Apple boasts that their AirPort Extreme base station is "5x faster" but which devices can connect?

Apple is not always quick to support new technologies, but they threw their weight behind 802.11n Wi-Fi as soon as hardware was available. They upgraded their access points, laptop and desktop computers beginning in 2006, though support importable devices lagged. But the capabilities of 802.11n devices varies widely, and today’s Apple devices are no exception.

802.11n Capability Refresh

Routers like this Cisco E4200 can hit 450 Mb/s data rate!

As I discussed in detail last week, there are four main technology enhancements to 802.11n: MIMO and multi-streaming, 40 MHz channels, 5 GHz radio spectrum, and various packet enhancements. Each of these is optional for 802.11n devices, and Apple has picked a subset to support.

Basic 802.11n devices operate in the same 2.4 GHz radio channels as earlier Wi-Fi technologies. Many also lack the multiple radios and amplifiers required for multi-stream performance, and Apple only supports 40 MHz channels in the 5 GHz range. This means that simple devices are limited to a data rate of 72.2 Mb per second. These compromises are often made to conserve power or due to physical space constraints, so portable devices like the iPhone lack the performance of full-fledged computers.

Most desktop and laptop implementations of 802.11n include radios capable of either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz operation, and many offer two or three antennas for MIMO and multi-streaming. From 2006, Apple has offered 802.11 draft-n wireless cards in their laptop and desktop line, and all of these boast dual stream, dual frequency radios. Beginning in 2011, Apple has introduced ultra high-performance Wi-Fi offering three spatial streams and up to 450 Mb per second data rate.

When it comes to access points, Apple has aggressively moved toward 802.11n but lacks many of the features found on competitive products. The Apple AirPort line of Wi-Fi access points currently includes both the AirPort Express, with selectable frequency and dual stream support, as well as the AirPort Extreme, which supports both frequencies concurrently as well as triple stream performance. But Apple does not allow multi-streaming or 40 MHz channels in the 2.4 GHz frequency range on any device in their AirPort line.

Apple 802.11n Wi-Fi Device Capabilities

You might also want to read Which iPad is the Best Choice? and Decision Point: Comparing the 2011 MacBook Pro Models

To try to alleviate the confusion around which devices support what 802.11n features, I created the following table. Generally speaking, any Apple access point, laptop or desktop built since 2006 includes selectable 2.4 or 5 GHz support and at least dual stream capabilities. Every Apple TV also includes 802.11n Wi-Fi right out of the box. On the portable device side, both iPad generations, the iPhone 4, and the latest iPod Touch support 802.11n, though performance is limited.

Apple Devices with Limited 802.11n Support

I love my AirPort Express, but it's limited to two streams and either 2.4 or 5 GHz

Apple’s portable devices sacrifice performance for efficiency when it comes to Wi-Fi. The iPhone 4, 3rd generation iPod Touch, iPad, and Apple TV each have just one Wi-Fi antenna, so they are limited to single stream performance. The iPhone 4, iPod Touch, and first-generation iPad also lack 5 GHz radio compatibility, though the second-generation iPad and Apple TV do include it. This means that households with these popular devices cannot use 5 GHz-only networks, making the dual-band AirPort Extreme more attractive as a base station than the switchable AirPort Express.

Unsupported Apple Devices

Many readers will find that they own devices that do not support 802.11n at all, forcing them to maintain backward compatibility when deploying new Wi-Fi routers. Some very recent devices, including the iPhone 3G S and previous and the first three generations of iPod Touch, require 802.11g to connect. On the computer side of things, pre-2006 MacBook, MacBook Pro, and iMac computers lack 802.11n compatibility. But the Mac Mini is the real standout: It didn’t include 802.11n until the Core 2 Duo refresh in early 2009.

Stephen’s Stance

Apple's 5th-generation AirPort Extreme can hit 450 Mb/s data rate in combination with the 2011 MacBook Pro and iMac

It is nice to see Apple out in front with a technology like 802.11n, considering their reluctance to support Blu-Ray and USB 3.0. Although expensive, the AirPort Extreme and 2011 MacBook Pro and iMac sport top-of-the-line specs and high performance Wi-Fi. But the lack of 5 GHz support across the board means many users will stick to the crowded 2.4 GHz spectrum, limiting performance. And I’m sure owners of recent but unsupported devices (the older iPhone, iPod Touch, and Mac Mini) will be disappointed to have to stick to 802.11g.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Which Apple Devices Support 802.11n Wi-Fi?
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

OWC sent me the DataDoubler (purple), so my MacBook Pro now has "paired storage": A hard disk drive and an SSD

Datacenter servers commonly store data on shared networked storage arrays, but the laptops and desktops used by individuals continue to rely on internal hard disk drives. Enterprise arrays employ a number of performance enhancements, including large RAM caches and fast flash storage, but end users are stuck with single disks. This is changing, however, as users increasingly deploy flash SSD for performance while retaining a hard disk as well for capacity. This is “paired storage”, and it’s a major trend.

Tiering and Pairing Storage

Tiered storage is commonly used in the enterprise server space. Storage pros deploy a few different categories of storage and assign them to servers as needed: Slower RAID-5 for capacity and faster 15k rpm mirrors or flash SSD for performance. Some systems now have the ability to actively move data on the fly between according to demand, often on a block-by-block basis.

Tiered storage makes sense in the enterprise because storage arrays are shared by multiple servers. But it was impractical to deploy multiple storage types in a desktop, and often impossible in a laptop. The typical client machine still has a single hard disk drive, often chosen for capacity rather than performance.

Avid gamers challenged the status quo, however, by deploying faster hard drives, multiple drive types, and even RAID storage. Drives like the 15k rpm Western Digital VelociRaptor and OCZ Vertex SSDs took this enthusiast market by storm, and the excitement about the massive performance offered by these devices is spilling over into other markets.

