May saw a few updates in Apple’s arsenal of products. As a courtesy to our customers and readers, we’ll recap them here with links to pertinent information.
As of May 29th, some Intel-based Mac models have firmware updates available for EFI Boot ROM or SMC firmware (System Management Controller). The most recent updates are for the most recently released products; none of the older Intel-based Macs seem to have updates, yet. According to Apple, Software Update may not alert you that a firmware update is available. Click this page, EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Macs, and check your firmware version as explained in the support article. Download links and full instructions appear on that page.
Macworld UK reports that the SMC firmware update for 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro laptops adjusts the behavior of the fan under high workloads. The MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.3 is available for MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2008), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2008), MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.4/2.2 GHz), MacBook Pro (17-inch, 2.4 GHz), as detailed on the EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Macs support page linked above.
If you use Keynote, Numbers, or Pages, then you own iWork. iWork 09 was updated to version 9.0.2 last week. Software Update should alert you to the update, but you can also download it. Apple’s download page simply states that the “update improves reliability when saving some iWork documents and when playing some presentations more than once per Keynote session.” If you don’t yet own the very useful iWork, you can order it today from OWC.
Another welcome Apple update was a speed bump for a new MacBook. This $999 laptop now includes a 160GB hard drive (up from 120GB) and a respectable 2.13 GHz processor instead of the previous 2.0GHz. The RAM is slightly faster now too, clocking in at 800MHz versus the previous 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM. The Apple Store includes the complete specifications.
We do not endorse, certify, or recommend any of these updates – we’re just keeping you informed!
Don’t forget that you can achieve the best performance for all your Macintosh computers by maxing out the RAM. OWC offers RAM for nearly every model Mac made over the past two decades at very reasonable prices. Please check out our OWC Memory page to find the best memory for your machine.
