With the introduction of the MacBook Air, Apple offered a new mass storage option for the first time -- Solid State Drives (SSD). The Solid State Drive takes the place of the traditional Hard Disk Drive (HDD) as the place to store your files. Being based on NAND Flash ram, SSD boasts the advantages of being more reliable, using less battery and being faster in certain circumstances.
Intel and Micron announced last week that they have developed a new high-speed NAND flash chip which can reach speeds up to 200 Megabytes/second reads and 100 Megabytes/second writes. Conventional Single-Level-Cell Flash memory is reportedly limited to 40 Megabytes/second reads and 20 Megabytes/second writes.
Mass production of an 8GB Solid State Drive based on the technology is expected by the end of 2008. This "high-speed" drive is expected to carry a significant premium and will first be targeted at the professional market.
Meanwhile, for general consumers, prices on more conventional NAND flash appears to be falling, with prices dropping as much as 75% since August 2007. The dropping price of NAND Flash made the offering of SSD possible in the MacBook Air, though still at premium prices. These price drops should also trickle down to Apple's other Flash-based products, such as the iPhone and iPod Touch. The iPhone has been rumored to be due for a revision sometime this year, with the possibilities of increased storage and the introduction of 3G networking.
Sunday September 15, 2024 10:09 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Following over three months of beta testing, iOS 18 was finally widely released to the public on Monday, September 16. The update is available in the Settings app under General → Software Update on the iPhone XS and newer. Below, we have highlighted eight key new features included in iOS 18, and Apple shared a complete list of new features and changes last week. Note that Apple...
Tuesday September 17, 2024 3:18 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
The "Apple ID" era is officially over. The transition from "Apple ID" to "Apple Account" went from a rumor to an official announcement to something that has now been fully completed. As of this week, the account.apple.com website is fully updated with Apple Account branding. "Apple ID is now Apple Account," the page says. "You can still sign in with the same email address or phone...
Monday September 16, 2024 11:40 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple has seemingly leaked the rumored next-generation Mac mini with five USB-C ports, according to a code change within Apple software that was discovered today by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris. The code refers to an unreleased Mac mini model with an Apple silicon chip and five ports, which lines up with a previous report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman that said the next Mac mini will be ...
Tuesday September 17, 2024 11:24 am PDT by Juli Clover
Apple stopped signing the iPadOS 18 update for the M4 iPad Pro models, which means the new software is no longer available to be downloaded and installed at the current time. The update appears to have been pulled following complaints from some iPad Pro owners, who found that the update bricked their devices. There are reports on Reddit from iPad Pro users who had an interruption in the...
