We mentioned the announcement of Elgato’s portable Thunderbolt SSD last week, and since then it appears as though more and more Thunderbolt devices are being announced, as more and more users are looking for high speed storage solutions.

ars technica has a good preview of the Thunderbolt devices on display at the 2012 International CES, which is currently underway in Las Vegas.

Our head tech James recently implemented Promise’s Pegasus RAID with Thunderbolt at one client site, and reported that the transfer speeds EXCEEDED his expectations. With the Promise Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt RAID + Mac mini server, reads over AFP / the network were clocking in at 100MB/s (or, 800Mbps, which would be the theoretical FireWire max).  Some site examples: 8GB upload over the network in under 2 minutes (i.e., much faster than a direct FireWire connection), and a 100GB download in around 10 minutes.

The new iPhone 4S was officially announced today, and pre-orders will be taken as of this Friday, October 7. The iPhone 4S comes in black or white, and is $199 for the 16GB, $299 for the 32GB, and $399 for the 64GB (with contract). But!  Users now have the choice between AT&T, Verizon and Sprint as far as carriers are concerned.

The latest and greatest version of the iPhone includes an amazing 8-megapixel camera that can record 1080p video AND has a new image signal processor for image stabilization (which brings it up to par with most point-and-shoot cameras on the market).

The processor is a zippy Dual-core Apple A5, which makes apps launch faster and increases the speediness of all the functions of the phone.  Battery life is also much improved over the iPhone 4, with up to 8 hours of talk time on 3G.

The iPhone 4S is also a proper “World Phone” – Hybrid GSM / CDMA and Bluetooth 4.0.

But really the most exciting part of the new phone is Siri, the “Assistant” or live AI.  Siri lets you use your voice to send text messages, schedule appointments, make phones calls, find restaurants… just about anything you would normally do with your iPhone.  Check out the video of how Siri works here.

So the white version of Apple’s iPhone 4 went on sale yesterday. Should be the same device but just a different color, right? Well, it seems as though there is a slight difference between the two versions. MacRumors reported yesterday that the white iPhone 4 is slightly thicker than the black iPhone 4 (see photos here). While the report notes that the size difference is noticeable to someone who has the black version of the iPhone 4, it’s really only a 0.2mm difference in thickness so all available iPhone 4 cases look as though they will still work.

A lot of users out there are still wondering which is better — MacBook Air or iPad 2?  I tweeted about this a while ago, but thought I’d revisit the question as it has been coming up a lot lately.

Brooke Crothers wrote a spot-on review of the two machines for CNET a few weeks back. His verdict (much the same as ours) is that the MacBook Air is probably a better value for users who need to have great browsing and media capability AS WELL AS the ability to use the software that is part of their every day workflow. And it’s much faster, too!

For the full list of pros and cons, click here.

Attention fellow Mac users!  We’ve already had a report of a user bricking his iPhone when he updated to iOS 4.3.  We caution all our clients and users out there to wait until we’ve had a chance to read through the reports being posted on the interwebs and test it out ourselves…

Most of the rumors turned out to be true. The iPad 2 is thinner, faster AND lighter! It does indeed have TWO (2) cameras on the front and the back (FaceTime for iPad!). The new 1GHz dual-core A5 chip is supposed to be twice as fast as the original, with ultra fast graphics up to nine times (9x!) faster.

While we were a bit disappointed that there’s no Thunderbolt connectivity on the new iPad 2, we were pleasantly surprised to see HDMI output on the new tablet (it does require an Apple Digital AV Adapter).

The iPad 2 will be available for order on March 11!

The Apple Store is down, which is a definite sign that a new device is going to debut. All reports point to the release of a second-generation iPad, since the invitation to today’s media event shows this image:

The new iPad 2 is purported to be thinner, have more RAM and a faster processor and one or even two cameras.

Full coverage of the event begins at 1:00pm NYC time and you can tune in by visiting Macworld.

Photos of the low-end 13″ MacBook Pro have been revealed by MacRumors (via the German site fscklog), who confirms that the images are legitimate.

The specs (in German) for the 13″ MacBook Pro are as follows:

Core i5 two cores at 2.3 GHz 3 MB cache
4 GB of DDR3 1333 MHz
Hard Drive 320 GB 5400 rpm
Screen 13.33 “glossy 1280×800
Intel Graphics GPU HD 3000 with 384MB of RAM shared with main memory
Camera HD FaceTime
Superdrive 8x
Thunderbolt yet compatible with the I / O devices and high speed MiniDisplayport
SDXC Card slot, Firewire 800 and two USB 2.0
Digital Audio Output
Integrated Ethernet
Backlit keyboard
Size and weight 32.5 x22, 7×2, 41 cm, 2.04 kg

The mysterious Thunderbolt could be Apple’s answer to Light Peak.

Yesterday TUAW posted an update on the new MacBook Pros that are rumored to be released next month. TUAW’s post cites several sources that point to a February 24 announcement.  The report also mentions that the new MacBook Pros may include a new “high-speed connection technology” based on Intel’s Light Peak, which means data transfer speeds will exceed those of USB or FireWire.

We’ve had a lot of clients ask us about the new MacBook Pro rumors that have been circulating lately.  For our clients who are in the market for a new MacBook Pro and ask Need Mac Help for our Macintosh tech and equipment recommendations, we’ve been asking them to hold off buying one until March (unless they absolutely, positively have to have an MacBook Pro right now, of course), because there’s a strong possibility that Apple will announce a new MacBook Pro lineup on March 1st.

The last MacBook Pro 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch models were introduced in April 2010, and this is the longest that Apple has gone without releasing an update to the line since its introduction in January 2006.

Several tech blogs have speculated that Apple will unveil quite a few major upgrades to the MacBook Pro line, such as better displays, better battery life, and updated designs.

The folks at Apple Mac blog Mactrast claims that the new MacBook Pros will have a new battery technology that provides 20% more battery life. They also state that the new line will be significantly lighter than the current models, which begs the question — would Apple get rid of optical drives entirely in its line of MacBook Pro notebooks?

I guess we will have to wait until March 1st to find out…