Today, high-end laptop and desktop buyers are rapidly adopting dual-drive strategies, pairing an SSD for booting and applications with a hard disk drive for capacity. PC makers are responding, offering built-to-order paired storage configurations in high-end machines like the Apple iMac.

Leave The Optical Drive At Home

A common aftermarket paired storage configuration replaces the optical drive with a hard disk drive (HDD) using a specialized bracket. This is especially common in the Apple world, with MacBook Pro users snapping up the MCE OptiBay and OWC DataDoubler and moving their DVD SuperDrives to external enclosures.

One reason for this shift is the lagging capacity of optical media. Today’s hard disk drives have up to 100 times the capacity of a DVD, and “ripped” media files are even more compact. A 1 TB hard disk drive can hold over a thousand hours of high-definition video and can serve double duty storing virtual machine disks, music, and other space hogs as well.

Another reason to skip the DVD drive is a shift in the distribution of software from optical disc to online download. Apple has rapidly moved to Internet-based distribution with their Mac App Store, and independent publishers commonly rely on digital downloads rather than box-and-disc distribution. Many users simply no longer need an optical drive.

Fitting an SSD in place of a DVD or Blu-Ray drive is something of a challenge, however. The Slim SATA connectors used by optical drives is mechanically incompatible with laptop hard disks (microSATA), as is the drive bay mounting screw locations.

Data Placement Difficulties

But mainstream operating systems like Microsoft Windows 7 and Apple Mac OS X are not inherently suited for paired storage. No desktop operating is able to make optimal use of an SSD and hard drive by dynamically placing data according to performance demands or frequency of access. They will not even combine the SSD and HDD into a single logical drive.

Instead, users must manually configure their storage, often placing most of their data on the SSD and moving data to the hard disk by hand. This wastes valuable flash capacity and limits the effectiveness of a paired storage configuration. But users are willing to sacrifice some price efficiency for the performance they get from the SSD.

Stephen’s Stance

Paired storage is a growing trend in the laptop computer market, with many high-end machines sporting both a SSD and hard disk drive. But it remains a game for the rich, adding many hundreds of dollars to the cost of a computer, and manually placing data is inefficient. It will be interesting to see if future operating systems bring better support for paired storage, and if it will reach into the server world.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | What Is Paired Storage?
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The Out-of-Box Experience

For more information on the Eye-Fi card line-up, see Introducing the Eye-Fi X2 Card and What Are The True Eye-Fi X2 802.11n Wi-Fi Capabilities?

The Eye-Fi Center application uses Adobe Air and has lots of tiny, fiddly buttons

The Eye-Fi comes in a pleasing package, and includes a USB SD card reader along with the SD card itself. I was happy to find Mac and Windows software pre-loaded on the card – just insert it and you are ready to install and configure the Eye-Fi Helper and Eye-Fi Center software.

Before it is useful, the Eye-Fi card must be configured in Eye-Fi Center. This includes associating it with an online Eye-Fi View account as well as any photo-sharing services you might want. The software uses Adobe Air, and the user interface is neither Windows nor Mac-like. It uses lots of tiny fiddly icons, menus, and tabs, and I found it difficult to understand what was going on at times.

"Failed to initialize the Eye-Fi card" is an all-too-common error message. Eject it and try again...

Annoyingly, the Eye-Fi Center frequently refuses to recognize my card when I insert it directly into the SD slot on my MacBook Pro. The card functions fine (iPhoto can see it and import), but the Eye-Fi Helper reports no card attached and Eye-Fi Center won’t allow it to be configured. This caused initial frustration for me, and continues to annoy. Eye-Fi blames the MacBook Pro slot for “powering down” and recommends their USB reader.

You can only configure networks your laptop can currently access, so you will see this screen often...

Adding a known Wi-Fi network requires the computer to be in range and connected, a serious limitation. I was unable to configure the Wi-Fi for my home and work LAN since I was on a trip, and it’s a hassle to move the card to the computer when I happen to be on-site. Why not let me program networks arbitrarily, perhaps in an “Advanced” menu?

Configuring Direct Mode

Configuring Direct Mode and setting up the iOS app are much more difficult tasks than expected, even for an advanced computer user. You must enable Direct Mode in Eye-Fi center with the card in the computer, then configure all devices (including the computer itself) to connect to the special network created by the card. Since it’s password protected, the Eye-Fi instructions call for a multi-step process of copying and pasting the password.

It would have been much easier if there was a way to disable the password entirely. It’s not much of a security risk – Direct Mode is only active when the card is powered on and has photos to transfer, and its weak Wi-Fi signal is limited to short range only. I would also like to be able to customize the SSID: Perhaps something without the word, “Eye-Fi” in it?

Since Direct Mode is an ad-hoc network, some operating systems (including, apparently, Mac OS X and iOS) occasionally refuse to automatically connect. When this happens, one must manually select the Eye-Fi network when a transfer is to be made. And I found that the iPhone sometimes refused to download photos in Direct Mode, even when everything appeared to be set up correctly.

Direct Mode can only connect to a single device at a time. I was testing with an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook pro and had to tell the Eye-Fi software to switch devices frequently. When you do switch, however, it re-uploads photos to the new client software, creating duplicates if online photo sharing is enabled!

A Slow and Draining Experience

When initially configured, the Eye-Fi card will upload all photos to the online service, any configured sharing sites, and any connected devices. This takes quite a while for a 14 megapixel camera.

In the case of my NEX-5, each image is about 6 MB. Each took 10 to 20 seconds to upload using my Virgin MiFi, with an inexplicable delay before and after. I tend to shoot a lot of photos at events like Tech Field Day, and the Eye-Fi/MiFi combination simply could not keep up with my demands.

