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Apple add support for SSD drives

Posted on July 2, 2015 by Mac Onsite Posted in Software

Some four years after adding TRIM support for first-party solid state drives to OS X, Apple incorporated the command for aftermarket drives as part of Tuesday’s OS X 10.10.4 update.

The new capability allows users to enable TRIM functionality on third-party SSDs without resorting to unsanctioned workarounds or software. Prior to the change, Apple only supported TRIM on original Mac SSDs.

Enabling TRIM for non-OEM drives requires the trimforce command be entered into Terminal, specifically, sudo trimforce enable. The system throws up a message warning users of potential incompatibility with certain SSDs before performing a reboot operation.

Part of the ATA standard, TRIM helps optimize garbage data handling in SSDs by earmarking files no longer in use for permanent deletion. Unlike conventional spinning hard drives, SSDs perform erase operations before writing new files, meaning multiple erase/write operations could create a backlog of garbage bits that gradually slow the system down.

More Info From Appleinsider

New Interview with Tim Cook

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Mac Onsite Posted in Apple Mac News

Published on May 14, 2015

Stepping in as successor to one of the most successful CEOs in history is no easy ‘job’, but with a range of successful product launches under his belt, including the latest iWatch, Tim Cook has certainly proven himself up for the challenge in the post-Jobs era.

A couple of days ago, Cook sat down with CCTV in an exclusive interview, where he revealed details about the relationship between himself and Steve Jobs, including the moment he tried to offer his ailing friend a portion of his liver.

The surprising part of Cook’s four-day journey to China is that he didn’t come to sell electronic products, but to plant trees. In his first post to his newly made microblog Weibo account, Cook announced optimism for innovative environmental programs, such as how to manage sustainable forests and expand efforts in renewable energy.

During the interview, he told CCTV his company plans to build a 40 megawatt electric solar facility in China’s Sichuan Province that will be used to power all of their stores, headquarters and offices.

In the first quarter of 2015, more iPhones were sold in China than in the U.S., grabbing the top spot with nearly 15 percent of the market. The company’s focus on China continues to grow as the firm captures more and more of the world’s largest smartphone market. Cook said that China is very important for Apple in every facet, from sales to supply.

 

 

 

 

Older Apple CEO on challenge of keeping company cutting edge

Steve Jobs’ hand-picked successor, current Apple CEO Tim Cook, talks exclusively to Rock Center Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams about Apple’s battle with Samsung, glitches with their maps app, the prospect of Apple TV and the challenge of keeping Apple cutting edge.

Originally aired on December 7, 2012 on NBC

Stock Clearance May

Posted on March 13, 2015 by Mac Onsite Posted in Apple Mac News

appleraised

•  Reconditioned Macbook Pro 13″ $790 at shop 

•  iPhone and iPad cases from $5

High End Mac Pro’s for Video or Audio Professionals

• Mac Pro Xeon 6 Core 3.33ghz, 8Gb ram, 256Gb SSD, 1TB HD, DVD-Drive, 512mb Graphics $2295

• Mac Pro Xeon 6 Core 3.46ghz, 16Gb ram, 256Gb SSD, 1TB HD, DVD-Drive, 512mb Graphics $2695

 

Reconditioned iMacs
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Reconditioned Macbook Pro 13″
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Reconditioned Macbook Pro 15″

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Reconditioned Macbook Pro 17″

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Hard drive failure rates – Be Warned

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Mac Onsite Posted in Apple Mac News, Hardware, iMac, Mac, MacBook, Service

The results on Seagate 3tb hard drives are the same as what we have already experienced but have had no issues with 2Tb Seagate Barracuda drive. We stopped supplying the 3TB Seagate’s with issues back in early 2014 although it seemed to be centred around one particular Firmware version. It was no mistake that all of our customer failures were in Raid systems (redundant safe duplicates) because loosing 3Tb of data is just unthinkable, in most cases we replaced the drive with a Server Grade drive that where more than $100aus more and have not looked back.drive failure chart

Hard Drive Failure Rates for 2014

The table above shows the annual failure rate through the year 2014. Only models where that have 45 or more drives are shown. It is also usually enough drives to start getting a meaningful failure rate if they’ve been running for a while.

