May 15, 2025 • 37 mins
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Ever wondered if your "failing" memory cards might just need some TLC? Larry O'Connor, founder and CEO of OWC (Other World Computing), shatters common misconceptions about technology lifespan while revealing game-changing approaches to extending the life of your digital gear.
Since founding OWC in 1988, O'Connor has maintained a singular focus: "giving users more from the technology they have." What began as memory upgrades for Apple computers has evolved into comprehensive storage solutions, docks, and software tools designed to maximize performance and longevity.
O'Connor reveals why so many photographers and videographers prematurely discard perfectly good memory cards. Most perceived "failures" simply result from dirty caches rather than actual hardware deterioration. OWC's Energize software can sanitize these cards and restore factory-original performance in seconds, potentially saving creative professionals substantial money while reducing electronic waste.
O'Connor also explains Thunderbolt technology, explaining why its universal compatibility, maximum performance, and ability to handle both power and data through a single cable make it indispensable for creators who need reliable equipment. "If you are a mission creator, you want to be in a situation where you don't have to think about what you're connecting," he notes.
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Hosted and produced by Gary Pageau
Edited by Olivia Pageau
Announcer: Erin Manning
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Erin Manning (00:02):
Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the
photo imaging industry'sleading news source.
Here's your host, Gary Pageau.
The Dead Pixels Society podcastis brought to you by Mediaclip,
(00:23):
Advertek Printing, andIndependent Photo Imagers.
Gary Pageau (00:23):
Hello who's joined by Larry O'Connor,
who's the founder and CEO ofOther World Computing, or, as
mostpeople know it these days, OWC.
Hi Larry, how are you today?
Larry O'Connor (00:35):
I'm doing great, Gary.
Thanks for having me onappreciate being here.
Gary Pageau (00:38):
So you've been in the computer hardware world
almost as long as there havebeen computers.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthe founding of the company in
terms of you know where you camefrom and starting the business
back in 1988?
Larry O'Connor (00:52):
You know it's always been about giving users
more from Macs technology thatthey have.
You know where can we put theenvelope and just let you do
more.
And back in 1988, there was alot of untapped opportunity with
memory upgrades, later storagethat you know.
Apple made it seem verycomplicated.
You know, focus on Apple and wemade it really really simple.
(01:13):
But it was all about againthese are great machines, let's
make them do more.
Let's let the users do morewith what they already have.
Gary Pageau (01:20):
And yeah, I've noticed that because I bought,
as I mentioned earlier, I boughta few things from you guys over
the years and it always beenSanta Mac focused.
But you have other prod memoryproducts and that seems to be
like the main focus has been thememory piece, which has always
been a I wouldn't say achallenge, especially in the
early days of Macs.
They were almost, I wouldn'tsay underpowered, but
underutilized.
What was the reason you decidedto focus on that market as
(01:44):
opposed to even at 1988, I thinkthe DOS market was probably
larger?
Larry O'Connor (01:51):
Well, I was an Apple user.
Ultimately, I was my owncustomer.
I mean, this was something thatI needed, right, and looking at
how, for all intents andpurposes, how easy it was, this
is something that anybody coulddo at home, and it was such an
easy way to substantiallyimprove the performance of, well
, the computer you already had.
And, as opposed to having tospend you know whatever number
(02:12):
of time driving, ripping yourcomputer apart, driving it into
an apple store, leaving it therefor a couple days, this was
something you could do in lessthan 10 minutes in your house,
right in your business, whereyou were, and and this was.
It just made a ton of sense,and that's that's how we got
started, did?
Gary Pageau (02:30):
you start as like a shop that would repair people's
Macs and then got into mailorder, or were you always
providing components?
Larry O'Connor (02:39):
started right in the components.
It was something to me again.
To me it was just highwayrobbery.
What was was happening withservice, especially with HRs,
yeah, how long it took.
And it was something that thiswas very, this was something
very easy to do.
So it was.
This was also where OWC becamevery educational.
It wasn't just selling theproduct, it was also putting out
documentation and explaininghey, this is how you do it,
(03:01):
these are the benefits, you know, this is why you want to do
this.