I would take a few photos and then set the camera aside, leaving it on so the Eye-Fi could transfer. Contrary to Eye-Fi’s claims, this rapidly drained the (normally strong) battery in the NEX and proved unsatisfying in terms of usability.

Put simply, over the course of three days of use, my photos were never where I wanted them when I wanted them there. They would eventually upload to Flickr, but by then I was on to the next presentation or location. I couldn’t wait for the card: By day 3 I was frequently removing the Eye-Fi and using it as an ordinary SD card.

Tuning the Eye-Fi Experience

One reason my photos were so slow to upload was the sheer volume of data to be transferred. I took hundreds of photos over the course of two days, 598 to be exact. Uploading 3 GB of data over a MiFi just isn’t practical; even a standard broadband connection would have had difficulty with this kind of load.

This is a perennial complaint about the Eye-Fi, and something the company really can’t solve. Images keep getting bigger and cameras just keep getting faster. The new “wireless n” radio in the X2 series of cards is severely limited in terms of performance and does little to help.

I can think of two solutions, neither of which exploit the full potential of the Eye-Fi card:

1. “Wireless card reader” – Disable all online services and rely on Direct Mode for wireless connection to a computer, iPhone, or iPad.
2. “Selective transfer” – Configure the Eye-Fi to selectively upload only the best photos, skipping the local computer.

In both cases, many of the vaunted features of the card are ignored. Neither uses the Eye-Fi View online service, for example, and Endless Memory and the Eye-Fi Center application are skipped. But these options function, which is really the point, after all.

Stephen’s Stance

I simply cannot recommend any Eye-Fi card, even the fancy new X2 line, to average camera users. Even enthusiasts like me would be wise to curb their enthusiasm. Most features barely work in practice, and the device frequently failed to perform.

I found myself pulling the Eye-Fi card from the camera and transferring photos like any old SD card. Only Direct Mode shows any promise, and it was annoyingly inconsistent, but I did come up with two workable use cases. All in all, I’m deeply disappointed.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Hands-On Review: The Eye-Fi Connect X2 Card
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

What does this logo really mean? It depends on the product...

Consumers and businesses love wireless networking, but the latest version of 802.11 “Wi-Fi” will leave many scratching their heads. With a confusing array of optional features, most of which are disabled by default for compatibility, today’s 802.11n products will not deliver the performance gains promised by vendors and expected by consumers. Let’s take a look at the key components of “Wi-Fi n” and consider what is included and what is not.

A Little Wireless History

Also see Jennifer Huber’s post, The History of Wireless Part One

802.11n is the fifth major revision to the 802.11 wireless Ethernet spec marketed popularly as Wi-Fi. I have been interested and involved since the very start, implementing a dead-end Raylink FHSS 802.11 network in the 1990′s, and skipping 5 GHz 802.11a before deploying 2.4 GHz 802.11b and faster 802.11g networks. Today, I use a mix of 802.11b and new 802.11n devices in both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands.

Each of these upgrades saw a major performance boost, and each also saw broader adoption by consumers and businesses. Basic 802.11 was a revelation in mobility in the 1990′s but 2 Mb/s couldn’t support real work. After its ratification in 1999, many corporations deployed 802.11a at 5 GHz to avoid the crowded 2.4 GHz band and boost theoretical performance all they way to 54 Mb/s. At the same time, consumers began snapping up standardized 802.11b “Wi-Fi” devices, despite the crowded confines of the 2.4 GHz band and mediocre 11 Mb/s performance.

Introduced mid-decade, 802.11g would become the catalyst for a wireless networking revolution. It matched 802.11a with 54 Mb/s peak performance but was compatible with 802.11b in the 2.4 GHz band. And “wireless g” was widely implemented from consumer and business devices to public hotspots. Home deployment of mixed 802.11b/g access points is common, with an easy majority of broadband Internet subscribers sharing their connection as I do, using a single Wi-Fi router.

But my home office network is nowhere near as advanced as the corporate wireless LANs that are the workplaces of my friends from Wireless Field Day. Most are rapidly adopting 802.11n and deploying its performance-enhancing features. They use “mesh” access points for mobility and deploy wireless controllers to coordinate the network. And they sniff the airwaves for interference and rogue devices.

Four Key Enhancements in 802.11n

802.11n was designed to unify the Wi-Fi world and bring new levels of performance. It includes both 2.4 and 5 GHz radio spectrum as well as multi-stream “MIMO” radio capability, wider channels, and frame aggregation. 802.11n is even backward-compatible with 802.11 a, b, and g networks.

802.11n is a package of enhancements, most of which are optional

The 802.11n specification adds the following four key areas of improvement:

1. Frames and symbols are tuned for better performance. This includes aggregation, which reduces the overhead of data transmission by combining multiple MAC Service Data Units (MSDUs) or MAC Protocol Data Units (MPDUs). Another optional enhancement is a shorter guard interval between symbols.
2. Some 802.11g devices included multiple antennas, but true multi-antenna and multi-radio MIMO capability is new in 802.11n. “Wi-Fi n” can combine multiple data streams in the same channel to double, triple or even quadruple throughput using spatial division multiplexing (SDM), but most devices use just one or two radios, blunting the performance benefit. Space-time block coding (STBC) is another option to improve MIMO performance.
3. 802.11n is compatible with both the 2.4 GHz band common to consumer Wi-Fi devices and the 5 GHz 802.11a band. When operating at higher frequency, “wireless n” has more channels to choose from and will experience less interference from Bluetooth, portable phones, baby monitors, and other scourges of the 2.4 GHz range. But many 802.11n devices do not operate by default at 5 GHz, and some lack this capability entirely.
4. 802.11n can also use wide 40 MHz slices of spectrum, doubling performance but potentially interfering with previous 802.11 devices that used just 20 MHz at a time. This potential for incompatibility has greatly restricted implementation of this feature in the 2.4 GHz band, and such devices are required to support coexistence mechanisms. A new “green-field mode” is optional for high-throughput (HT) networks.