Why is my Mac running slow

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Mac Onsite Posted in Apple Mac News, Hardware, iMac, Mac Pro, MacBook, Service, Software

Has your Macintosh started to run slow!!

More and more now we find that off the street Apple Mac’s where the internal hard drive is running very slowly may be because a Fail-Safe guard called S.M.A.R.T has been triggered and your beloved Hard Drive is about to fail.

This problem can be very easily tested with this software FREE and will tell you if your drive is failing (only works with 10.5 onwards) and checks the onboard chip on your hard drive. We use this application to check the health of all the reconditioned and second hand older machines we sell.

Smart Utility

FREE https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24875/smart-utility

Why does it go slow?
When your drive has a number of errors, SMART kicks in then slows the hard drive. This gives you longer to backup and recover all your files before the drive stops dead.

Surprising but there is no support for “SMART” warnings or issue reporting in the current Mavericks Operating System 10.9. and if it did it would most likely only work with Apple original drives. A bit like not having a low-oil-light in your car, your not going to need it most of the time, but when you do, its is going to be critical.

What some users will do to fix the problem
There is a promise from a persistently advertised software product called “Mackeeper”. Many users BUY this software to fix a computer problem because of claims it will “Speed up their Mac”. There are 2 things that this application will also do that may just cause more problems:

1. high disk activity as is scans all files for viruses that don’t work on Macs. Not good if your drive is failing!!
2. Memory and processor intensive

The other things this application does like a “cache cleaning” can be searched and downloaded from here: http://www.macupdate.com. I use and recommend Onyx

Connecting your Mac to a faster Drive
One of the great advances in storage SSD or Flash drives is what makes the slickness of the Macbook Air work so much faster. You can add a SSD to any Macintosh but UDS is the only company that can make sure that you get the right software keep you drive optimised but also last longer. Larger cheaper drive are now on there way from companies like Samsung.

Backup, Restore and Recovery experts

more

Mac Pro Release Today!!

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Mac Onsite Posted in Apple Mac News, Hardware, Mac Pro

Merry Christmas and a happy new year from

Unique Design Systems.

 

On Site service and consulting will commence late January but orders can be processed during January.

 

Mac Pro Released 19th December 2013

CUPERTINO, California―19 December 2013―Apple® today announced the all-new Mac Pro® will be available to order starting later today. Redesigned from the inside out, the all-new Mac Pro features the latest Intel Xeon processors, dual workstation-class GPUs, PCIe-based flash storage and ultra-fast ECC memory.

 

See Press Release

 

New Mac Pro

Hackers use Adobe Cloud to access US military

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Mac Onsite Posted in Apple Mac News

We received an email from Adobe see below, any customer worried about possible breaches should contact UDS as we can very quickly
put security in place to stop all non authorised out going connections.

Dear Adobe Partner,

As we all know, cyber attacks are one of the unfortunate realities of doing business today. Given the profile and widespread use of many of our products, Adobe has attracted increasing attention from attackers. Very recently, our security team discovered sophisticated attacks on our network, involving the illegal access of customer information as well as source code for numerous Adobe products.

 

Our investigation currently indicates that the attackers accessed Adobe customer IDs and passwords on our systems. At this time, we do not believe the attackers removed decrypted credit or debit card numbers from our systems.

 

We’re working diligently with both internal and external partners and law enforcement, to address this incident. Among other things, we’re taking the following steps:

 

  • As a precaution, we are resetting relevant customer passwords to help prevent unauthorized access to Adobe ID accounts. Customers whose user ID and password were involved will receive an email notification from Adobe with information on how to change their password. We also recommend that customers change their passwords on any website where they may have used the same user ID and password.

 

  • We are in the process of notifying customers whose credit or debit card information we believe to be involved in the incident. Those customers will receive a notification letter from us with additional information on steps they can take to help protect themselves against potential misuse of personal information about them.

 

  • We have notified the banks processing customer payments for Adobe, so that they can work with the payment card companies and card-issuing banks to help protect customers’ accounts.

