

You download a tiny application that installs in three clicks and doesn’t require a credit card or any information to start using it. This internet backup application automatically finds all your photos, music, documents, and other irreplaceable files—no matter where they are on your hard drive—and compresses and securely encrypts them.

You can get the free trail here. backblaze.com (Intel Only, OS 10.5+)

For the most part OS X is very fast and nimble. However, with just a little bit of time and effort, you may find that you can get even more performance out of your mac. Try starting with these apps.

ATIccelerator II is an overclocking app for ATI based video cards. This app allows you to increase the clock speed, and thus increase performance of ATI based video cards on your Mac.

I recommend atMonitor to monitor GPU temps to insure your card doesn’t overheat after overclocking. If you see increased temps after overclocking, try installing smcFanControl to increase system fan speeds.

Xslimmer works by removing unnecessary bits of code from apps you have already installed on your mac. The slimming of the apps can often speed up launch time as well as recover gigabytes of hard drive space. (I saved 3.8GBs over the span of 28 apps)

If your Mac is a bit on the older side, you may be able to eek a bit more performance if your not attached to the “Dashboard’. OS X’s Dashboard feature can consume upwards of 100MBs of RAM in addition to stealing some CPU performance. If your not using it everyday, try disabling it until you find you need it. Just paste this string of code into a terminal window. defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES Press enter, then this killall Dock

Not to long ago I was in search of a system monitor utility that was able to monitor the temperature of my graphics card. The OS X Activity Monitor simply didn’t cut it. I wanted advanced reports of my GPU including GPU load and Temp. Thankfully there is atMonitor. Developed by atPurpose, atMonitor is a full featured system monitoring app that includes the following features:

CPU Monitoring [Load and Temp]

• GPU Monitoring [Load and Temp]
• VRAM and FPS Monitoring
  
• Hard Drive I/O
  
• Network I/O
  
• Actively displays the top 3 resource hungry apps.
• Logging and saving of all data to XML files.

Some features require a newer graphics card and atMonitor currently requires OS X 10.5

You can download and learn more about atMonitor here.

“Inside sources” claim Apple has set December 13th as the official launch date for the upcoming Mac App Store. Mac App Store submissions started rolling into Apple around the 3rd of November. So the store it self should be fairly well stocked at the time of launch.

I love the idea of the Mac App Store simply for the fact that it will be so convenient to discover new apps. There is no doubt that all apps available for OS X will not be in the app store, but I believe it will still benefit the majority of OS X users.

The Mac App Store has another benefit as well, updates! All apps installed via the app store will also be able to receive updates directly through the app store. This centralized update hub should definitely help to keep everyone up to date with the freshest software release.

Apple to sell iLife, iWork apps individually