It is difficult to be all things to all people, so the standards bodies made many of the advanced features of 802.11n optional. This means that many “wireless n” products do not support performance-enhanzing features like multi-streaming and 5 GHz operation. In fact, many popular devices offer little more than basic 802.11n compatibility.

Even more troubling, most consumer-grade access points disable the features they do support in the name of compatibility. Buy a brand-new “Wi-Fi n” router and it probably won’t use the 5 GHz band or 40 MHz channels, and is unlikely to contain more than two radios for MIMO and SDM to exploit. Both the device and access point must support each feature to reach maximum performance.

The Current State of 802.11n

802.11n MIMO capability is specified in "axb:c" notation, as seen here

Today, many 802.11n access points support both 2.4 and 5 GHz, sometimes with a single radio but often with two. Some also include two or three antennas and can support two or three spatial streams. Properly configured, these access points can reach 300 Mb/s in throughput, but are often limited to 72 Mb/s in their out-of-box state. Many vendors specify a default configuration with 20 MHz channels and 2.4 GHz for compatibility with “wireless g” devices.

Some consumer access points (and most business ones) can be configured for full 802.11n performance in the 5 GHz band while at the same time maintaining an 802.11b/g network at 2.4 GHz. These are known as “concurrent” or “simultaneous”, as opposed to “selectable” dual-band products that only support one or the other frequency range. These offer the best of both worlds, pushing Wireless-N performance without sacrificing “wireless g” clients. But this requires the expense of multiple radios and more-complicated software.

Client devices are flexible and limited at the same time. Cost, space, and power constraints mean many devices do not support 5 GHz frequencies and multiple spatial streams. But those that do will often “fall forward” to improve performance when paired with an appropriate access point.

The latest MacBook Pro, for example, includes a 3×3:3 radio and can hit 450 Mb/s if a capable access point is available. But most PCs and tablets have just one or two radios, and some are restricted to 2.4 GHz as well. Mobile devices like my own iPhone 4 and Eye-Fi camera card are severely limited, with 802.11n included mainly for compatibility rather than performance. The iPhone 4 and Eye-Fi card are 2.4 GHz-only and 1×1:1, the iPad 2 is 2.4 or 5 GHz but still 1×1:1, and the AirPort Express I use is dual-band 2×2:2.

Stephen’s Stance

Buyers of 802.11n wireless network equipment should not assume they will see a great benefit right out of the box. Most will have to enable by hand a high-performance configuration including wide channels and 5 GHz operation. And some client devices may never reach the levels of performance expected by consumers due to hardware limitations.

It is disappointing that enhanced performance is disabled by default. But perhaps this will change as 802.11n-compatible client devices become more common.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Not All 802.11n Networks Are Alike
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Features, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

LaCie will be first to market with a Thunderbolt storage device

LaCie looks to be the first out of the gate with a Thunderbolt storage system. They promise to deliver their Little Big Disk portable RAID storage device sometime this summer, and the polished look of the devices on display at the NAB show suggests that they will meet this target.

Hello, Little Big Disk

The Little Big Disk is a portable RAID storage device featuring two hard disk drives or flash solid-state disks (SSD). On display at NAB was a two-drive 1 TB hard disk drive RAID featuring 7200 rpm drives. This will be the initial product to market, with the SSD devices following later.

Each Little Big Disk features two Thunderbolt ports, and LaCie demonstrated daisy-chaining four of the devices at NAB

LaCie’s demonstration at NAB was impressive, but not really a real-world scenario. They had four Little big disk devices daisychained off a single Thunderbolt port, each configured as RAID 0 for maximum performance. These eight hard disk drives were able to deliver over 800 MB per second to Apple’s Final Cut Pro.

But real-world users will likely configure the drives as RAID 1 mirrors for data protection, and the Thunderbolt port does not have enough power to spin up this many drives without external power bricks. Therefore, most Little Big Disk buyers will experience less-mindbending performance – around 100 MB per second. Although not quite as fast as some might hope, this still leaves USB and FireWire in the dust, making this new product the fastest official external storage device available for a MacBook Pro. It’s just too bad Apple doesn’t support USB 3, however, since some USB 3 devices already push past 200 MB per second.

Stephen’s Stance

Since Thunderbolt was introduced on a portable device, the Apple MacBook Pro, first, it makes sense that a portable storage product should be the first peripheral to market. The LaCie Little Big Disk looks like an excellent combination of data protection, portability, and performance, and will likely sell like hot cakes once it is released. LaCie should be applauded for targeting the right niche to start out, as well as for their early access to the Thunderbolt technology from Apple and Intel. I look forward to seeing what products they follow on with.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Preview
This post was categorized as Apple, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

We have barely scratched the surface of what this little cable can do!

Apple and Intel introduced the impressive new Thunderbolt interconnect last month on the MacBook Pro line, but folks like me who bought one have nothing to connect to yet. It was exciting to see the wide variety of Thunderbolt peripherals on display at the NAB show in Las Vegas last week, but none of these will ship to end-users before the middle of the summer. But evidence is mounting that Apple will be the first out of the gate with a Thunderbolt peripheral, it just won’t be the sort of peripheral you might expect. I am hearing rumors that the new iMac, to be introduced this month, will be both a Thunderbolt host and peripheral in one! Read on for what this means in the real world.

A Quick Review of Thunderbolt

Before we dive into this discussion, it is probably wise to revisit the latest information about the Thunderbolt interconnect. Although Thunderbolt MacBook Pros are widely available and Intel, Apple, and others have been talking about the technology quite a bit lately, there is still much confusion about just what this new interconnect is all about.