And hey, you know, if you breaka chip?
I remember the first customerthat we shipped, and one of the
first customers was worried well, what if I break a chip?
I said well, you know, it costsmore to pay somebody to install
it than to buy another set ofmemory.
You're not going to first off,you're not going a chip.
This is back in the Sims and itdepends on what computer you had
(03:24):
.
It's either the chips or theSims.
But this is really easy,Nothing to worry about.
Off to the races.
Then got to external storage.
I mean, everybody needed morestorage and actually in 1992,
OWC had the very firstbus-powered hard drives.
For anybody who had bus-powereddrives.
Back in the day there werefloppy drives, so everybody had
(03:50):
a floppy drive port.
Our hard drives powered off thefloppy port.
There were SCSI drives that usedthe power off the floppy port
to the power up, so verycost-effective, very convenient
and looked like a three and ahalf inch floppy drive back in
the day which, you know, I'menvisioning several of perhaps
our younger listeners runningaround going what's scuzzy,
what's floppy?
Gary Pageau (04:08):
I mean these are all antiquated phrases these
days, but it was really quitedifficult back then to add
peripherals and componentsbecause of the varying, you know
standards there.
You know it wasn't plug andplay, certainly back then in
those days.
Larry O'Connor (04:23):
Yeah, there are a few more, certainly barriers.
I mean it wasn't superdifficult but, like everything
you know, there were thesebarriers and they and, if
nothing else, just thesemisconceptions of maybe, perhaps
why you shouldn't do it or whyit was difficult to do.
And again, our goal was to makethis as easy as possible and
show people the light so thatthey could take advantage again.
I mean unleash, you know thebeast and those great Macs that
(04:45):
they had.
Gary Pageau (04:46):
You know you started in Illinois but you're
worldwide now.
How did that evolution takeplace?
Because I mean, certainly therewere a lot of years there where
Apple was struggling even tostay alive, like in the 90s.
There was a lot of issues there.
Was that a concern for you?
Or did your growth kind ofparallel Apple's growth?
Because you know, I've read thebiographies.
(05:07):
I was around back in the day.
You know there were a lot ofyears when, you know, apple
wasn't selling a lot of Macsback then there were some
challenges.
Larry O'Connor (05:16):
You know, in good years and difficult years,
people always need to get morefrom the technology that they've
already purchased.
Gary Pageau (05:22):
Right right.
Larry O'Connor (05:23):
So on the upgrade space, I mean we were
always what people needed andquite honestly, we were doing
this.
I mean, again, we were our owncustomers.
We enjoyed doing this.
We certainly absolutely benefitfrom the growth of Apple, but
even when Apple was struggling,there was such a large market
opportunity I mean, there's justso much you can do with these
machines that nobody was doingat that time and, honestly, we
(05:45):
were there to open doors and,like I said, we were our own
customers.
Our customers also gave usgreat feedback.
There was again, the world waspretty wide open.
It absolutely helped when thejobs came back and got them on
the right track, to say theleast.
That created an opportunity forexplosion.
That created an opportunity forexplosion.
But even before that, hey,these were always.
Apple has long built some ofthe best machines in the world
(06:09):
period, and having theopportunity to make those
machines better, hey, that waswhat we were there for.
Gary Pageau (06:27):
But also part of the challenge you've got, though
, as an accessory maker is, youknow, the reality is they've
closed up the machines.
Now I mean, you can't pry opena macbook like you used to and
insert more memory, and noteasily.
It's much more difficult thanyou said, because they either
want you to, you know it'ssealed tight.
So when did you realize youneeded, like kind of pivot, a
little bit from that?
Larry O'Connor (06:41):
well, if you look at the history of abc, I
mean started in memory, got intoexternal storage actually, and
then in the early 2000s we werethe first company to have, how
do I say, some firewire storagefor off-tracker purposes and
that was a great way toexternally upgrade systems,
processor upgrades, firstcompany to actually really dive
(07:03):
into processor upgrades in thelate 90s.
