Tuyen's Blog

Posts for Tag: apple

Forget RAM, CPU, etc. The most cost effective way to speed up your Mac is with an SSD

Someone asked me the other day about upgrading to a new laptop.  Specifically they wanted to grab a new MacBook Pro (non-retina) to upgrade from their 2011 MacBook Pro which seemed to be getting slower for them.  Applications loaded slower, startup seemed to take forever, etc.  As I am a current user of a 2011 MacBook Pro, I was a little confused as to what they meant by slower since my machine is still very snappy for a 2 year old machine.  When I showed them what I meant by cold booting my machine from off to login screen in less than 15 seconds, they were floored.  Even when their machine was brand new, it never booted that quickly.  Opening up applications was even faster.  The difference between our machines?  I have an SSD and they have the stock 5400RPM hard drive.  My recommendation to them was to keep their still pristine looking laptop and simply swap out the hard drive for an SSD.  The one I run in my MacBook is a Crucial M4 512GB.  They're relatively cheap - Amazon has this particular model for less than $400 - and it truly is like upgrading to a brand new MacBook.  It's no wonder Apple is starting to move all of their products over to SSD. 

The great thing about the non-retina MacBooks is that it's still relatively easy to do upgrades yourself.  Check out the tutorial from the iFixIt guys.  Remember to back up all of your data before doing any hard drive swap out.  To me, CPU and RAM upgrades haven't provided nearly the same punch as going from a standard hard drive to SSD.  Once you've experienced it, you'll never go back and you can keep that old trusty laptop even longer before needing to upgrade.

Warriors ... iPhone on T-Mobile ... Co-working Spaces

Been absent for a while but now I'm back.  Been very busy lately but hopefully will be able to post more.

Warriors!
Beat the Lakers last night.  Strong performance from Curry and Lee.  After a slump last month, they seem to be rolling.  Still need more production from Bogut.  He's definitely an upgrade from Biedrins or Ezeli but for $14M a year, he should be doing more.  Question is will he get healthy/better next year?

T-Mobile iPhone ... FINALLY!
News hit today that T-Mobile will finally be getting the iPhone.  I have to admit a certain fondness for T-Mobile.  I joined when the original Sidekick came out and never had an issue with the service.  The only reason I switched to AT&T was the iPhone.  If their LTE footprint were a bit wider, I might be convinced to join up again.  They seem to be much more reasonable with their subscriptions and this new "un-subsidy" is a good idea.  It's also reported that the T-Mobile version of the iPhone 5 actually is a newer version than the one with AT&T, Sprint or Verizon.  It makes use of the HD Voice calling feature talked about during the iPhone 5 launch and has access to more radio bands across the world.  Overall, glad to see more competition in the wireless marketplace.  Could only mean good things for consumers.

Co-working Spaces
I recently moved out of the large office space my company has occupied for over 2 years.  Just didn't need the space and needed to be more economical.  We found some co-working space nearby in Jack London Square.  So far so good.  From a financial standpoint it makes a lot of sense.  Month to month rentals, shared resources, etc.  The one benefit I haven't quite seen yet is the creativity/buzz when people from multiple businesses hang out in one space.  Maybe it's the quality of the tenants as most of the folks seem to be lawyers, contractors, etc.  Would be great if there were more start-ups in the co-working space but that will take time.

LTE? WTF?!

Received my iPhone 5 bright and early today. After a few SIM related glitches, I was able to get online and test out the new LTE connection. First, a comparison with standard WIFI. Below is my speed test of my home network (Comcast Performance - 20MB down and 5MB up per their specs).

Pretty respectable. I sometimes can get 10MB-15MB down but 5MB+ is the usual norm. Now check out the speed when I turned WIFI off...

Holy... freakin'... shnookies...

I have a feeling that I'm about to be throttled by AT&T quite frequently...

New iPhone, iOS6, etc.

Can't believe it's been two months since I last posted.  Things got busy, I got lazy, etc.  But lots of things coming up so felt it was a good time to get back on the saddle...

According to UPS, my new iPhone 5 arrives by 10:30am tomorrow.  Should be sweet.  

The biggest thing I'm looking forward to?  64GB of memory since I've got about 1.5GB left on my 32GB iPhone 4S (damn baby pictures/videos).

I've been reading about a ton of backlash with iOS6, especially maps.  I think this is great!  When everyone is constantly patting you on the back, you get complacent.  I even think all the success coming from the Android camp is welcome because it forces Apple to be better.  Competition helps everyone.  On a side note, I think the iOS6 maps aren't as bad as everyone makes it out to be.  Sure, there are some warped looking satellite images but I don't rely on that as much as I do the turn-by-turn directions which though aren't perfect, don't seem to be any worse than apps like Waze or TomTom.  I've gotten plenty of wrong directions from those guys.  Plus it's free and Apple will make it better.  I've been using the iOS6 developer beta for a couple of months now and trust me, after a few months of usage, you do get used to the maps.  The only glaring exception is Street View which I liked.  If Google decides to release a new Maps app for iOS, I'll probably download it.  If they decide to give it turn-by-turn directions, I'll probably use it over the Apple Maps app.  Outside of that and the occasional need to use Street View, I'll be using Apple's Map app most of the time as I'm sure most people will.