Thunderbolt includes both PCI Express and DisplayPort video

Put simply, Thunderbolt passes two important protocols between a computer and its peripherals:

1. Video, in the form of a full DisplayPort signal
2. Data, in the form of two full-duplex 10 Gb PCI Express lanes

These two signals are multiplexed onto a Mini DisplayPort interface. Although envisioned as an optical interconnect, Thunderbolt is today an electrical interface that uses copper wiring.

The Shape of Things To Come

There is one key reason to be excited about Thunderbolt: This high-bandwidth connection promises to change the physical shape of computers, since external devices can be accessed with the same performance as internal devices. In fact, design engineers who have worked with Intel’s initial chips report that integrating existing PCI Express peripherals with Thunderbolt is a piece of cake: The chips don’t know that they are located outside a computer!

Historically, laptops have been severely limited when it comes to I/O bandwidth. One reason for the lackluster performance of most portable computers is that they are strangled by slow interfaces like USB, FireWire, and ExpressCard. But Thunderbolt changes everything.

My new MacBook Pro has far more I/O capability than the iMac sitting on my desk, and perhaps even more than the Sandy Bridge desktop system I built for my lab! Packing all this I/O bandwidth into a single cable connection allows us to do magical things: We can put a wide variety of peripherals, from displays to storage networking, on that one little port and everything can operate at full speed.

This changes the very shape of the computer. No longer do we need to reserve empty space inside the box for full speed peripherals. Instead, a compact machine like a laptop or an iMac can connect to external devices without sacrificing performance. The next-generation Mac Mini might even be stackable, with a variety of expansion bases produced by third parties.

The iMac as a Peripheral

But things get weirder and more wonderful if we consider that the PCI Express lanes found on a Thunderbolt connector can even extend one computer’s resources to another. It is already possible for a MacBook Pro or other DisplayPort-enabled device to use the iMac as a monitor. Yet this leaves the keyboard, hard disk drive, camera, and other peripherals idle.

But what if we could use every part of the iMac as an extension of the MacBook Pro or vice versa? Plugging a Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook Pro into a new Thunderbolt iMac could allow the desktop system to take on the personality of the laptop entirely, sharing all peripherals and connections transparently and at full speed. The running operating system would instantly see the iSight camera, keyboard and mouse, network expansion ports, and of course the display panel.

But let’s take things a step further: What if the MacBook Pro and iMac shared their CPUs and graphics adapters as well? Grand Central Dispatch, built into Snow Leopard, could use these to accelerate rendering or gaming, using the high-speed PCI Express interconnect to share all the resources of both machines as a single compound computer.

Stephen’s Stance

Who doesn’t want an eight-core MacBook Pro with a 27-inch high-resolution display? Who wants the hassle of synchronizing documents and files between a desktop and portable computer? Why not just merge everything into a single computer over the high-speed Thunderbolt interface?

There is no reason this cannot be done, and I have heard many hints and suggestions that this is exactly what Apple is planning to introduce next week. The supply of iMacs is running short, and no one doubts that Thunderbolt will make an appearance on the replacement device. The only question is whether Apple will allow this kind of host to host interconnect, and how integrated it will be.

Jan Tångring consulted electronic experts and found this to be a credible idea at least. Read in Swedish (English translation)

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Will The First Thunderbolt Peripheral Be The iMac?
This post was categorized as Apple. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Now for some highlights from the week:

• My writing:
  • I wrote another post for Network Computing: Storage Capacity Still Drives Accessibility
  • I picked up a new 2011 MacBook Pro last Thursday, and took it along to Redmond. You might want to read my MacBook Pro review series:
    • 2011 MacBook Pro Review: Introduction
    • Decision Point: Comparing the 2011 MacBook Pro Models
    • Benchmarking the 2011 13″ Core i5 MacBook Pro
  • I had some time on the plane, so wrote up some things I’ve been meaning to get out:
    • How Google and Dropbox Revolutionized My Laptop Migration
    • Keep Multiple Macs in Sync with Dropbox
  • Some good deals popped up this week, too: Great Deals on iPads (for now) and Get a Cradlepoint PHS300 Portable 3G WiFi Router For Just $79!
  • This week marks my first Storage for Virtual Environments seminar, so I kicked it off with Introducing Storage for Virtual Environments (From My Seminar)
• Other great stuff:
  • Terry Slattery is perhaps the most-famous CCIE, and we were lucky to have him join us at Networking Field Day in September. But he wanted to talk about Infoblox & NetMRI at Tech Field Day from last month! He also wrote about IPv6 Economics – Why Move To IPv6?
  • Another great post from Tech Field Day comes from Matthew Norwood, who will also be joining us in two weeks at Wireless Field Day: HP Networking – The Vision(As I Understand It)
  • Last week saw the unveiling of the iPad 2: I don’t often share John Gruber’s writing, but I loved The Chair, and also really enjoyed MG Siegler’s piece, An iPad Lover’s (Initial) Thoughts On iPad 2
  • Some interesting tech notes out of Redmond:
    • Using Hyper-V with large sector drives on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2
    • An update that improves the compatibility of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with Advanced Format Disks is available
    • File Server improvements from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2. 8 items for 8 years…
  • A great Greg Schulz post on bit-level encoding: From bits to bytes: Decoding Encoding
  • Nigel Poulton is always worth reading, but his take on Storage Benchmarking and Formula 1 is especially rewarding
  • Nerd Vittles didn’t like the Motorola Xoom: A Disappointing Introduction to Android 3.0
  • Another great enterprise networking piece by Greg Ferro: Diverging Ethernet Switch Markets
  • Who’d have thought it? Exploring the Limits of Datacenter Temprature
  • Some great information on the next Mac OS: iOS on the Desktop: Hands-On With the OS X 10.7 Lion Preview
  • Bill Hill put together a great single-piece on Tech Field Day Posts as well as Fixed Block vs Variable Block Deduplication – A Quick Primer

Subscribe to my Google Reader feed or follow me on Twitter to see these in real-time.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, March 4, 2011
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The new MacBook Pro impresses with its performance

As I mentioned in my previous article, I decided to buy the 13″ Core i5 (base model) MacBook Pro. It meets my needs as a travel workstation, but how does it perform? I decided to benchmark it against my other Macs to see how it stands up.