I mean this is, you know,there's always these different
steps along the way and if yougo back about that it's already
now about 15 years.
Got in the solid state drives,got in the Thunderbolt and today
, you're right, actually youcan't even upgrade the memory of
these systems.
Right, and upgrading solidstate, I mean there's ways to do
it, but the flash, the realityis you really can't get the
(07:26):
flash that you need to do theupgrades, not in Viome, it's
very difficult because it's I'lljust leave it like this, it's
without throwing others underthe bus, it's a very proprietary
flash.
Right, it's using these andunfortunately it's just not
something you really can getyour hands on.
Right, but Thunderbolt openedup brand new paths, starting
about again 15 years ago, toexpand machines externally, so
(07:50):
what you couldn't put insidesystems you could connect
externally.
And that's I mean it's really.
And again you go.
Anybody who's you know, today,buying a mac, even a pc, for a
greater purpose is what you cando with a thunderbolt cable.
It's really, I mean it's.
To somebody you know, 20 yearsago it's almost unimaginable.
Oh sure, the simple cable.
(08:12):
What was fast, you know, 20years ago.
Yeah, you know, it doesn't evenhold the can.
I mean it is.
I mean it's today thunderbolt.
This is a blink in terms of thehow much faster it is by
comparison.
And it's just a simple cable.
You can plug it in.
There's no direction to it, youdon't have to worry about
lining anything up, it justplugs in whichever way you want
to plug it in and it just goes.
Gary Pageau (08:32):
That's anywhere, yeah, and it's faster.
It's universal and you can dodifferent things with it.
It's a power cable as well as adata transfer cable and other
things.
Larry O'Connor (08:42):
Yeah, for cable and other things.
Yeah, actually in advance.
I mean something our customers,a lot of our customers, take
advantage of with Thunderboltsingle cable that works for
everything.
On a trip I bring a Thunderboltcable because I can use it for
power, I can use it for data andI never have to worry about
what I'm using it for.
Anything that's C to C if it'sa Thunderbolt cable, thunderbolt
(09:04):
4 cable, thunderbolt 5 cablewill give me the maximum
performance and maximum power,maximum data.
It works with everything.
If I pull out a USB C to C cable, I got to really make sure that
cable is compatible.
A lot of C to C cables are justpower.
I mean people.
You know the number one techsupport call that we still get
(09:24):
is from somebody who's usingtypically their Apple cable,
their Apple C2C cable.
That came with their poweradapter and they're trying to
connect a dock or data deviceand it's a really high quality
cable.
The only problem is it's justbuilt for power.
Every cable, though the C2C,has to do at least USB 2.
So you get this little bit ofdata stream, which is what's
(09:45):
used also to navigate powerdelivery when you plug it into
the device.
If it even registers.
It's like what's going on here?
I mean it's barely working.
It's like, and it's, orespecially with the dock.
I mean some of the questions,and I'd never assumed this.
We had a customer who had aniMac and a MacBook Air.
We'll, who had an iMac and aMacBook Air, will never forget
us.
After an Apple update, you know,the assumption was I mean, the
(10:06):
customer had assumed this waspushing us hard that something
broke up with their iMac.
It's like this doesn't make anysense.
It's working fine with theirMacBook Air.
It doesn't work with their iMac.
And I can't take credit for ourtech support.
I'm just turning over to ourproduct.
I don't know what's going onhere.
He Turn it over to our product.
I don't know what's going onhere.
He was using his Apple cable.
He was using a different cable.
He was taking the dock back andforth, not the laptop back and
(10:29):
forth.
He was just using the Applepower cable.
I said, yeah, that would barelywork.
That's the problem.
But Thunderbolt makes it so, soeasy.
Thunderbolt cables especiallytake the guesswork out.
I mean, if you are a missioncreator, you want to be in a
situation where you don't haveto think about what you're
connecting, or connecting withThunderbolt cables just always
work.
Erin Manning (10:48):
And.
Larry O'Connor (10:48):
Thunderbolt is an amazing, fantastic technology
.
Usb-c and hey, we sell USB-C.
