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Really? Thats funny because I did.

Perhaps a cluepon would be something you would look into.

Apple will replace them under warranty of course, or you can pay out of warranty.

You can also buy them from OWC if you want an alternative. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC

Not completely true. You can get one from OWC . You will pay more for it and it is a pain in the butt to do the work but you can replace them. I do remember when working on mac hardware was easy and quick but those days are long gone.

Bullcrap. They can be replaced. Look up http://macsales.com/ they sell several sizes for the airs and the pro retinas.

30 pin SIMMS are readily available at least up to 16MB a stick, they're used frequently in the vintage Mac world to get the likes of SE/30s and IIcis up to 128 MB of RAM. I can't say they're the biggest but it's the biggest I've seen.

Here

They're really surprisingly affordable for what they are. I suspect they'd work fine in the majority of 386 boards (and I've seen 386 boards with 8 SIMM slots)

What Mac? Give us the actual product code too.

A year old and unable to run OS X? So it was a PPC G3 or something? No, it must be older, since G3's could run OS X. PPC 603?

Probably a PPC 603e model (not supported officially, unlike the G3, which also would still be supported after 10.2), using XPostFacto as the installer. Check the XPostFacto Compatibility List for possible models of pre-G3 PCI PowerMacs, there are a whole lot of them.

sorry, no.

http://blog.macsales.com/14111-15-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-lessens-web-experience
http://www.robertotoole.com/2012/06/17/macbook-pro-retina-display/

etc...

Hence the question "is there any OS that handles this quite right?". Because we all know about iStuff, and we all know it doesn't.

Sorry but the OS does handling it properly but some websites and third party apps have not been updated to handle a higher DPI mode.

sorry, no.

http://blog.macsales.com/14111-15-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-lessens-web-experience
http://www.robertotoole.com/2012/06/17/macbook-pro-retina-display/

etc...

Hence the question "is there any OS that handles this quite right?". Because we all know about iStuff, and we all know it doesn't.

Thanks for the typical obligatory karma whoring post full of snark.

Meanwhile, they did figure it out to the extent it can be.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/21/scaling-to-different-screens.aspx

Meanwhile, Apple has similar issues with their retina display:

http://blog.macsales.com/14111-15-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-lessens-web-experience
http://www.robertotoole.com/2012/06/17/macbook-pro-retina-display/

Meanwhile, let the anti-MS bashfest continue.

You can get PATA from http://eshop.macsales.com/search/3.5+Internal+IDE/ATA

They sell them for older Macs, but they're just IDE/ATA (PATA) drives. Nothing special about them.

I'll give you three.

1. You have no choice but to buy from Apple and once they drop support you are SOL.

ifixt sells refurbished batteries for last years macbook airs, I suspect they will soon have ones for this years, and the rMBP. There are other places that do as wekk

2. You can't carry a spare battery for long journeys.

While I'll give you this, I had spares for both my 2006 macbook pro and my powerbook before that. Before *that* I had a Compaq Armada 1750 that was a beast and held 2 batteries when I needed internally. When I replaced the MBP with an air this summer I didnt worry about needing a spare so much, the machine holds a (realistically, when working) 5hr-6hr charge. That's far better than I got swapping batteries with either of my 2 recent machines. I haven't had many days when I need more than that on battery, and it's nice to get that now without needing to swap batteries. I suspect most people feel the same way.

3. You can't safely dispose of the machine yourself, you have to get Apple to deal with the battery. Since the SSD can't be removed either if the machine dies there is no way to remove your data first.

The SSD *can* be removed, as can easily be seen here. OWC already sells a (admittedly expensive) third part SSD as well., and an external enclosure that can hold said SSDs

It's true, the CPU is "sealed" (one can upgrade the memory, drive if really necessary).

Drive, yes. Memory, well, it's soldered to the system board - can one safely un-solder the memory chips and solder in replacements? Apparently the iFixit people don't think so.

in some high security you need to be able to get hdd out for repair and some OEM's even let you destroy a bad HDD and still be able to swap it out under warranty.

...which, other than it being an SSD rather than an HDD, you can do with a Retina MBP, albeit only with the help of the Special Magic Screwdriver mentioned in my linked-to post (available from iFixit) and with a replacement SDD with the appropriate connector (available from Other World Computing, and maybe the high-security customers in question could get them, as well as the Special Magic Screwdriver, from Apple as well).

