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Apple Updates MacBook Pros

Charles Jade — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:46:27 +0000

Nearly a year after the last MacBook Pro update, and months after Intel launched its latest mobile CPU, Apple has added Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs to the MacBook Pro…or at least most of them. The 13″ MacBook Pro will continue to use the Core 2 brand of CPU technology first introduced in 2006. Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller carefully avoided that point in an ebullient press release.

“The new MacBook Pro is as advanced on the inside as it is stunning on the outside. With faster processors, amazing graphics and up to three more hours of battery life, the new MacBook Pro delivers both performance and efficiency.”

Those amazing graphics would be the NVIDIA GeForce 320M for the 13″ MacBook Pro and the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M for the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pros. Regarding battery life, Apple now claims a jaw-dropping 10 hours of battery life for the 13″ MacBook Pro, and between eight and nine hours for the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pros.

Besides CPU speed increases, larger hard drives were added across the lineup, and the base configuration for RAM was increased from 2GB to 4GB. Pricing remained largely static, except for the 15″ MacBook Pro, which saw an increase from $1,699 to $1,799. While there aren’t really any big surprises, like USB3, there are a few small ones in the specs.

The 13″ MacBook Pro has two models: a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 250GB hard drive at $1,199; a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 320GB hard drive priced at $1,499.

The 15″ MacBook Pro has three models: a 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M and 320GB hard drive at $1,799; a 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M and 500GB hard drive at $1,999; and one with a 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M and 500GB hard drive at $2,199.

The new 17-inch MacBook Pro features a 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M and 500GB hard drive for $2,299.

Beyond the specs, the focus is on the 13″ MacBook Pro, which got an insignificant speed bump instead of the Intel Core i5. However, it could be argued that by staying with the Core 2 Duo for the 13″ MacBook Pro, Apple kept the price down and the battery life up…way up. In contrast, the 15″ MacBook Pro, which in certain circumstances could be as much as 50 percent faster than the previous model, costs $100 more and lags behind the 13″ MacBook Pro in battery life.

While it’s no surprise that the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pros got advanced NVIDIA GPUs, there was reason to be concerned about the 13″ MacBook Pro. Because of the legal battle between NVIDIA and Intel over chipsets, it was a distinct possibility that the 13″ MacBook Pro would be stuck with whatever poor-performing Intel HD graphics. Instead, the 13″ MacBook Pro got the NVIDIA GeForce 320M, integrated graphics, but without the Intel suck.

Interestingly, the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro did get stuck with Intel HD graphics, but only when it doesn’t matter. When a real GPU is needed, the high-end MacBook Pros have the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, and the ability to “seamlessly” switch between integrated and discrete GPUs. Optionally the high-end MacBook Pros can be upgraded to the Core i7 for another $200, as well as higher resolution and anti-glare displays,

If there’s anything missing from these updates, besides the Core i5 in the 13″ MacBook Pro, it’s USB 3. While it might not matter now, in a year or two when many people are still using their Core i5 MacBook Pros it definitely will. A USB 3 update, along with Core i5 for the 13″ MacBook Pro will likely be seen in the fall, so perspective buyers might want to consider how long they intend on owning their next MacBook Pro before buying today.

5 Companies That Should Be on Dell's Shopping List

Stacey Higginbotham — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:31:23 +0000

Since Dell keeps telling folks it wants to buy some companies, we’ve written out a list that Michael Dell should consult as he expands his eponymous empire. Second-hand sources quoted in the Wall Street Journal today said that the company was seeking deals in data storage and tech services. The article also noted that Dell hired a former IBM deal maker last month who has since been sued by his former employer to keep him from getting involved in strategy discussions at the computer giant. So since Dell’s new M&A guru can’t offer up ideas, we thought we’d take a stab at it. Readers, feel free to offer up your own suggestions in the comments below.

CommVault: Dell already supplies CommVault software (including de-duplication software) in some of its storage boxes, and accounted for about 22 percent of CommVault’s sales in the last nine months of calendar 2008. With the fight over Data Domain, de-duplication is hot. And storage is clearly an area where Dell wants to buy something.

oDesk: Dell equals low-cost hardware and just-in-time manufacturing, and as a services play, oDesk mimics that philosophy. Need a developer for next week? Through oDesk, Dell could provide a cheap contractor on a just-in-time basis. This isn’t the IBM services model, but it’s quintessential Dell.

ParaScale: This startup makes software that allows companies to build their own storage clouds. This is another way Dell can create a low-touch services offering to customers, rather than get into an intensive, consulting-based relationship with companies that require cloud storage from an outside vendor.

Vyatta: With Cisco launching its own servers, and HP emphasizing computing and switching in its gear, why shouldn’t Dell be bold and acquire its own switching assets? Vyatta is like the open-source Cisco, and combining it with Dell’s servers gives folks low-cost, functional products — something people come to Dell for in the first place.

Palm: I know, I made fun of this last month, and have an idea that Dell would likely grind down the Palm folks with its exacting and less-than-innovative culture, but it’s also a move that could make sense. Perhaps Dell could model this deal on its Alienware acqusition that left the high-end gaming maker a separate subsidiary that didn’t have to deal with Round Rock.