Usb-c is just a connector.
I should actually kind ofclarify that USB devices really
aren't certified.
If it's Thunderbolt, it'scertified.
You've got to be very carefulwho you buy a USB product from,
(11:08):
because there's a lot ofvariability and there's even
some risk in using just USB.
Thunderbolt can guarantee thework.
Gary Pageau (11:15):
You could use.
For example, if you'reconnecting a USB-C device, you
can connect that to aThunderbolt dock through a cable
.
I mean they're not incompatible, it's just the dock right
through a cable.
I mean they're not incompatible, it's just the other way around
.
Might be a challenge.
Larry O'Connor (11:31):
Correct you can't plug a Thunderbolt device
into a USB-only system.
Right, but you can plug a USBinto pretty much anything and
you can use a Thunderbolt cableif it connects C to C.
If it's a C connection on bothends, you can use a Thunderbolt
cable to connect any device thatconnects C to C.
If it's a C connection on bothends, you can use a Thunderbolt
cable to connect any device at.
C to C.
Gary Pageau (11:48):
It's kind of good this stuff is settling down.
I mean I know you know Applewas thrilled with you know the
lightning, you know cable for awhile because it was proprietary
and I believe it was more.
It had more to do with the EUtelling them they needed to do
USB-C.
That kind of forced them tokind of adopt Thunderbolt, which
I think is going to benefiteverybody in the long run.
Larry O'Connor (12:07):
It's always tough and you know this
proprietary, separate interface.
I kind of understood what Applewas doing with lightning.
They had some pretty coolthings enabled, you know, with
that lightning chip and somesecurity.
But of course they couldintegrate that into the system,
into the silicon chip with C2C.
So you know they made thetransition and well, for all
usbc now and I, it is certainlysimpler.
(12:28):
Like I said, my iphone when I'mon a trip I'm using a
thunderbolt cable to the powerto charge my iphone yeah, you
can bring far fewer things forthe consumer, certainly, I mean.
Gary Pageau (12:37):
And then if you lose it and you need to go to an
airport kiosk to get areplacement, it's easier to get
as opposed to.
I mean, how many flavors of usbwere there for a while there?
I mean there was the mini, themicro, I mean there were like
seven different kinds of one.
Larry O'Connor (12:51):
I think at one point it was crazy there are a
few, yeah many, uh tech b andthen the micro, the trapezoid,
that the big one it was.
Gary Pageau (13:00):
It was crazy so let's talk a lot about how you
know people who are kind of inthe in the creative world are
using your products, right?
A lot of my audience are thepeople who service creators or
whatever, and you know, workingwith choosing devices, attaching
different devices these days,with Lightning, you're not going
(13:20):
to get a performance hit byattaching multiple devices to
one of your docks, right,because the throughput is so
great.
Larry O'Connor (13:28):
Correct Depends.
I mean, if you look at our ownmedia cards, I mean we're
providing ingest speeds on atype A card of up to almost
2,000 megs a second and a type Bcard approaching 4,000 megs a
second.
Sd, of course, is a lot slower.
I mean you're less than 500megs a second.
But in terms of the performance, when you're less than 500 megs
a second, but in terms of theperformance when you're plugging
(13:49):
multiple things into a dock,yes, there's plenty of bandwidth
to share and it'sbi-directional, which also makes
a big difference.
Time is, I think, the mostimportant thing that creators
value a lot more, especially inthe bigger shoots.
I mean, if you're doing rapidstills, there's so much more
video being shot, even forphotographers, and if you can
cut that ingest time down from,you know, 20 minutes down to 10
(14:12):
minutes, down to five minutes,which requires fast storage as
well as a fast reader that makesit big.
Gary Pageau (14:17):
I mean that's more time to be out there, because a
lot of these folks, time ismoney and if they're opting for
you know budget cards, they'reactually costing themselves
whatever time they probablywould have been saving buying a
name brand card.
Larry O'Connor (14:31):
Well, it's more than that, though.
If you look at again, I'll plugour Atlas cards.
Gary Pageau (14:36):
A plug is okay, so please.
