optics

(Read our new head-to-head buyer's guide for an updated comparison between the 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro and Air.)

Just a few short months ago (in March, to be exact), we wrote about an odd glut in Apple's otherwise streamlined lineup of products: instead of one or even two 13-inch laptops to choose from, Apple was offering three. The white MacBook, the MacBook Air, and the MacBook Pro each had a slightly different value equation in terms of design, features, and price.

That glut's been lessened a little now that the white MacBook has been discontinued. The MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro are the only two MacBook product lines left, and they represent two different solutions to same problem. The unibody aluminum Pro used to be considered thin, but it's--relatively--thick at 1 inch, and weighs over 4 pounds. The Pro offers better specs, while the Air, which has just been recently updated, leans toward light weight and quick booting as its advantages.

There's more to consider, though: the 2011 13-inch MacBook Pro and new 13-inch MacBook Air have become more similar than they've ever been before, for several reasons: performance, battery life, and a Thunderbolt port.

Two 13-inch MacBooks: which do you choose?… Read more

Apple included an optical drive in most Mac models, and even for those who do not have an internal drive there are options for using external USB or Firewire drives. While optical drives should accept formatted and blank optical media, there are times when people find that discs automatically eject from the drive when inserted.

This happens because the drive cannot recognize the formatting of the disc and also does not recognize it as a burnable medium. Usually the drive will recognize a disc and attempt to communicate its file-system structure to the computer, but if it cannot read the … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers. This week readers wrote in asking questions on optical media no longer working, the OS requirements for installing OS X 10.7 Lion, how to determine SATA controller link speed, and Keynote crashing because of font problems. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present a few answers here, we welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: CDs and DVDs no longer working MacFixIt reader "mikart" asks:

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers. This week readers wrote in asking questions about the options for OS X 10.7 Lion recovery discs, CDs and DVDs automatically ejecting when inserted into the drive, and options for playing Flash media files in Keynote presentations. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present a few answers here, we welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: Information on OS X 10.7 Lion's recovery disk options MacFixIt reader "Paul&… Read more

There is no doubt that when compared to a mechanical hard drive, the new solid state drive (SSD) technology is by far superior in terms of speed. Data access and throughput can be well above 4x faster than a contemporary mechanical drive, and using it as your main boot drive widens a major bottleneck, resulting in exceptionally quick boot-ups, application launches, sleep and wake events, and shutdowns. Beyond speed, the drives also have a number of additional perks, including cooler operation than most mechanical drives, power efficiency resulting in longer battery life for laptops, silent operation, and higher tolerance for … Read more

When an optical disc is mounted in OS X, it cannot be ejected by pressing the button on the optical drive, as is the case with Windows PCs. In fact, even though some of Apple's OEM drives contain the standard eject button, it is hidden by the system's chassis. When mounted, the disc is locked by the system so to eject it you will have to do one of three things:

Drag to the trash Dragging a removable disc to the trash has been in the Mac OS since early on. It is how floppy disks were ejected … Read more

Apple's DVD Player is the default option for viewing DVD movies in OS X, and is set up in the "CDs and DVDs" section of the system preferences to automatically launch when a video DVD is mounted and recognized by the system. While a good tool for viewing DVDs, DVD Player does have some quirks, one of which appears to be the requirement for a properly recognized DVD player to be present in order to play DVDs. If not, then even though the external drive may read and mount DVD media, DVD Player will issue the "… Read more

In 2004, we covered Varioptic's liquid lens technology, reporting that by 2005 consumers could expect to see liquid lens cameraphones on store shelves. It's 2011, and we still don't have those products. But we're getting closer.

As a refresher, liquid lenses use two liquids--a refractive liquid (an oil), and a conductive, non-refractive liquid--together in a tiny sandwich, with the conductive liquid touching tiny electrodes. A current is applied to the electrodes to pull the liquid to them, and surface tension between the liquids changes the shape of the refractive material, and thus the optical characteristics of the lens package.

Simple liquid lenses have variable focal length, so they can focus. If you put four electrodes around the circumference of the lens, you can also change the axis of the lens, enabling image stabilization. The liquid lenses are faster to focus than current-tech voice-coil focusing lenses, and they take a fraction of the power, too. To make a liquid lens zoomable, you need a stack of three liquid lens components; that's in development. … Read more

Researchers have used a single laser to transmit data at 26 terabits per second over an optical fiber cable, a data-transmission breakthrough that promises to come in useful for cloud computing and 3D TV transmissions.

The transmission is biggest volume of data ever carried by a laser beam, according to the group of scientists, led by Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. With the demonstration, which sent the equivalent of 200,000 high-resolution images across 50 kilometers in one second, the researchers said they had broken their own record of 10Tbps, set in 2010.

"To the best of our … Read more