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Will Storage Go the Way of The Server?

Tue, 12 May 2009 16:00:35 +0000

The storage industry is on the cusp of the biggest structural change since networked storage began to substitute for direct-attached storage a decade ago. Despite being one of the fastest growing technology sectors in terms of capacity, the economics for many participants are deteriorating. Several major technology shifts will radically redefine the economics of the industry leading to slimmer margins for all but the most innovative, software-driven players. In essence, the future of storage is about storage software that increasingly absorbs intelligence that used to be hard-wired in a proprietary storage controller and array, which in turn is increasingly becoming an abundant pool of commodity disks. It is the pace of this transition that is at issue. In this report, we show how the different customer segments and associated workloads will evolve at different paces, and examine the associated opportunities for both incumbents and new market entrants.

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ParaScale, a Cloud Storage Company Opens For Business

Om Malik — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:15:37 +0000

ParaScale, a Cupertino, Calif.-based storage software company that debuted in June 2008, today announced the availability of its ParaScale Cloud Storage (PCS) software, which allows companies to turn commodity Linux servers into an Amazon S3-styled storage cloud. Sony Pictures Imageworks and Stanford Genome Technology Center are two companies currently using PCS. A handful of hosting companies such Carpathia Hosting are using ParaScale software to offer their own public storage clouds.

ParaScale’s software release, while 6 months behind schedule, comes at a time when there is growing interest in private storage clouds at large companies. Big demand is yet to materialize, however. These private and low-cost storage clouds are likely to be used as a replacement for tape drives, which are used for backing up corporate data, much of which is never retrieved. Blue Coat Systems is using PCS for a cloud storage system for precisely that reason.

The company plans to charge for the software based on the size of the storage cloud. It will cost about $1.05 per gigabyte of storage. ParaScale competes with Amazon, NetApp, Islion, EMC and Sun Microsystems in what is generically referred to as the scalable network-attached storage business.

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Charles River Has Another $320 Million To Invest

Om Malik — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:19:48 +0000

[qi:115] Charles River Ventures (CRV), well known for its network infrastructure and chip investments such as Big Band Networks, Netezza and Virtusa, has closed its fourteenth fund at $320 million. They have also invested in consumer web companies, with investments in Social Media and Vlingo, among other companies. One of their more interesting investment is ParaScale, a cloud-centric storage startup.

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Of Parascale & Other Cloud Computing News

Om Malik — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:56:55 +0000

Parascale, a Cupertino, Calif-based start-up that has developed a storage file system for a cloud of computers announced that it had attracted $11.37 million in Series A funding from Charles River Ventures and Menlo Ventures. The company recently changed its chief executive and brought in Sajai Krishnan, a former NetApp executive to run the company.

I spoke to Sajai briefly this morning, though I have not had a chance to dig deeply into the company’s technology just yet. The company is going to officially release its software, currently in trials in Fall 2008. It is targeting the streaming media/video industry and others who want to get storage for less than 50 cents a gigabyte. Others like ISPs can use it to set up their own grids and offer competitors to AWS.

What essentially they have developed is software that gets commodity storage drives attached to plain vanilla low cost servers to behave like a giant cloud of storage space, which can be used (and managed) using protocols such as HTTP, FTP and NFS. The company describes its approach as virtual storage grid.

The general idea is not novel, though the company’s commercial rivals (such as Isilon & polyServe (part of HP)) can handles limited number of nodes, an industry euphemism for storage-attached servers. Parascale claims it can handle hundreds of nodes making it easier for the company to handle terabytes of data.

How it works is that a control server – lets call it the brain of the storage cloud – communicates over Gigabit Ethernet connections with storage nodes and makes them all behave like one giant storage cloud. Similar systems from more traditional storage companies would use custom high-speed connection technology like Fiber Channel.
Storage nodes are x86-based Linux servers that support cheap SATA drives. The brain essentially stores the metadata of the files on storage nodes and at all times knows where data has been placed, file versions, and other such information. A software management console helps manage the flow of data in-and-out of the system.

This approach to build high volume storage systems has received a lot of attention, thanks to the success of Google File System and of late, the open source Hadoop platform, championed by Yahoo and Apache Foundation. Our sister blog, OStatic had noted that Hadoop was putting companies like EMC at risk.

Add newcomers likes Parascale to that list, for we have seen many a few open source projects upend proprietary efforts. I am quite bullish on the prospects of open source cloud projects. Still, the company has garnered some positive reviews from early users of its trial software.

In Other Cloud Computing News:

The Much talked about start-up, SmugMug launched an online back-up service, SmugVault, based on Amazon Web Services’ platform. It costs 22 cents per gigabyte per month, but to upload it will cost 30 cents per gigabyte, while downloads cost 51 cents a gigabyte. Thomas Hawk points out that at those prices, a two terabyte archive would cost $440 a month, not to mention a $600 one time fee and extra to get the stuff off the drive. Now that’s expensive. I am sticking to Bingo from Joyent.

ADC, a telecom equipment maker has teamed up with APC, a power management company to develop fiber optic switches and storage area network devices for the data centers. They want to tap into the recent trend to use fiber in the data centers. ADC recently showed off a ton of new gear for the data center market.

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