Larry O'Connor (14:40):
We were the first company to bring out PCI
Gen 4 cards, which for thecameras.
You see all the compatibility.
You're going to get the maximum, whatever the different modes
your camera supports.
That's not the issue.
The benefit becomes on theingest side.
I mean, you're ingesting at twoto four times the speed that
you do with a lot of other cards, so you're getting the data
onto your drive, off that card,at a much higher speed, a much
(15:03):
higher velocity.
The other piece of the equationthat comes with the Atlas cards
is Energize and what Energizeallows.
You know, for lack of a betterway to really explain this in a
game.
When we got into the space, welooked at two things.
The first thing we looked athey, we've been building
solid-state drives for a verylong time.
This is a relatively easy spacefor us to come into.
(15:25):
It wasn't that easy as it wouldturn out by the time when we
did come into the game.
I mean the different modes, theperformance demands on cards.
It's insane.
You know what cameras do todayversus even five years ago.
Oh sure.
Erin Manning (15:38):
Yeah.
Larry O'Connor (15:40):
The certification.
You know we don't lean on otherpeople's specs.
I mean, we bring in all thecameras.
We're RED certified on cardsthat work with RED.
We don't just kind of, you know, put them down, we match the
specs.
We actually do the testing anddevelop firmware to ensure that
there's complete reliabilitywith every mode on the cameras
that we list as compatible.
So we haven't just said they'recompatible because of certain
(16:02):
speeds, meant these are actuallytested and extensively tested
in these cameras.
But, the other piece that youknow and this is another reason
we got into this space we lookedat how much waste and how much,
and again we are a waste, notwant, not type of organization.
I mean it's what we looked atupgrading, enhancing systems.
We want people to get the mostfrom their investment and it's
(16:24):
crazy how many camera cards areput up on a shelf thinking that
they're bad and they've reachedthe end of their life, when it
just has to do with the cashbeing dirty on these cards.
Owc brought out the Atlasseries.
We also released, with no cost,software application called
Energize, and what Energizeenables is you to sanitize the
(16:44):
card and restore the factoryoriginal performance within
about three to five seconds.
It does a complete clean wipeof the card and it resets the
card, cleans the cache, so thatcard gives you the same
performance as it did the veryfirst time you used it.
When cards start to get alittle choppy or you see the
frame rate start to go down,typically that has nothing to do
(17:05):
with the card's lifespan.
Gary Pageau (17:06):
Right, because there's not really moving parts.
I mean you would think it wouldbe.
Larry O'Connor (17:10):
Well, it is a consumable.
I mean with heavy use.
You're still talking yearsbefore you actually resolve the
flash lifespan.
But the cache gets dirty.
There's no trim, there's nointerface for the card, via USB
or on the camera, effectively toclean itself up, to clear the
cache and reorganize the blockson the card with, via USB or on
the camera, effectively to cleanstuff up, to clear the cache
and reorganize the blocks on thecard.
(17:31):
And I don't want to get crazyinto the weeds, but at the end
of the day you see these carsslowing down, it's just because
the card needs to be cleaned andnobody actually enables us.
There's that?
Well, there's, I guess I saythere's one and a half companies
other than us that sort ofpromote it.
We're the only company toprovide a free utility.
And the big guys and I won'tmention them by, I wouldn't even
(17:53):
put them out there I thinktheir game is driven by
continuing to sell cars, drivecars to their existing audience.
People always need more cars.
There's so many customers outthere.
We want our cars to be used totheir full lifespan, not
replaced or put on a shelf justbecause somebody thinks
something's.
That is time we provide autility sanitize, recess the car
(18:14):
to factory gives you restoredperformance.
I mean you don't have to do itevery time Head to head.
Even without our software, youknow we go longer.
We've built cars to be morereliable than our competition.
Energize means those cars willgive you a longer useful life
because you can always keep themfresh.
And the health check on the card, which is another thing built
into our cards, allows you toagain with the same.
(18:35):
You know, easy click but in asecond say hey, okay, it is 90,
95% or 80% or 70% of this eventlifetime, so you have the
confidence to continue shootingwith it.
