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TidBITS#1135/23-Jul-2012

With July fast coming to a close without Mountain Lion having shipped, we continue our push to publish practical articles that aren’t specific to any particular version of Mac OS X. Jeff Carlson shares the story about how he replaced the optical drive in his MacBook Pro with a speedy SSD, leaving the 500 GB hard drive in place for large files. And Glenn Fleishman examines the problem of dealing with low-bandwidth situations while traveling or being tethered to an expensive mobile broadband connection. Also this week, Google buys the Sparrow email client, and Michael Cohen points to some nagging problems with iCloud as indication that Apple needs to improve the reliability of the cloud-based service. Notable software releases this week include Quicksilver β69, GraphicConverter 8.2, Carbon Copy Cloner 3.5, ChronoSync 4.3.4 and ChronoAgent 1.3.4, SpamSieve 2.9.3, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Update 1.0, Alfred 1.3, CloudPull 2.1.2, Mellel 3.0, and SOHO Organizer 9.2.8.

Jeff Carlson 29 comments

SSD Optical Drive Replacement Speeds a Sluggish MacBook Pro

After experiencing the speed offered by the new Retina MacBook Pro — but needing to return the review unit — Jeff Carlson decided to put a solid-state drive into his sluggish MacBook Pro. But because he couldn’t give up its existing storage, he tried something different: he replaced the optical drive with the SSD.

TidBITS Staff No comments

ExtraBITS for 23 July 2012

We have a number of interesting ExtraBITS for you this week, including news of Tor Books going DRM-free, a sad farewell to Spell Catcher author Evan Michael Gross, the addition of a Cards pages to Trello, and word that Qantas Airways will be providing iPads for in-flight entertainment on some flights.