I do wonder about the possibility of running video cards externally through the Thunderbolt port with the monitor daisy chained on the other end.

You can do it, but it's redundant. The MBP is perfectly capable of running three daisy-chained thunderbolt monitors.

Your best bet for speed is likely to be eSATA.

Have you looked into something like this:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/NewerTech/Voyager/Hard_Drive_Dock

The cost becomes noise when you consider how many drives you will end up needing, and per TB, will be cheaper than USB solutions.

I don't know how your data is organized, but if possible, you may want to back it up by project/directory/etc.

There are also online backup systems that can do what you want, but it'll take an extremely long time...

OWC sells PCIe SSD drives alongside their more traditional 2.5" ones.

Not as small as 60GB (seems 120 is the smallest), but they use Sandforce controllers:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

While it's predominantly a Mac-based site, there's nothing stopping you using the drives with other machines.

Most laptops require a screwdriver to replace the hard drive. This one is no different. Except that in this case, the "hard drive" is a chip, third party versions of which will undoubtedly be available soon, just like the were for the Air.

RAM soldered to the motherboard is disappointing, although looking at how things are crammed in, I'm not really surprised. iFixit's point that it's "the first MacBook Pro that will be unable to adapt to future advances in memory and storage technology" is incorrect - Intel laptop motherboards have almost always been limited to memory that existed when they were sold, and you CAN upgrade the storage.

I'm quite honestly surprised they even made replacing an HDD with a non-Apple brand even possible.

They've sure made it a pain in the ass on the iMac.

Woz's Apple would have run out of business before you finished reading this sentence.

Tablet designed by Woz
Tablet designed by Jobs

http://www.osnews.com/story/25264/Did_Android_Really_Look_Like_BlackBerry_Before_the_iPhone_

That right. Apple didn't invent all that stuff either. iPhone/iPad is just what Apple has always dones. Add a few improvements to the hard core work of others and scream they invented the whole thing with lawyers. And people like you drink that Kool-Aid by the 55 gallon drum barrel.

Incidentally, I notice your name is Macs4all. The last straw in our K12 with iMacs is Apple deliberately gimping hard drives with non standard sensor pins on the SATA connection to force the use of "Apple Branded Parts". If a commodity SATA drive is put in a new iMac, the fans run at Jet Engine. A third party extension can force the OS to use S.M.A.R.T.

http://blog.macsales.com/10146-apple-further-restricts-upgrade-options-on-new-imacs

So it isn't just self-repair obsessed nerds. Behavior like this now has us eliminating Macs by attrition and we are also going to start resisting any further iDevice purchases.

Try http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/
Sandforce, designed and built in the USA (they seek US & imported parts). 3/5 or 7 year warranty depending on what you buy.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_6G/ they had 3 or 5 years for some time. 7 years on their enterprise ssd's

I've bought several dozen hard drives personally over the years, starting with scsi, and I work in a computer repair shop where I've replaced hundreds of failing and dead drives over my time, so I've got a pretty good sample size to work with.

Long ago I used to buy quantum and seagate because I didn't have the money for backups and so I needed to rely on quality and warranty. Quantum was one of the best quality going, and seagate ruled the roost with its 5 year warranties.

But as the years passed, lots of HDD manufacturers got bought out. Quantum went with IBM and quality absolutely flushed down the toilet about the time of the "IBM Deskstar/Deathstar debacle. Seagate also got bought out, and their quality went south as expected, but their warranties remained at 5 yr for most models.

I continued to buy seagates, until I got so sick of dealing with failing drives and RMA hassles. I bought my last seagate about 2 years ago. (a pair of them) Two weeks after purchase, one of them suffered one of the loudest catastrophic head crashes I have ever heard - the drive sounded like an operating circular handsaw. (best buy was even surprised by the sound when I returned it) They offered me an immediate new replacement, and I instead got my money and bought a different brand. Now I see they're finally dropping their warranties, probably after an extended period of losing their shirts due to a never-ending flood of RMAs.