We hear from so manyphotographers and videographers
that they start to they see anissue with a card, they think
there's an issue with the card.
It goes on a shelf and they buyanother one.
And I get that.
(18:56):
You cannot lose a moment.
You know our goal is to makesure you don't lose a moment.
But you're not again retiring,you're not spending.
Gary Pageau (19:03):
You're not losing the card tour.
Larry O'Connor (19:09):
Right, I mean it , I mean it's, it's, I mean it'd
be.
I can't even make up an analogy, but I mean you can look at
your tires in your car and youknow your tires are good, or
right, yeah, I mean, you know,with the card, you know and, but
you don't throw the car awaybecause it needs to go through a
car wash effectively.
Yeah, and there's so many carsthat memory cars, camera cars,
that do get shelved early justbecause, well, they just needed
a quick cleaning.
Gary Pageau (19:29):
Media today.
Removal media today is so muchmore reliable than it used to be
.
You know even most.
I think problems could be takencare of even with just
reformatting the card as you mayneed to.
Larry O'Connor (19:42):
You can do it on cards that don't have a
sanitize.
Again, you can do a low levelformat.
Yeah, that does use a completeright cycle and you have limited
right cycles of that nature ona card and that's something you
can take.
It depends on the size of thecard it can.
I mean it's.
It could be an hour, it couldbe a few hours, and again, the
benefit to me is a benefit of uswith energize, where we provide
(20:04):
a solution that, hey, we knowwhat's going on with the card.
This is how the technologyworks.
You can use this card for threemonths a year, whatever it
might be, depending on how heavyor light your use is.
Run Energize, click this button.
Five seconds later, the card isat full performance.
Gary Pageau (20:19):
Because it seems like you know, I think there may
be other people out there whojust say, okay, that's fine, we
just get a new card, we want youto use it more like a
consumable.
But I think that's sort of aclosed loop thinking, in the
sense that I think, as peopleare capturing more and more
images, right, there's more andmore video being captured.
There's more and more imagesbeing captured that there's just
(20:39):
more demand for more storage,more things.
So I think that's sort of aclosed way of thinking about it
is that, you know, we kind ofwant our stuff to be somewhat
erratic so that people will buymore, when you really don't have
to think like that.
It's almost an abundancementality.
Larry O'Connor (20:54):
Sure, it was interesting.
I mean they've allowed this tobe the consideration of a car
starting to get a few lessframes per second.
When I'm doing those, you knowthose big capture shots, it must
be time for me to replace mycar.
They've not corrected theconsumer and said well, you can
low-level format.
They've also not.
They've called it lazy.
In my opinion, they've notreleased utilities really that
(21:15):
provide proper management ofthat card.
The third thing that we do isprovide firmware updates.
So a new camera comes out, itmay require some special, you
know, some special sauce forthis mode or that mode.
An existing camera may have afirmware update that fixes a
mode or makes an adjustment thatcould negate compatibility with
a card for a certain setting.
And the other thing Energizedoes that we provide with our
(21:37):
cards are free firmware updates.
Even last year we worked withone of the manufacturers.
We knew they had a bug in theircamera.
We knew there was going to be afix coming out.
When they released the fix, wereleased an update, the flash
that you had our card and youhad a reader.
It was a very easy update tocontinue to have compatibility
with the new mode and with thefull, proper operation of that
mode in this particular camera.
(21:59):
You should not have to worryabout what cards are compatible.
If your cards can be compatiblewith a future camera if it
meets the spec, the manufacturerI mean there's a few years ago
there was a firmware change andcustomers none of our product
and we didn't have the productat the time.
But the situation was you hadto figure out what serial
(22:19):
numbers were compatible.
It broke compatibility if youhad this.
Yeah, if you're a creative, youwant to worry about being out
there in the field taking thebest shots, not having to worry
about what.
What car is going to work, howlong this is going to work yeah,
and quite frankly, there'splenty of other things you can
make.
You should be investing in notlooking at a car that should
last years as a consumable.
