http://www.hardmac.com/articles/484/page1

As you have seen, we had to put HardMac on hold for a while.

The website will continue to exist but with a slightly different editing strategy.

For years, we have been trying to bring you both the latest news and publish interesting articles about improvements and modifications we could make in our Mac or other Apple device. However, it turned out to be too time consuming for us as our resective careers evolve, since we are not professionals, we edit this website and its bigger brother Macbidouille.com on our spare time.
That said, and considering that our spare time is shrinking, we have decided to shift to a new strategy. There will be less news posted everyday, and we will concentrate on the more "geeky" ones that we find more interesting, and that have made us successful.
On top of that, in the near future we will publish more articles that will focus on the two components of our name: Hardware and the Mac.

Later today we will publish an article featuring a test of Crucial's new M500 SSD, so stay tuned to read all about the heir of the C300 and the M4!

The HardMac Team

We are busy working with the MacBidouille team to see how we can start again the activity on the English side of MacBidouille.

We thank all of our readers for their interest in what we have offered so far and we are looking forward to welcoming you again in a near future.

Stay tuned!
The HardMac Team

As a reminder, Fusion Drive allows to create one logical storage volume comprising the SSD and the HDD. Data is first written on the SSD and once it is full, some data will be transferred to the HDD. Wile doing so, Mac OS will keep 4GB of free space on the SSD to be used as cache before transfer to the HDD.
This solution has the advantage of taking reserving only 4 GB of the total storage space for cache. There are however some drawbacks as the acceleration provided by the cache is limited to these 4 GB, and in case one of the drives fails, the data of the entire volume, including on the data stored on the other drive, is lost. (The only solution has always been and will always remain frequent backups)
In addition, this solution is not as fast as a single large SSD, which is not much more expensive since the price per GB of Apple's SSDs is 3 to 4 times higher than on the rest of the market.

ZDNet published a video showing the new Fusion Drive on a Mac mini with an SSD and an HDD.

As you can see, it is a lot faster than on a Mac with the HDD alone.

This new rumor is not surprising since the Retina high resolution has become a big marketing argument at Apple. There are already Retina displays in the iPod touch, iPhone, iPad and some models of MacBook Pro. We are sure that it will find its way in the iMac as soon as it becomes possible as well as in the Apple display that hasn't been upgraded lately and still has only USB 2.0.

To get back to the iPad mini, we will see that device in about a year. Before that, Apple will have to find a way to make an A6X chip that needs even less power than the current one in order to bring a higher resolution without hurting battery life.

This new logo will be unveiled during the 2013 CES in Las Vegas, and it will aim at giving a cooler and worldwide brand to the company.

Now we are left to wonder what this logo might look like...

This update includes graphics performance and reliability enhancements and improves compatibility with some USB devices. This last point is important as there have been issues with the support of USB 3.0 on these computers.

It is hard to say whether it is an Apple prototype or somebody who modified the indentification of a Mac to make it appear to be running a different OS. We however think that it is a prototype because all we have seen are exceptional visits.

According to Apple Insider, Apple would be ready to spend 2.3 billion dollars more than originally planned during this fiscal year, maybe (probably) to help Sharp. With that big of an investment, Apple will be able to take control of Sharp, or at least its LCD department.

On our side, we are still waiting for an iPad mini that should have been delivered on Friday through UPS. It left the UPS warehouse on time Friday but was never delivered. UPS doesn't know what happened and we are now in the middle of a complicated procedure between the Apple Store and UPS.

Foxconn had started negotiations with Sharp in order to cover part of the production of the displays. The agreement was never finalized as Foxconn tried to get too good of a deal from an already weakened Sharp. More recently, Sharp sent distress calls to Apple, Google and Microsoft, asking them to invest money in return for preferred access to new high technologies, that still need to be fully developed./p>]]> Sharp announced that if nothing radical happens in the near future, it would most certainly collapse.
The company doesn't think it can make it while keeping its current structure. It is however betting a lot on its new IGZO technology to compete on the market and drive its recovery.
It is widely believed that Apple wanted to use IGZO displays in the new iPad but because Sharp couldn't mass produce them, Apple went for the traditional LCD technology that consumes a lot more power because of the high resolution.
IGZO is the name of a new material that can be used to make transparent transistors. That way, it is possible to have a bright display while using a less powerful backlighting system than when traditional transistors are used.

Foxconn had started negotiations with Sharp in order to cover part of the production of the displays. The agreement was never finalized as Foxconn tried to get too good of a deal from an already weakened Sharp. More recently, Sharp sent distress calls to Apple, Google and Microsoft, asking them to invest money in return for preferred access to new high technologies, that still need to be fully developed./p>]]> http://www.hardmac.com_news_34065 lionel@macbidouille.com (Lionel) Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:35:31 +0100 http://forum.hardmac.com/index.php?showtopic=11913&view=getnewpost http://www.hardmac.com/news/2012/11/06/the-ipad-mini-already-jailbroken MuscleNerd announced on Twitter that he has already jailbroken the iPad mini, and he proves it with this screenshot.