 

  • We have contacted federal law enforcement and are assisting in their investigation.

 

In discussing this with your customers, please refer to the links below.  Should you have an escalated concern or require additional support, please contact your channel account manager.

  • Corporate blog post
  • ·         ASSET blog post
  • ·         Customer care page

 

Adobe sincerely appreciates your business and the relationship you have with our mutual customers.   We value the trust of our customers and are working aggressively to prevent these types of events from occurring in the future.

 

Kind regards,

Stephen Snyder

 

Vice President

Worldwide Channel Sales

 

Mac OSX Upgrade advise

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Mac Onsite Posted in Apple Mac News

appleraised

Got this email this this week from a customer:

Hello Marty
Do you remember me but I purchased an iMac from you just before last Xmas. I am just wondering if I should download the new Mac operating system – Maverick.
What do you recommend? Is it a straight forward procedure?
Thanks You
B K
Hi Barbara of course I remember,

It is straight forward but like every new major software update I usually wait for a dot .3 update (eg 10.9.3) before upgrading mission critical machines.
So far I have had only a few customer issues with Mavericks, XBMC media center which I fixed and some unusual spotlight issues which
seemed to have resolved themselves. Do a Google search as to problems with Mavericks and see whether they are isolated or a bug that Apple will need to fix. Make sure you have a current and working Timemachine backup before going ahead and if you can run an Onyx automated fix this will run a permissions fix so that the software will not have a problem installing.

New Mac Pro to be released December

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Mac Onsite Posted in Apple Mac News, Hardware, Mac, Mac Pro

Apple on Tuesday reintroduced its 2013 Mac Pro, which will be the company’s fastest and smallest MacPro ever. Apple unveiled the 2013 Mac Pro at WWDC back in June, but at its latest media event, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company announced the release date for the new Mac Pro to be in December, though no specific date was given. The Mac Pro’s price will start at $2,999us.

mac-pro-1

The 2013 Mac Pro is something of a Dark Stealth tech, a dense black cylinder designed around a thermal core and brimming with advanced technology. Small enough to keep it on your desk away from floor dirt and dust. The new Mac Pro is twice as powerful as the previous Mac Pro, which was still the fastest and most expandable Macintosh Apple sold despite its three years on the market. But even with this incredible power, the 2013 Mac Pro is also one-eighth the size of its predecessor with a diameter of 6.6 inches and a height of 9.9 inches, which was all accomplished thanks to a very innovative design built around balancing power and efficiency. It is apparently also whisper quiet which will please the audio techs.

 

Now if they could only allow you to plug in 2 keyboards and let 2 users use it at the same time 😉

Apple speedbumps MacBooks

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Mac Onsite Posted in Apple Mac News, Hardware, MacBook

MacBook Pro line updated

The MacBook Pro with Retina display line now features faster processors, double the memory on entry-level configurations and a new lower price for the top-of-the-line 15-inch model. MacBook Pro with Retina display delivers incredible performance in an incredibly portable design.

All MacBook Pro models come with iLife and iWork and are eligible for a free upgrade to OS X Yosemite this spring.

 

At just 0.71 inch thin and 3.46 pounds, the 13‑inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is 25 percent thinner and 20 percent lighter than the 13‑inch MacBook Pro without a Retina display.

At just 0.71 inch thin and 4.46 pounds, the 15‑inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is 25 percent thinner and 20 percent lighter than the 15‑inch MacBook Pro without a Retina display

MacBook Pro packs a lot of power into not a lot of space. Apple designers and engineers reconsidered each detail of every internal component to maximize performance and minimize size. As a result, these notebooks are the thinnest, lightest, and highest-performance MacBook Pro models we’ve ever made. Learn more

 

 

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Best Mac Upgrade

Speed up your old Mac ......
By adding an Solid State Hard Drive (no moving parts) and up to 10 times faster than you current drive. We will install and move over all your system and files. Normally $270 between now and Christmas we are offering this at $250 *Does not include drive recovery, prices may vary because ram manufacturers are short of components. Check with us by quoting "UDS SSD OFFER"

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