Though the announcement of the iPad mini was not a surprise at Apple’s product event on Tuesday, Apple did introduce a new memory drive few people in the audience had heard of called Fusion Drive, for the newly released iMac and Mac mini.
Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, unveiled Fusion Drive during his presentation of the new Mac products and upgrades. Fusion Drive is an optional feature that merges a 128GB flash drive (SSD) with a 1TB or 3TB hard drive — both into a single volume. It can be purchased as part of the new Macs, and in lieu of the traditional HDD or the latest Flash drives.
Schiller said the hybrid Fusion Drive will mean faster read and write performance for disk-intensive tasks and applications, such as increased speed for importing photos into Aperture and iPhoto, faster video rendering in iMovie, a 1.7x boot system rate for launching apps, and much more. Fusion Drive kicks in automatically with no prior need for setup or drive management.
Fusion Drive works by shifting your most used apps onto the SSD for increased performances. Schiller said that all the default applications (e.g. iCal, Safari, iMovie) that come installed in the new Macs are automatically managed by Fusion Drive, if purchased. Fusion Drive will automatically figure out what apps you use the most, and which of them will benefit from using the special flash drive rather the traditional HDD.
The extra cost of the Fusion Drive was not announced at Tuesday’s event and demonstration.
Source: AppleInsider
More articles about:
Hide 22 Comments
I wondered how long it might take Apple to start putting hybrid drives in their macs, nice article.
Interesting that no one saw this coming with all the predictions that were made.
From what I understand, this isn’t the classic hybrid drive where the drive controller decides what data resides on the SSD part, but rather a modification where the OS is in charge of positioning the data.
Hmmm, Dino, interesting point. Do you think Phil left this point out in his presentation yesterday?
I thought Apple had no more great ideas, but I think this is a awesome idea.
Like most of Apple great innovations this isn’t very original but I think this will bring hybrid drives mainstream.
I didn’t realize hybrid drives existed in other computers. So this isn’t exactly new?
Yeah, it does sound pretty good. I just wonder how much extra it will cost.
With separate purchases for the SSD and HDD you can end up somewhere near half the cost of the computer itself (not sure how’s the price in your region)-then the packaging and ‘Apple brand’. I’m sure it’d be quite shocking for the faint-hearted.
computer applelution… whats next?
will it work on windows,,,hmmm may be not!
Hmm, not sure.
Wow, great idea. Using SSD as part of the standar. And use the fast SSD for the most use apps. Sounds interesting, i think windows should consider make a system that can do the same thing.
Thanks for your feedback, Boni.
As a Windows guy I have to admit that the new iMac is sexy. Last year a put a Seagate Hybrid drive in my laptop and I think it is pretty slick but that has only 4gb of SSD while this new Fusion drive is 128GB!!! Pretty dang incredible. When the 27″ version comes out in Dec I will be making the trip to the apple store for a hands on look.
Yep, 128gigs seems very significant for SSD in this configuration. Thanks for your feedback.
wow! this sound awesome! will really love trying this! Bravo!
Doug, you thinking about getting the newest iMac and drive?
I’m excited about the iMac. I’ve never owned a desktop and live in an Apple ecosystem, so this may be my first desktop purchase.
Hey Charles, thanks for the feedback. Congrats on getting a Mac. I write several articles about Mac hardware and software, so keep updated with our site.
I am thinking to try this out
seems to be amazing
Yeah, it does. Wish I could afford to add it on.