Simultaneity in the AirPlay Universe

Most Apple products support the streaming of audio (and some even video) data through the network to AirPlay enabled devices like Apple TV, AirPort Express or third vendor products. Apple advertises the AirPlay technology with:

[...], you can stream your tunes to more than one room simultaneously, [...]. AirPlay works over Wi-Fi or an Ethernet connection, or a combination of both.

But how simultan can these devices stream under real world conditions? I tried to address this issue with two 2nd generation Apple TVs and an iMac Streaming through Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet. It proved to be a difficult task to measure this precisely! Continue reading

Installing additional SSD in Mid-2010 27" iMac

The 27" version of the Mid-2010 iMac is available with an additional 256 GB Solid State Drive for a small extra fee of $750. As I already owned an 160 GB Intel X25 G2 SSD I wanted to use this in my new iMac as well. There is several information on the web, how to replace the hard disk or the optical drive with a SDD, but information about adding a SSD without losing the hard drive and the optical drive is very rare.

spare parts

The problem is, that all iMac which haven't been ordered with the built-in SDD miss the mounting option for the SDD and the cables. So you have to order them separately. Fortunately http://applecomponents.com has them in stock. You will need three parts:

  • The power cable 922-9531 with connectors for logic board, LED backlight, hard disk and SDD which replaces the old power cable.
  • The mounting kit 922-9485 for the SSD which will replace a small plastic part
  • The SATA data cable 922-9538 which connects the SSD with the logic board

Continue reading