Benchmark Details

The following benchmarks were performed using Xbench and Geekbench, running on a freshly-booted machine. Xbench is outdated but solid and universally-accepted as the standard Mac benchmark. Plus, I had historical data from all of my machines. Geekbench is a great cross-platform CPU test, but it doesn’t measure as wide a variety of system parameters as Xbench.

Each Xbench test was normalized against the new MacBook Pro, which always shows as “100%” in these charts. This should help get a feel for how much slower or faster it is than the other machines.

The test subjects are as follows:

This probably seems like an odd and motley assortment, but they all have one thing in common: I own them. Although everyone’s performance baseline will be different, I was interested in how the new MacBook Pro compares to my other machines, and my 15″ machine in particular. So there you have it!

The CPU, graphics, and memory tests were performed running the latest version of Mac OS X “Snow Leopard”, version 10.6.6.

The disk tests, however, were run under either 10.6.6 (in the case of the 13″ MacBook Pro and iMac) or the version of Mac OS X that came with the machine originally (in the case of the 15″ Santa Rosa MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini). Since I am a storage guy, I have long-since upgraded the hard disk drives in both machines, and felt it was unfair to compare the OEM drive in the new MacBook Pro to these upgraded drives. So I used the original Xbench tests I performed when the machines were new.

Performance Overview

The new 13" MacBook Pro performance admirably

As others have reported, overall performance is solid. Even though it is the absolute base model in the line, the new MacBook Pro matches or bests my old machine in every respect. It clobbers the Santa Rosa MacBook pro in CPU, Thread, Memory, Quartz, UI, and disk tests, and ties in OpenGL performance. It even matches the high-end desktop in most tests, only falling behind when it comes to Disk, Thread and OpenGL graphics performance.

The fact that it achieves all this with a base price $600 less than my old MacBook Pro and runs for almost 7 hours on a charge is simply amazing. Moore’s law ought to allow new machines to outperform old ones, but one is still surprised to see it so flamboyantly displayed.

Performance Details

Now let’s dig a little deeper into these performance numbers!

CPU Performance Details

The base-model 13″ MacBook Pro uses a 2.3 GHz dual-core CPU, which hardly sounds better than the 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo chip used in my old MacBook Pro. And it shouldn’t hold a candle to the mighty 2.66 GHz quad-core “Nehalem” Core i5 in my iMac.

The "Sandy Bridge" Core i5 performs very well - it's nearly twice as fast as the old Core 2 Duo!

The detailed CPU tests tell a different tale, however. The architectural improvements made between Merom/Penryn and Sandy Bridge are evident, with the new chip almost doubling the old in floating point math and (thanks to hyperthreading) solidly throttling it in thread tests.

The most impressive feat is its performance relative to the quad-core Nehalem Core i5 in the iMac, however. Looking past the thread tests, which are greatly helped by two more full cores, we see nearly equal performance between laptop and desktop. This suggests that the Sandy Bridge architecture does a solid job of reducing electrical demands without sacrificing performance. The quad-core desktop CPUs in this family are shockingly strong, as we will see in a moment!

Geekbench Results

Since it is a cross-platform benchmark, I was able to add a ringer to the Geekbench test: My new lab workstation. Built around a Sandy Bridge Core i5-2400, Asus P8H67-M PRO motherboard, and speedy OCZ memory, this is a seriously-fast desktop for very little money. All in, we’re talking about under $500 for this guy!

The Core i5 and i7 processors walk all over the old Core 2 Duos

The two Sandy Bridge Core i5 CPUs are neck and neck in most of the tests, which is really shocking given that the desktop has two more cores, can ramp to 95 Watts, and runs at 3.1 GHz. It is also impressive that the older Nehalem Core i5-750 can keep up in Geekbench tests. Unsurprisingly, the old Core 2 Duo machines aren’t in the same league, not managing even half the performance of these three.

I previously talked about the performance-per-dollar ratio of the various MacBook Pro machines, noting that the base models were much more attractive by this metric. Although it’s definitely not an apples-to-apples comparison (for starters, my desktop is harder to use on a plane…) I will admit that one can get roughly three times the Geekbench score by building a Sandy Bridge system at home. With a score of 7350, my desktop delivers almost 15 Geekbench points per dollar, compared to 3.5 to 5 points from the new MacBook Pro line.

Memory Performance Details

Both the MacBook pros sport 4 GB of RAM, while the Mini still has just 2 GB and the iMac has been upgraded with 8 GB. The old MacBook Pro uses 667 MHz PC-5300 RAM, while the Mac Mini and iMac use 1066 MHz PC-8500 SODIMMs. The new machine steps up to 1333 MHz PC-10600 memory.

The "Sandy Bridge" platform really shines when it comes to memory performance

The Nehalem series integrated the memory controller with the CPU, and this is continued in Sandy Bridge. This allows really amazing memory performance across the board – the old CPUs are stuck with 30% to 40% of the new machine’s memory access capabilities.

The new chipset even manages to beat the iMac in many tests, with only the thread-sensitive System Copy test showing a real loss.