He used what he calls a failbreak, a breach that he found but doesn't want to reveal as Apple would immediately and easily patch it. This kind of breach is very useful to discover others, which is exactly what he will try to do now.

Since mid-september, progression has changed direction and after peaking at $700 per share, the price has dropped consistently, now by $120.

Many things can explain this decrease, investors have been disappointed by some of the last announcements that were made, even when they were very good ones. It seems now that Apple has lost its halo of invincibility that allowed the company to turn any product into gold.

Of course, this doesn't change the quality of the products nor the pleasure we have when we use them, but we fear that Tim Cook and his team could react to stop that decrease by announcing some new products or services too early, departing from the considerations that Steve Jobs had, as his priority always appeared to be making the best products.

It is a very simple but quite smart accessory: it is a micro-SD adapter that fits the SD port of the Mac without having about 1/3 of the card sticking out like it is the case with normal cards (it comes with a little tool that allows to remove it whenever you need, but you can simply use a paper clip)

That way you will be able to add up to 64 GB of storage and probably more in the near future. All the models of Mac starting in 2010 support SD XC with a theoretical limit of 2 TB, while the the previous models support SD HC, limited to 32 GB. The big advantage is that you don't have to remove the card every time you have to take your Mac somewhere, while a regular SD card has to be removed in order not to be damaged as it sticks out.

The Nifty MiniDrive will be available in December, it will cost $35, which includes shipping to North America and Europe, and will come in red, grey or black in each of the three versions:

• MiniDrive Air for the MacBook Air, Pro and iMac,
• MiniDrive Pro for the MacBook Pro and iMac,
• MiniDrive Retina for the MacBook Pro Retina, MacBook Pro and iMac.

Nifty recommends to choose the exact model for your computer. For example, the MiniDrive Retina will fit in a regular MacBook Pro but since it is 1 mm longer than the MiniDrive Pro, it will probably stick out a little bit once it is installed.

One more thing, while SD cards use flash memory like SSDs, the performances are much lower especially in the models of Mac in which the SD cad reader is connected on the USB bus, which limits the total speed to a few tens of MB/s, even if some cards offer better performances (on the 15" Retina MacBook Pro, it is connected on a PCIe bus, so it is faster than USB and it is also probably the case on other models, you can check that in the Apple menu, 'About this Mac').

• Safari 6.0.2 brings security updates,
• Xcode 4.5.2 brings support for the new models if iPad,
• iPhoto 9.4.2 fixes many bugs.

This update contains improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Fixes a bug that prevents iPhone 5 from installing software updates wirelessly over the air
• Fixes a bug where horizontal lines may be displayed across the keyboard
• Fixes an issue that could cause camera flash to not go off
• Improves reliability of iPhone 5 and iPod touch (5th generation) when connected to encrypted WPA2 Wi-Fi networks
• Resolves an issue that prevents iPhone from using the cellular network in some instances
• Consolidated the Use Cellular Data switch for iTunes Match
• Fixes a Passcode Lock bug which sometimes allowed access to Passbook pass details from lock screen
• Fixes a bug affecting Exchange meetings.

You can see the speeds just shy of 1 GB per second, something very impressive for such a small computer.

Some say that his leaving could be caused, at least partly, by the Maps application on iOS 6, which was launched too soon and while it still needed many improvements.

Also, John Browett  who was in charge of the Apple Stores and who was hired less than a year ago is also leaving. The cause is probably in his case the unease he caused when he decided to make big changes in the way Apple Store employees are paid.

It is the first time that it happens at Apple and we only wish that it will become the norm. We are now wondering how much this whole recall will cost Seagate and its insurrances. You have to take into account the cost of the disk as well as the cost of the technical support intervention, which is quite high when you have to change the hard drive on an iMac (as a reminder you have to remove the display to access the inside).

As usual the inside if very clean, Apple used every little available space to fit the 3 elements that compose the battery.
There is however something peculiar here, the SSD is strangely put in a sort of hard drive caddie.

There is just enough space to fit a 2.5" drive (although a 9.5 mm won't fit, a 7 mm or a 5 mm one probably will), as if Apple had decided to go with this SSD at the last minute, too late to change the rest of the design. We will see if in the future a manufacturer is able to make a compatible cable and a real caddie to hold the drive in place, it would allow to replace this SSD by a much more common 2.5" SSD, which would be great news for the potential evolution of this computer.