So at this point I'm down to looking for quality, and only expecting a 1 or 2 yr warranty. Western Digital used to be crap, but while other brands went down in quality, WD seems to have come up. I'm still seeing a lot of samsung drives failing but they've improved. Haven't seen enough toshibas to really have an opinion on them, but I generally haven't had good experiences, especially with their externals. Right now I'm buying WD greens, they're cheap and fairly reliable. I try to avoid buying drives already in enclosures, because it's been my experience that they put the cheapest thing they can find in them, especially the USB-only enclosures, those are generally junk and slow to boot.

May as well throw in my 2c on enclosures also. You get what you pay for when buying a single drive enclosure. A cheap usb-only case is going to be slow and I would be very surprised if the AC adapter lasts more than 2 yrs. My personal favorite at this time is made by OWC, their Mercury Elite Pro, it's got esata, dual fw800, fw400, and usb. USB speed can get up near 38mb/sec, fw400 and 800 top at theoretical maxes of 39 and 79, and esata I have yet to discover the speed limit on, it maxes the drives I have attached. $80 seems like a lot for an empty case, but it's worth it. Two at home and two at work, here I use them for data recovery because they're also tolerant of failing drives.

If you need more storage, go with a Drobo. One at home and one here at work, I know a dozen people that have them and nobody has any complaints, they work as advertised, are easy for even a newbie to maintain, and so far have proven very safe. Stuff a drobo full of WD greens for cheap, reliable, large storage.

I am currently doing a grad degree in CS and use my modbook and inkbook for taking notes. As others have pointed out, handwriting recognition is hit and miss, and Apple's inkwell is no different, so I usually just take notes with handwriting recognition turned off. Either way though, you can doodle on it like it's paper and add in diagrams, etc. It makes me very happy as my day-to-day all purpose machine.

Anyway, you can get them from a bunch of distributors, and if you're in the US you can order them from OWC. That said, Axiotron has been going through some financial problems for awhile now and the modbook hasn't been updated in some time to use current macbook base systems, but if you're comfortable getting a 2009 era macbook and the possibility that the company may disappear at any time (so, warranty repercussions) then I can recommend it as a great system. Personally, when my modbook eventually retires I'm not sure what I'll replace it with if Axiotron isn't still around - it will be a sad day for me when I have to give up the stylus. YMMV.

So far I have only found them on obscure sites like Amazon (must be a South American company), Newegg (sounds like a hippie cult to me), and BestBuy (they are full of themselves with that name). Of course I could show you how to find them using this thing called the Interweb but it's much harder than people think. I mean it took me all of 15 seconds to find them.

So, no, you don't need to buy Apple HDDs or whatever nonsense you are spewing.

Please tell that to angry iMac Fans:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3053942?start=0&tstart=0
http://blog.macsales.com/10146-apple-further-restricts-upgrade-options-on-new-imacs
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/12/apple-restricts-hard-drive-replacements-on-new-imacs/

Toss the drive and put another HD in the slot. Put the Superdrive in an external enclosure so you have it available for those walks through memory lane.

Apple first with USB? PCs had them a year before the iMac. Plus back in the day, the only portable music player that would dare use firewire was the iPod.

Apple Computer is the new Sony for proprietary f-you lock-in.

Are you still using your Apple Bus Mouse with an ADB connector?

Look at OWC for their Legacy SSDs.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Legacy_Pro

They're actually Sandforce SSDs with a SATA to PATA converter.
Given Sandforce appears to be in the lead for garbage collection, I'm sure these should do you well.

The only drawback is that Apple refuses to produce a wireless keyboard with a number pad.

Here's a kinda cool solution for that problem:
Cropmark LMP Bluetooth Keypad

Other than that I'd say just send in your suggestions to Apple. Believe it or not they have been known to listen to suggestions.

Other links might be of interest to the /. crowd too, like info on the hack that allowed Darwin or OS X (up to 10.4.x IIRC) to run on some older (PPC) hardware that didn't support it. It was an open-source utility called XPostFacto With an Ultra-160 SCSI or ATA interface card for acceptable disk performance, an old 9600 worked surprisingly well. Having 12 RAM slots, a 9600 could hold up to 1.5 gig of RAM, which is pretty decent for something made in the 90s.