(22:40):
You know when it starts to dothings, that when it starts to
show well, just signs that needssome tlc.
Know, maybe after a few monthsof heavy use.
Gary Pageau (22:48):
And you know the reality is is.
You know, most people should betaking care of their gear
regularly anyway.
You know, if you're using acamera you should be cleaning
the lens and make sure that youknow the contacts on the bayonet
mount are fine and all of thosethings.
So you know, card care is oneof those things that you should
just normally be doing, right.
Larry O'Connor (23:07):
It should be.
And, again, this is somethingthat you know, we educate and we
always are sharing, and we'vemade it very, very easy.
So the short answer is yes, andit's just something you just
need to know, you need to do.
If you've always been told thisis just a consumable issue,
it's just consumption.
It's time to replace the card.
You're just doing what you'vealways done.
And that's where we get intotrouble.
(23:28):
And when we came into the space, you know it wasn't just about
being another brand in the space.
We wanted to do it better,right?
So we innovated with higherperformance on our cards.
You know, I mean toe to toe,head to head with anybody out
there in the real world, withcompatibility and performance,
that we come out on top and thenwe add this other layer where
(23:49):
hey, no, you know you.
You know how your existingcards might perform.
You see things over the courseof time.
You don't have to put up withthat.
With our cards, you run,energize and you can always keep
those cards at full performance.
It's a good security thing too.
If you're sharing cards withother people and you don't
necessarily want to share yourproject, you don't worry about
your data being shared.
The sanitizer also, in additionto resetting the card to best
(24:14):
performance, is a clean wipe ofthe card as well.
There won't be any media torecover by accident.
You know if you're using cars,sharing cars with other
photographers, videographers.
Gary Pageau (24:26):
Now, one of the things that's changed over the
years going back to you knowthat old days of early computer
components, of course, was, youknow, hard drives failed a lot,
and nowadays, with SSDs andother technology, you don't
really run into that.
Part of my audience are folkswho do photo organizing, photo
management for people, and someof them are looking for
solutions.
For you know, in addition tocloud storage, they always
(24:49):
recommend store your images inmultiple places once you've got
your family archive.
Really, ssds and some of theproducts you have are suitable
for that as well.
Larry O'Connor (24:59):
right, Well, the first thing I say is the wrong
hard drives might fail a lot,but quality solutions have….
Gary Pageau (25:06):
Right, yeah, well, I was saying back in the day,
they used to fail a lot, right,I mean, that was always one of
the… no, I would honestlystrongly disagree with that.
Larry O'Connor (25:13):
I mean, we've been building drives since the
90s.
It has to do.
I mean there's so manyvariables, but the right drive
mechanism and probably one ofthe most important things and
this goes for SSDs as well Imean some of our clients had
problems a year ago and it comesdown to overall design,
componentry and the power supplyas well.
There are so many solutionsthat are underpowered.
(25:34):
When I say underpowered, youuse a small for spinning drives,
especially that they use anunderpowered adapter, and you
put a lot of stress on thecircuitry when you're using a
power supply that has to go intoa peak output mode.
If you're in the audio space,you know you want an amplifier
that has plenty of headroombeyond your listening level.
(25:56):
Right, Because if you'returning it to the maximum to
hear it where you want to hearit, you get a lot of distortion.
Right.
Power supplies are effectivelythe same situation, except for
that distortion can wreak havocon the electronics.
It beats them up for allpractical purposes.
It creates probabilities offailure that you don't have when
(26:17):
you have a robust power supplywith plenty of headroom where
it's operating in a standard.
You got to use peak power tospin up a drive.
That's stressful on thecircuitry and that does lead to
more failures.
But going into SSDs,solid-state drives, certainly
from a physical point of viewthere's nothing spinning A car
drive is just I mean peoplebumping them, dropping them.
(26:38):
Things happen by action,something that's rotational and
it's mechanical and there's allthe probabilities it's kind of
spinning but there's not.
From a reliability point ofview, drives are still a very
large part of our offering.
Gary Pageau (26:58):
But I mean what I'm saying is that, even almost for
archival purposes, right?