ArsTechnica is pretty good at guessing what is hidden underneath.
Just like the A5X was an improved version of the A5, this one is probably an improved version of the A6 with 4 graphics cores and 2 CPU cores. Thanks to the transition from 45 nm to 32 nm Apple was probably able to increase the frequency of the CPU cores to 1.5 GHz and 500 MHz for the GPU cores while keeping power consumption down. These improvements would be enough to provide the increase in performance between the A5X and the A6X.

In any case we are happy to see that Apple still refuses to put quad-core chips in the iPad. Having a quad-core CPU in a tablet is pure nonsense as it is too power hungry and doesn't provide much better performances as applications are rarely optimized for that. All it does is keeping-up with Moore's law, which doesn't do much good when it comes to user experience.

It seems clear that it is impossible to upgrade the RAM on the 21.5" model.

As you can see the access panel has been removed from the bottom and is not visible for now on any picture published on the Apple website. We will see if it is still as easy as it was on the previous models.

For the 21.5" model, we will see wether the RAM is soldered to the motherboard or in DIMM slots that are accessible by disassembling the display. 

It features a few improvements compared to the previous model:

• New, faster A6X chip,
• Increased battery-life,
• Improved 4G compatible with most frequences,
• Lightning...

It comes with the usual 9,7" display but also now with a 7.9" display, the long awaited iPad mini.

It is thinner than all the previous models thanks to several improvements including a new display with laminated glass.

It features an SSD in a RAM form factor in addition to a regular hard drive with 1 to 3 TB of storage. One new feature, FusionDrive, is worth noting. OSX uses both drives seemlessly to improve performances by keeping the OS, applications and files that are used most often on the SSD and the rest on the regular hard drive. While that feature has been supported by the last generations of Intel's chipsets, it is the first time it is supported on the Mac.

It will sell for $599 for the first model featuring a Core i5 2.5 GHz, 4 GB and 500 GB, $799 for the model with a quad-core i7 2.3 GHz 4 GB and 1 TB and $999 for the server model featuring the same i7, two 1 TB disks and 8 GB of RAM.

This new model has the same features that made the 15" model popular, the Retina display with a 2560 x 1600 resolution, two Thunderbolt ports, etc. It even supports SSDs with up to 768 GB of storage.
As you can see on this screenshot, Apple went into a lot of trouble to fill every empty space with battery cells in order to provide 7 hours of battery life. Interestingly, for the first time, a 13" model gets 2 fans and as exepcted, there is no dedicated graphics solution so the HD 4000 will have a lot to do with that new display.

The two models feature a Core i5 clocked at 2.5 GHz with the option to configure it with the i7 clocked at 2.9 GHz. The model with 128 GB of storage sells for $1,699 and the 256 GB for $1,999, with always the option to increase the storage to up to 768 GB.

Be careful when ordering your model, the storage is built-in and is not upgradable. Also, you don't have the option to increase the RAM to 16 GB like on the 15". It is probably the least upgrade-friendly Mac we've ever seen!

'We've got a little more to show you' sounds just like 'iPad mini' :-)

On a side note, the iPad mini will probably be announced together with the new 13" MacBook Pro Retina, new iMac and maybe Mac mini.

You can see the circle in the center matching the Apple logo on the outside, which would tend to authenticate this as the inside of an iMac. Other than that, there is nothing similar to the models that have ben unveiled in the last few years. Both fans have moved to the side of the motherboard, allowing to think that there will not be a Superdrive in this model, and the power supply in on the lower left side and the motherboard on the right side.

The Hard Drive shown here is a 2.5" one, as Apple will probably leave the 3.5" models behind. While most of the computer is not shown on the picture, we think that there is another 2.5" slot somewhere else, and it is probably towards the bottom, maybe it could be accessible via a little hatch just like the RAM on the current models. These new models would be released in the coming weeks and would be a lot thinner thanks to their smaller disks and thinner fans.

Of course the raging competition between iOS and Android was also in the interview. Eric Schmidt thinks that competition will reduce the huge margin that Apple makes on each device.
However, he refused to openly criticize Apple, for example he didn't offer any real comment about the Apple/Samsung legal battle and preferred reminding everyone that he was a friend of Steve Jobs... at least until he left Apple's board to become CEO of Google and develop Android.

After that, Steve Jobs decided to patent everything about every new product, starting with the first iPhone. With time passing, Steve's decision became a rule at Apple and it lead to the multiple unending legal battles that we know. Instead of being a victim, Apple decided at the time, not to be the attacker, but at least to be ready to defend itself with considerable strength.

Now the company spends huge amounts in legal proceedings to sue or defend itself. The patent system is now at risk because there no real reason that this endless cycle should stop without leading to the complete destruction of the system itself.