If you've just spent $6k on a new Mac Pro, and you *really* need USB-3, just spend another $40 and plug the card in. It's a Mac Pro. It has expansion ports. Use them and feel happy.

... and if you want e-sata, just buy an extender cable for the two extra on-board sata channels in the Mac Pro. That'll cost you the princely sum of $19.

Sure, you can argue it ought to have come with them (and I'd agree, for what it's worth) but the cost of implementing it yourself is hardly the end of the world.

Simon

Its not too bad, for 1066MHz ECC.
Have a look at Mac Pro ram options for 8 gb.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1066-memory

You don't have to pay for their geniuses to upgrade your hardware if your warranty is up. Buy the ram, hard drive, or optical drive from wherever and do it yourself. I had to do a ram and hard drive upgrade, took about an hour to finish. And I'm pretty sure the standard warranty they provide you lasts for one year, not one month.

Perhaps, but there are enough exceptions. Was the first netbook by Asus hyped to extreme proportions? Is the Macbook Air selling wildly or is it eventually going to be quietly discontinued? Hyping isn't everything, but it helps. Now please, read my reasoning below.

Let's look at this from an interestingly different other angle. Here on slashdot people blame Apple for advertising they have a tablet whose main feature is that it is more of a flexible appliance than a computer. If you go to a video game website, when a good game doesn't sell well, all the gamers start blame the company for not advertising enough. (Particularly on the Wii.) Both Dell and Microsoft are much larger than Apple. They regarded tablets as niche for all these years and done their best to avoid advertising them all together. Apple did too considering a third party company started making the ridiculously expensive "Modbooks".

Why are people not blaming Microsoft and the computer makers for sitting around doing nothing for 10 years? Apple hypes their new products much like a console maker, but come on guys. You don't take the initiative, you don't get the cookie. If it wasn't Apple with the iPad, it was going to be Amazon with a future revision of the ereader. PC industry have their heads so far up their asses with the status quo they didn't have a chance in hell of making a breakout product with the public in this segment.

4 drive bay, USB, FW400/FW800 and eSATA. Will take 2tb drives, RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10. Comes pre-populated or unpopulated, the latter is what I got and added my own drives. http://www.macsales.com/ No financial connection, just a satisfied customer (they have great tech support!)

This is obviously not a build-it-yourself storage array, but is a good option if you want a commercial out of the box solution.

"SSD have a limited life, in a different sense to spinning disks. SSD wear with writing, so if you constantly write to the same "sectors" they will fail."
The early versions did, but now you have real developers with real support entering consumer space.
eg. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Mercury_Extreme_SSD_Sandforce
10,000,000 Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) and a 5 year warranty.

Every single word will generate a popup or link to some ad or other non sequiter .

You cant just buy your own graphics card, more hardware, or even a damn battery for iPhone. You have to buy everything from Apple, from an Apple store, with high Apple prices. This just follows the same lead.

Buying RAM for a Mac: http://www.newerram.com/

Buying a new graphics card for a Mac (Mac edition of graphics cards): http://www.nextag.com/mac-graphics-card/compare-html

Pretty much everything you need to upgrade the hardware of a Mac: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/site-map/

These aren't Apple sites, but you can upgrade your Mac with their parts. Just because its harder to do, doesn't mean it can't be done.

Let me ask again. Is this server, 'rackable'? How many Us?

4 Mac Minis will fit on this $58 2U tray..

Yes, "RAID is not backup", in that you shouldn't simply RAID your primary drive and consider the backup problem solved, but backing up to a RAID array can be advantageous -- you do disk-to-disk backup (via any of a variety of methods), and monitor the health of the RAID array closely -- if any disk in the array goes south, replace it promptly and your backup stays consistent. And, if you keep a spare drive or two around, you can swap a drive out occasionally to take off-site (and let the array rebuild onto one of your spares).

