Apple ads and fast drives

The new 27-inch iMac has a Thunderbolt port for high-speed transfers. Photo / Supplied

It's a bit weird being in a country where there are Apple ads everywhere. Almost every ad break on TV seems to have an ad for iPad or iPhone (compared to NZ), and there are ads in the tube stations, big billboards by the road...

On TV, actually, it's not just Apple advertising Apple. Macs may not be as high a percentage of British computer use as they are in New Zealand (I'm guessing, I don't know the figures, but that's my feeling), but the iPhone has definitely been a big hit.

Apart from seeing them being used all over the place, it seems a bragging point to advertise almost anything by virtue of its iPhone app. Weight loss, transport services, supermarkets, you name it.

I had a meeting with Sonnet Technologies' marketing maven for many territories, including New Zealand. The irrepressible Jolanda Blum hails from Switzerland and seems to be somewhere else every time I hear from her, so I was pretty happy that we coincided in London. That may sound strange as Jolanda actually works from London, but she'd only been 'home' for less than a week since the beginning of March, maintaining her contacts and attending trade shows.

Sonnet has a wide range of products, from the handy (like Carapace keyboard covers and USB/FireWire dongles) to high-end, fast, premium storage products like eSATA drive arrays.

As promised, the company now has Thunderbolt drives available. There's the Fusion F2TBR portable 2-drive RAID which uses SSD flash media as storage. Thunderbolt throughput with SSD speed! Man, I'd love one of these for shooting video in the field!

The Fusion E400TBR5 and D800TBR5 also have Thunderbolt, combining the new high-speed interface with multiple traditional hard drive platters (4 or 8) and high-speed RAID controllers.

I don't know the NZ prices yet, but MacSense may already have them listed.

The new 27-inch iMacs, by the way, have two Thunderbolt ports and can run two additional HD screens out of the box. Three screens! I didn't think this was actually a plan of Apple's, but Thunderbolt+ new iMac + Sonnet Technologies Fusion looks like one doozy of a video solution, or game building setup etc.

This all again begs the question: what will Apple pull out of the box for the new Mac Pro, which will most likely be revealed in a few weeks at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference? It will have to be very impressive. All eyes on June 6th.

Meanwhile, new Mac minis and MacBooks are anticipated with, at the very least, Thunderbolt ports and newer, faster CPUs.

Later that night, having zoomed up the motorway, I was having an ale in an old pub in Milton Keynes with a son of my mother's cousin. Milton Keynes is renowned in the UK for being one of the first fully planned cities, but it was actually created by building the town within a ring of ancient villages - we were in one: Stoneycroft. It has all the Milton Keynes planned-town roadways shielded from the houses by belts of trees either side of the roadways, and since it is spring, the perhaps nondescript terraced houses were practically not to be seen.

My relative, Nigel Feetenby, assured me that in winter it's not the case. The trees lose all their leaves. But everything's blossoming and abundant and warm here - I can still hardly believe my luck.

Mind you, I started to wonder how true anything Nigel was telling me. He and his wife Sheila took me to a pub called, I kid you not, The Cock.

And this is across the way from the Bull. These pubs were old coaching and stabling stops on the ancient carriage route. Travellers and coachmen told tales and by the time they'd gone from one pub to the other, the tales had grown and changed ... leading to the expression that sounds like 'a Cock and Bull story!'

TomTom has been an absolute godsend. Even in the nightmare of London's streets and one-way roads and huge circus-like roundabouts, imposing buses, special taxi lanes, cyclists, bewildered tourists used to the other side of the road looking the wrong way before crossing, and the like.

I hired some bland, nondescript car from Hertz to do some driving in. Well, that's what I thought. It's no race-car or anything (a Kia c'eed) but I was pleased to discover a USB connector in the dash.

I didn't get any functionality with my iPhone as a music source (apparently it works with some iPods) but I don't mind. It happily charges the iPhone while I drive and not only that, there's a kind of recess in the dash that fits the iPhone exactly, so you can place it where it's visible through the steering wheel to easily glance at TomTom's navigation data. Fingertip controls in the steering wheel let me shut the radio up when the Australian voice on TomTom Western Europe app tells me to turn left into a town or whatever.

I also appreciate the choice of Fastest or Eco routes (if I have time for some sightseeing). Also, I told it to avoid toll roads completely.

I would be stopping and poring over maps constantly if it wasn't for this app - and it covers Holland and Belgium too, where I also have some business.

(This may not surprise many of you readers, but my own regular Auckland drive is a no-bells-and-whistles 1996 Toyota Corolla.)

I've only had one problem with TomTom, and that's because of a local peculiarity. I'm staying near Naseby in Northampton and I was looking for 'Haselbech Rd'. It turned out, after some fruitless searching, to be the road from Naseby to Haselbech - which is a village consisting of a big church and about 12 houses. So there is no Haselbech Rd; it's called something else. So if I didn't know that, how could TomTom?

The iPhone's been worth it's weight - with a tough Wrapsol covering it's handling constant use and transfers from pocket to bag to dash many times a day. Wrapsol is a clear covering that keeps touch sensitivity working just like it should.

I have a meeting later this week to get more information about Mac security with Sophos, and several in Holland ... of which, more later.

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com