While a blow-dryer is necessary to remove the display, the rest is pretty straightforward. It sports an A5 chip with 512 MB of RAM. Its battery is smaller than the one of the iPhone 5, which is normal since its processor is less powerful and it doesn't need to power the power-hungry 3G/4G chip.
It is a good choice for all those who don't want an iPhone but still want to have acces to the iOS platform and all the new iOS features (as a reminder it supports Siri).

There are many arguments supporting these good predictions. The first one of course comes from Intel because by then the new Haswell chips (and the following ones) that are especially designed for this type of device will be widely marketed. This will allow a decrease in cost while optimizing performance. Then there is of course the increase in competition and in volume shipments that will push the prices down and force manufacturers to innovate more instead of simply copying Apple like we've seen until now.

Look for our follow-up post in 2015, it will say whether the prediction came true or not!

Despite its small size, it offered a lot of possibilities of evolution and has proven with time to be a very reliable machine, like the Mac Pro.

The only thing was that it appeared impossible to install 4 GB of RAM, while increasing it from 2 to 3 GB was slowing down its already weak graphics chipset.

A member of the Netkas forums posted a step by step explaining how to update the firmware of the Mac mini 1.1 and to make it a 2.1 model in order to support 4 GB of RAM. The change is relatively simple and all you have to do is become a member of the forum to have access to the download links.
As a reminder it is also not too hard to make it support Lion.

PS: If you try it yourself, please tell us about how it went!

The price per unit decreases the more cables you buy, and goes down to $13.40 when you buy 10 of them. They look identical to the original Apple cables, and probably come from the very same factories.

• 10.7.5 Supplemental Update solves the problem on Time Machine and also a problem preventing certain applications signed with a Developer ID from launching
• 10.8.2 Supplemental Update solves a problem regarding Japanese characters in Mail, a bug in parental control and another concerning Macs with more than 64 GB of RAM, meaning a few Mac Pro.

Given the huge number of computers at risk on all platforms supporting Java (yes, that includes Mac OS), this breach will most likely be exploited on a large scale by hackers all over the world.

• Improved Trim response time,
• Improved power-on-to-ready time (known as POR, or TTR for Time-to-ready),
• Improved resume-time from low power modes, and improved reliability of warm reboot,
• Improved power consumption by disabling HIPM (Host Initiated Power Management).

As usual on Mac OS X, you will have to update with a bootable CD.

It is very likely that other engineers are currently working on other parts to also gain a few tenths of a millimeter, which added together make the difference on the notebook as a whole.

When compared to the Galaxy S3, based on an OLED display, vs. LCD for hte iPhone 5, it might be difficult to compare. But here again DisplayMate indicates that the GAlaxy S3 does not offer the same brightness than the iPhone 5, but theoretically a better contrast not necessarily visible in everyday usage. The large gamut panel of the iPhone 5 offer the best color panel and spectrum, where the OLED used by Samsung tends to overload colors and contrast.

In one word: Simply the best.

9to5Mac published the answer made by Phil Schiller to a customer complaining on the scratches on the band and back of his iPhone 5:

If the coated-aluminum might be lest prone to resist to scratches than the glass-made backside of the iPhone 4 and 4S, it will be much more resistant to shocks. We can also mention that having a complete aluminum case would be the perfect system for releasing heat generated by the hardware of the iPhone.

Shared Photo Streams - Accept invitations for Shared Photo Streams, browse photos and comments, and receive notifications of new content.

AirPlay - Send audio content from Apple TV to AirPlay-enabled speakers and devices (including AirPort Express and other Apple TVs). Also includes the ability to require an onscreen code to use AirPlay with your Apple TV.

iTunes account switching - Save multiple iTunes accounts and switch quickly between them.

Trailers - Search movie trailers. In the United States, see show times for local theaters.

Screen savers - New Cascade, Shrinking Tiles, and Sliding Panels screen savers.

Main menu - Reorder icons on the second page by holding down the select button on the remote.

Subtitles - SDH support for the deaf and hard-of-hearing as well as improvements to viewing and selecting subtitles.

Network configuration - Support for setting up advanced network options using configuration profiles. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5437 for more information.

Stability and performance - Includes general performance and stability improvements.

• It is a lot lighter than the iPhone 4S. We knew it was lighter but we didn't think that the feeling in the hand would be so different,
• It is also very thin, again the difference with the 4S is quite noticeable and the increased length add to the feeling of thinness,
• The lightness and thinness combine lead to an impression of fragility quite similar to what we can feel when picking up a 17" MacBook Pro.
• The display is very bright, and it appears to provide a better contrast than on the 4 or 4S.
• It provides better reception than the 4S. We were able to make a phone call from a place where it was impossible to do so with the 4S.

We'll have more of course later.