Personally, I like the ReadyNAS Duo a lot more than the Drobo (hard to explain, I just trust their tech better, and the ReadyNAS is natively networked, rather than needing an afterthought add-on). Last I checked, Amazon will sell you an empty ReadyNAS Duo and a couple WD Green 1TB drives for ballpark $500. That said I haven't got a ReadyNAS yet (because money has so many uses these days); I'm using my second most favorite backup setup, a 500GB laptop drive in an external bus-powered FireWire enclosure. I'm using a MacAlly PHR-S250CC enclosure (which I'm very happy with), using a drive I already had, but for a complete setup, I'd probably go with one of Other World Computing's packages for about $150. This loses RAID (which I ultimately want very much to have, for reliability), and isn't networked (which would be good for backing up multiple machines, and ease of use), but the bus-powered drive is so damned easy to use that I actually do it every day (set the drive next to my laptop and plug one cable between them, Time Machine notices the drive and starts a backup, 5-10 minutes later it's done, and I unmount the drive, unplug the cable, and put it back on the shelf).

My primary machine is a Mac; I use Time Machine for daily backups, and use SuperDuper to clone my MBP's drive onto the same backup disk every few weeks (minus a number of large directories that I know Time Machine is getting anyway); this gives me a backup drive I can boot from (via SuperDuper), and a lot of incremental history stored in a very usable manner (via Time Machine). And a backup system that I actually use because it's painless.

Add a ReadyNAS, and I could have my laptop automatically backing (hourly) up any time it's on the home network.

As far as on-line backup goes, I haven't been convinced yet. It eats a lot of bandwidth, and it means that someone else (that I don't know personally) has a copy of all my data, with only their promise of encryption keeping them honest. Sure, there isn't much there for anyone else to get worked up about (a variety of legally purchased music and software, a bunch of old email and vacation photos), but if it's not out of my hands, then that's one less thing I have to worry about. I do love DropBox for moving non-confidential files around, but I wouldn't use it for backup.

The miniStack v3 supports FireWire 800 and eSATA for a slight increase in price. If you follow the links to the price page. For a product description, you can go to NewerTech.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/BookEndz/BEMBP15F/

or if you have the 17" MacBook.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/BookEndz/BEMBP17/

They also make one for the old style 13" MacBook

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/BookEndz/BEMB13B/

I've used the MacBook dock and the MacBook Pro dock and they're indispensable. Once I had decent docking solution I was able to get rid of my G5 tower and replace it with a MacBook Pro.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/BookEndz/BEMBP15F/

or if you have the 17" MacBook.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/BookEndz/BEMBP17/

They also make one for the old style 13" MacBook

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/BookEndz/BEMB13B/

I've used the MacBook dock and the MacBook Pro dock and they're indispensable. Once I had decent docking solution I was able to get rid of my G5 tower and replace it with a MacBook Pro.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/BookEndz/BEMBP15F/

or if you have the 17" MacBook.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/BookEndz/BEMBP17/

They also make one for the old style 13" MacBook

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/BookEndz/BEMB13B/

I've used the MacBook dock and the MacBook Pro dock and they're indispensable. Once I had decent docking solution I was able to get rid of my G5 tower and replace it with a MacBook Pro.

Are these cards cheaper than current 802.11n gear for Macs?

If Apple made a tablet Mac I'd love to get one. Another company does make them though, Axiotron makes the ModBook. The company buys MacBooks/Pros then rebuilds them into tablets.

Falcon

No, but Other World Computing does.

Anyone upgrading mac innards themselves knows about them, or should.

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro(TM) Storage Solutions is good ext drive case with Quad eSATA FireWire 800 + USB 2.0 is likey to still have at least 1 port that is still on system that will be out in 5+ years.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/external/elite-al-pro-quad

Tiger will install on the PowerCenter no problem. Just use XPostFacto. I use this to run Tiger on my two Wallstreet 300mhz Powerbooks. Runs great with enough memory.

The system is fine, we'll forgive them for not including enough memory for OS X by default but charging $150 for a $25 part is inexcusable.

Sorry, but you're comparing costs for different products. Apple does indeed overcharge for memory but they don't use that $25 memory, they use memory that's gone through more thorough testing and costs more. I'm not sure if you have a G4 Mini or an early Intel Mini but even the off-brand (or "in house" brand) stuff from perennial Mac-user favorite OWC costs $55, and they typically charge about half the cost for the "in house" stuff as they do for the more thoroughly tested memory like Samsung. Off-brand memory will often work and may not have much of a difference to the end user, but it's typically not as well made and runs hotter. Personally, I've been burned too often with the off-brand stuff to bother with it any more (and I've installed memory on hundreds of machines as part of my old job).