Graphics Performance Details

Graphics performance is the one area I was most concerned about. All three older machines use discrete graphics controllers of various sorts, from the wimpy Nvidia GeForce 9400M in the Mac Mini to the Nvidia 8600M GT in the Santa Rosa MacBook Pro to the more-impressive ATI Radeon HD 4850 in the iMac.

Intel's integrated HD 3000 graphics do a fine job, generally keeping up with the discrete GPUs found in the other machines

As expected, the discrete graphics cards are much more competitive with the new HD 3000 engine integrated into the Sandy Bridge Core i5. Yet once again, the new machine is able to match or beat the old machines in nearly every test.

OpenGL performance seems to be an issue for Intel’s new chip. Perhaps a driver update might improve the situation? But it’s still solid – matching the older machines and only throttled by the big desktop. Most of the Quartz graphics tests show the iMac and new MacBook Pro tied with the old machines trailing far behind. Perhaps they are CPU-bound?

Hard Disk Performance Details

Finally we turn our attention to the question of storage. Hard disk drive performance depends on many factors, and Apple’s machines have historically varied quite a bit. Every one of the new MacBook Pros come standard with a mundane 5400 rpm Hitachi hard disk drive, so one cannot expect it to match the performance of the full-size 7200 rpm desktop drive in the iMac.

Although it's nothing to write home about, the 320 GB Hitachi drive performs adequately

Density improvements should give the new MacBook Pro a leg up on the old Mini and ‘Pro and, our tests bear this out. None of the disks are really all that impressive (sequential reads and writes in the 65 MB/s range aren’t impressive) but it’s not bad.

Stephen’s Stance

The Sandy Bridge MacBook pro really shines in terms of performance. It soundly beats my old laptop in nearly every test, and even gives the desktop a run in some tests. In all, I’d say the hard disk drive ought to be the first thing to get an upgrade. Throw in a speedy SSD and we’ll be looking at some really earth-shattering performance and battery life. And yet, we’d still be looking at a sub-$2000 machine!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Benchmarking the 2011 13″ Core i5 MacBook Pro
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

My new MacBook Pro was up and running with my data in less than an hour, thanks to Google and Dropbox!

I replaced my trusty MacBook Pro last week, the latest in a series of upgrades stretching back over 25 years. In the past, moving to a new computer is a time-consuming process of installing applications and moving data. But things were different this time: I still had the installs to do, but most of the data migrated on its own.

A Cloud of Data

Like many people, I’ve spent years unconsciously integrating my workflow with cloud applications and services. My email was first, and moving it to Google’s servers pulled my calendar and contacts along as well. This kind of data “wants” to live in the cloud, where it can be accessed on my phone, laptop, desktop, or any web browser I happen to be seated in front of.

Over the last few months, I have begin to use Dropbox to mirror my documents off-site. A clever trick allows this cloud-based repository to keep multiple computers in sync as well, and I recently set it up between my desktop iMac and the old MacBook Pro.

My only portable data set that still doesn’t live in the cloud is the collection of music and movies I like to take with me. The iMac maintains a massive iTunes repository on my Drobo, but I like to take a few thousand songs and a few movies and TV shows on my laptop as well. It seems ironic that this data is so stubbornly local, considering that, for the most part, it purchased and downloaded from a cloud service!

That’s It?

The majority of my data migrated automatically to my new computer

Just after buying my new 2011 13″ MacBook Pro, I sat down in a cafe next to the Apple Store to have a look. I was still in range of the Apple Store guest network, so the laptop was already online. I typed my information into Apple’s Mail, Contacts, and iCal applications and watched as Google re-populated them automatically.

But even I was surprised at the ease of moving the rest of my daily data. I downloaded the Dropbox client and entered my credentials. In moments, my entire Documents folder began filling up, and the astonishingly-quick Apple network made short work of a decade of content. By the time I finished my smoothie, I was up and running.

Stephen’s Stance

The ease of this migration is simply amazing: I was up and running quicker than I could have driven home! Google and Dropbox made short work of my “working set” of data, and I could have been literally anywhere on the planet. How times have changed!

Once I returned home, I fired up rsync to pull over the iTunes library and I was ready to retire the old machine. To be on the safe side, I pulled the 640 GB hard disk drive out of the old MacBook pro and installed it in an external enclosure. I’ll replace it with another drive and re-install Mac OS X before handing it down to a family member.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | How Google and Dropbox Revolutionized My Laptop Migration
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Which Apple MacBook Pro would you buy?

As I discussed in my 2011 MacBook Pro introduction, all three models of Apple’s Pro lineup include key inside upgrades: Speedy “Sandy Bridge” CPUs and Intel’s new Thunderbolt port. Although the aluminum case is unchanged, it was these features I was waiting for. But which model to buy?

Once I decided to upgrade from my 3-year-old “Santa Rosa” MacBook Pro to one of these new models, I was left with a few key decisions:

1. Which model – 13″, 15″, or 17″?
2. Base model or up-rated?

I might have considered a built-to-order model with an SSD or upgraded display, but Apple’s upgrades are often over-priced. It’s usually better to upgrade RAM or swap in an SSD from aftermarket channels, especially since this does not void the Apple warranty!

Which Model? 13″, 15″, or 17″

I’ve been very happy with my existing 15″ MacBook Pro overall, but it does seem a little large sometimes. I travel but am too cheap for first class, and even though I spend a lot of time on United planes, I don’t always get upgraded. Sadly, the 15″ MacBook Pro is not entirely tray table-compatible. I often find it cradled in a V after the seat back in front of me has smashed rearward.

The 17″ model is right out for my needs. And although the top of the widescreen 15″ MacBook Pro is slightly lower than my old one, I wanted something smaller. I would never have bought the old 15″ MacBook Pro, with its outdated Core 2 Duo CPU, when the larger models had “Arrandale” Core i5 and i7 processors, but the new line changes everything.

