“The 2011 MacBook Air comes with an unadvertised feature: support for the SATA 6 Gb/s interface — which has twice the bandwidth of the 3 Gb/s SATA bus in the 2010 MacBook Air,” Jason D. O’Grady reports for ZDNet. “This means that the 2011 MBA is capable of pushing data rates to over 500MB/s — if you have the right SSD, that is. Apple basically hobbles the MacBook Air by shipping it with a SATA 3 Gb/s SSD.”
“OWC’s 6G Mercury Aura Pro Express [US$1,129] uses a screaming SandForce SF-2281 controller and Toshiba Toggle NAND and when combined with the 2011 MBA’s SATA 6 Gb/s interface pushes 511 MB/s read speeds and 448 MB/s write speeds according to OWC’s benchmarks,” O’Grady reports. “All I can say is that the thing is fast… The 6G Merc from OWC fully leverages the 6G SSD bus and cranks data rates to over 500MB/s – which is scorching fast.”
Read more in the full article, including benchmark porn, here.
Is it really expensive? Probably why Apple doesn’t choose to use it, no?
Yeah, right: Apple “hobbles” the MBA by not adding $1,100 to the sticker price for such a drive. Hello? That’s NOT “hobbling”- that’s making it affordable. Not everyone needs that speed (certainly not at the price)
Note the capacity: 480GB. For 256GB, a Crucial M4 SSD SATA3 6GB bus is around $320.
So Apple is indeed crippling the MBA with a 3GB SATA2 bus.
“So Apple is indeed crippling the MBA with a 3GB SATA2 bus.”
Obviously still for cost reasons though.
“So Apple is indeed crippling the MBA with a 3GB SATA2 bus.”
No, it has a 6 GB bus. Apple chose NOT to add another $320 to the price of the unit by adding a 256GB SSD SATA3 6GB SSD. Apple has a history of NOT providing expensive features of little value (for most people) just for the sake of spec inflation. Is there anything vital that this unit won’t do with the current hardware? No. Then why make things unnecessarily expensive?
Thank you for the sober analysis.
The MacBook Air doesn’t use a 2.5″ drive so the crucial drive wouldn’t be compatible.
The absolute worst you can say about Apple here is that they don’t give us the option to upgrade. But that’s it.
I feel so dirty even reading this story – too much screaming. I think I need to take a shower …
Also reliability. Apple isn’t going to add something that hasn’t been fully tested yet. Besides, when did this OWC component arrive?
Hobbling? My old back screen door.
All good questions I’m sure, why don’t you wait right here for the answer.
I just shot my data wad. Somebody get me a magnet.
Folks shop around before commiting yourselfs to purchasing
SSD and memory products from OWC.
Failure to heed my words means you are someone that likes to be ripped off
or have so much $s you dont mind throwing away some.
Numerous SSD’s are now on the market with more capacity, and performance on par,
or that exceeds the performance of OWC SSD products.
OWC does sell third party SSD’s but OWC sells these products at higher prices than there
competitors. Same applies to their memory products.
CRUCIAL SSD’s
$639.99 Crucial M4 Series 512GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148527
$329.99 Crucial M4 Series 256GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148443
PLEXTOR SSD’s
$679.99 Plextor M3 Pro Series 512GB (Pro’s are most recent models)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249022
$659.99 Plextor M3 Series 512GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249018
$374.99 Plextor M3 Pro Series 256GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249021
$339.99 Plextor M3 Series 256GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249015
SAMSUNGS’s
$719.99 Samsung 830 Series 512GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147136
$379.99 Samsung 830 Series 256GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147138
MACBOOK PRO MEMORY
MUSHKIN
$134.99 Mushkin Enhanced 16GB(2x8GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226301
G.SKILL
$134.99 16GB (2 x 8GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231576
CRUCIAL
$139.99 16GB (2x8GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233251
Also keep in mind that lots of manufactuers like to buy, rebrand prodcts, and sell them
at a higher price.
Please get a clue before recommending products. This is about MacBook Air. Every SSD I clicked on from your overly-excessive list of “recommendations” is a 2.5″ SSD. MacBook Air DOES NOT use SSD’s of that physical size. It uses special “thickness-optimized” SSD’s that look more like RAM sticks. That’s probably why they cost more than “generic” 2.5″ SSD’s, because they are specialized.
Also, you list RAM that does not work with MacBook Air… MacBook Air uses only built-in RAM (not upgradeable after purchase).
Anyone following your advice would get “ripped off” because the product would not even work with a MacBook Air. The folks at OWC are Mac experts. I order with confidence that a particular product will work well with my particular Mac model, because they have tested it.
@kent1w. 1st thing first. List was meant to be overly-excessive. 2nd i dont care if the posting was about Macbook Air or planet toga woga. My objective really was to impart to readers the wisdom of shopping around before committing oneself to purchases from OWC or any other PC hardware merchant.
Why would someone be mislead by my list and end up getting ripped off.
Are you implying that Mac users are not smart and suffer from reading and comprehension problems.
What’s the point of posting links for irrelevant products. You might as well post links to 3.5-inch hard drives and internal optical drives. Don’t compound your mistake with ridiculous excuses…
@kent1w
Sounds like u work 4 OWC. LOL
Hey… half the people here “sound like” they work for Apple, so what’s your point…? 🙂
For macbook pro the OWC Mercury extreme pro 6g 240 gb is great!
Boot to open browser in 10 seconds!
Also Intel 520 for 359 at new egg is a great deal