On Jun 15, 2010, at 11:27 AM, James Therrault wrote:
...and probably a slow 5,400 rpm drive...
Undoubtedly true.
One way to conserve unit power is to dumb-down the HD from 7200 to
5400 rpm, and from 16 MB cache to 4 MB cache.
Also, special firmware can be installed, and which further economizes
on power, at the expense of performance, by artificially increasing
latency time by slowing down the acceleration of the drive's voice-
coil positioning mechanism.
Apple has done this in the past, and I would expect no less in the
future.
One positive outcome of this anti-consumer initiative of Apple's is
Mac-oriented retailers, such as OWC, seem to be right there with
upgraded drives, which sport dramatically improved performance, and
they accept these essentially new drives as trade-ins, which they
promptly offer as "pulls", at dramatic savings, usually advertising
these as "Apple-branded" drives. Its a good way to get a drive for
testing purposes, as the price is usually very low, yet the
performance is not THAT bad, for a testing drive.
And, all this policy essentially does, to the end-user, is to
increase the effective cost of a Mac, that is, the cost to get a Mac
which one REALLY wants v. the cost of a Mac which Apple EXPECTS us to
"make-do" with.
Is it any wonder that the OSx86 crowd is operating Snow machines
which cost one-fourth, yet deliver four-times the performance?
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