Number	MC700LL/A	MC724LL/A	MC721LL/A	MC723LL/A	MC725LL/A
Model	13″ MacBook Pro MacBookPro8,1		15″ MacBook Pro MacBookPro8,2		17″ MacBook Pro MacBookPro8,3
CPU Model	i5-2415M	i7-2620M	i7-2630QM	i7-2720QM
CPU Speed	2.3 GHz	2.7 GHz	2.0 GHz	2.2 GHz
CPU Cores	dual-core		quad-core
CPU L3 Cache	3 MB	4 MB	6 MB
Integrated GPU	12-EU Intel HD 3000
Discrete GPU	N/A		AMD Radeon HD 6490M with 256 MB GDDR5	AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1 GB GDDR5
Hard Disk	320 GB	500 GB		750 GB

The critical differences between 2011 MacBook Pro models

All three MacBook Pro models offer Intel’s latest Sandy Bridge CPUs, though only the 15″ and 17″ models get quad-core processors. Upgraded discrete graphics cards are also limited to the larger machines, but the integrated 12-”execution unit” HD 3000 graphics found across the board performs admirably (as we will see in the next article in this series). Since I’m mostly a writer these days, especially on the laptop, I didn’t really need an upgraded graphics card.

Although I will miss the expansion capabilities of the ExpressCard slot, Intel’s new Thunderbolt technology promises much more capability in the future. That little jack is capable of more than 8 times the bandwidth of an ExpressCard slot, reducing the impact of Apple’s foot-dragging on USB 3.0.

All three models come with 4 GB of RAM standard, but upgrading RAM is fairly straightforward. OWC already offers an 8 GB upgrade kit for a very-reasonable $88.99, after a $26 rebate when you send them the original RAM. It is disappointing that Apple only offers 5400 rpm hard disk drives across the board, but at least the drives perform reasonably well (unlike my Mac Mini!) Upgrading the hard disk drive to a faster model, hybrid Seagate Momentus XT, or SSD is fairly easy as well.

My final area of concern is the screen resolution. Although the new 13″ MacBook Air offers a high-resolution 1440×900 screen, but the new 13″ MacBook Pro sticks with just 1280×800. This is a step down from my old 15″ model, let alone the glorious 2650×1440 iMac I use in my home office. This resolution issue was the main thing to give me pause, and almost derailed my purchase entirely.

Comparing the MacBook Pro Models

One additional comparison is worth considering. The 2011 MacBook Pros all offer high-performance Sandy Bridge CPUs that rival Apple’s current-generation desktop computers. But not all CPUs are created equal, and it can be difficult to weight the cost versus the benefits.

One important consideration is that the Core i7 CPU used in the 13″ model has just two cores, while the Core i7 found in the larger machines has four. In fact, there is very little difference between the Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs used in the 13″ model apart from clock speed, but the quad-core chips are in another performance league entirely.

The base-model 13" and 15" models are best on a cost-per-performance basis

I decided to compare the Geekbench scores of all five basic models against their cost. As an additional twist, I added in the cost of the AppleCare extended warranty since I recommend everyone buy it. Interestingly, AppleCare is $100 cheaper on the 13″ model than on the larger MacBook Pros. This extends the cost difference between models – the basic 13″ MacBook pro costs a full $700 less than the cheapest 15″ model once AppleCare is added!

Once we compare how many GeekBench points our dollar buys, it’s clear that the base models are winners. Although the up-rated Core i7 CPUs do offer more performance, it doesn’t offset the additional cost.

Buyers might still consider the higher-end models for other reasons. The 2.2 GHz 15″ MC723LL/A model is particularly attractive thanks to its upgraded Radeon HD 6750M graphics card. And an additional $100 spent on upgrading this model’s display to 1680×1050 is probably money well spent as well!

Base Model or Up-Rated?

I decided that the 13″ MacBook Pro was right for me, so the next question was which version to get. Apple offers to basic models at retail, the 2.3 GHz Core i5 and 2.7 GHz Core i7. Although the CPU used in the 13″ model is a previously-unknown and still-unannounced model, it is part of the new Sandy Bridge series.

The only differences between these two models (apart from $300 on the sticker) are the following:

• Both use a dual-core CPU with hyper-threading and HD 3000 graphics, but the Core i7 CPU in the upgraded model runs 400 MHz faster and has 1 MB more L3 cache. This translates into 900 Geekbench points (about as fast as two iPads) or 15%.
• The upper model also features a 500 GB hard disk drive, though it spins at the same 5400 rpm speed.

That’s it. $300 extra buys 15% better performance and a bit of extra space. If Apple had offered some compelling difference (a high-res screen, for example, or a 7200 rpm drive) it might be compelling. Some buyers might jump to the conclusion that the Core i7 CPU has four cores like the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro models, and the technically-savvy might think the Core i5 doesn’t have hyper-threading or has just 6 graphics execution units, but they would be wrong.

As it stands, there is no really good reason to buy the more-expensive 13″ MacBook Pro, so I decided on the base model. The cost savings went to AppleCare and two Mini DisplayPort adapters.

Stephen’s Stance

The combination of portability, performance, and build quality made the base-model 13″ MacBook Pro the right choice for me. Others might be tempted by the upgraded graphics, quad-core CPU, and high-resolution display of the 15″ model. But the dual-core i7 CPU in the up-rated 13″ MacBook Pro is hard to justify, as is the massive 17″ model.

Note: Some of these links include affiliate codes that help pay for this blog. For example, buying an Amazon Kindle with this link sends a few bucks my way! But I don't write this blog to make money, and am happy to link to sites and stores that don't pay anything. I like Amazon and buy tons from them, but you're free to buy whatever and wherever you want.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Decision Point: Comparing the 2011 MacBook Pro Models
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.