I mean you'll probably be ableto use that drive, a solid-state
drive, in 10 years archive inthere and then want to access in
10 years I mean assumingthere's a cable somewhere
that'll attach to the Mac, youknow, the 2035.
Larry O'Connor (27:18):
Mac that it'll probably work Well.
A hard drive is the same way.
In fact there's two things.
If you, if you use the SSD asarchival, you still want to
energize that drive.
Probably Well, I think it'sthree, four if you go.
You know, and there's it's allabout probabilities, but
typically you want to energizethat drive.
You go more than two, threeyears, certainly actually really
more than a year or so, withoutenergizing an SSD.
(27:40):
You start to run the risk ofdata loss.
Five years, 10 years withoutpower up.
You know there's theprobabilities of how do I say?
A bit drift and that's probablynot the right term.
But at the end of the day,issues with the data that's
starting on that drive doincrease.
With a hard drive you have adifferent kind of issue.
You have capacitors and otherparts that support the mechanics
(28:01):
that they're not energized.
They can.
When they lose their charge,they lose.
They actually can dry up.
But if you power those units uponce a year, for example, a
hard drive can last a very, very, very long time.
We still have customers runningdrives.
If you're using a driveconstantly, I mean the
recommendation.
Our recommendation certainly isas you go past three, four
(28:22):
years, it's time to replace thatdrive as a primary drive and
make sure that you move it tosecondary or tertiary and shift
to something else for yourprimary data.
But ultimately hard drives canlast if maintained and they're
not being used constantly.
I mean they'll last certainlyas long as an SSD.
Wow, okay, Any of these things.
(28:45):
You need to energize them.
Don't take an SSD, load it withdata, stick it in the safety
deposit box and come back 10years later.
Right, power it up.
Ideally, power it up once ayear.
Just energize it, mount it youcan put it away at that point,
but just energize it.
And same with the hard drive.
Keep the electronics fresh forall practical purposes.
Gary Pageau (29:04):
I'm getting a continuous thread from you that
proper care of your electronicsextends their life right.
From you that proper care ofyour electronics extends their
life right.
I mean that seems to besomething that kind of has gone
through the through point of allof this discussion.
And you provide tools for this,for SSDs and smaller things.
What other software do you have?
I mean, I saw on your siteyou've got quite the list of
(29:25):
software.
Are they all in this vein?
Larry O'Connor (29:28):
Yeah, data is probably one of our most
prevalent areas.
You know we have CopyThat,which provides checksum, ingest
of data off cards andduplication make sure everything
comes off.
The memory card is well,exactly what it should have been
.
Soft RAID provides very highperformance.
I had to say well RAID.
I mean a lot of people buymultiple drives, whether SSDs or
(29:50):
hard drives, for higherperformance, but, like a lot of
RAID applications, this alsoprovides advanced
self-monitoring.
By the time smart privacy of adrive is failing.
You've already experiencedproblems, so I'll frame it for
you before a drive has failed,that we're predicting a failure
While the drive is still working.
It gives you time to replace.
Erin Manning (30:10):
And then there's Mac drive.
Larry O'Connor (30:11):
You know, one of the things that kills me in all
this out there is,unfortunately, for camera cards
you're still using exFAT andexFAT is fine in small doses.
You know you start to getlarger volumes it can become a
problem and you don't want toedit or use exFAT as a main
drive ever on Mac or PC.
It's really just to be able togo between platforms.
(30:34):
But we provide Mac drive.
Mac drive is an applicationthat lets you use APFS, which is
the modern file system,natively on Windows, so that
whether you're on an iPad oryou're on a Mac and or a PC, you
can take those volumes andsoftware, by the way, does this
as well.
But you can plug and play a macviam on a pc windows system
(30:55):
just like it, with the sameperformance, with the same plug
and play response, right, as ifa native pc volume.
Just don't use exfat to edit.
I mean please don't.
I mean but x fast, one of thosethings I mean, and we've seen
it where, especially as thevolumes go up, the loss risk
substantially increases.
(31:16):
And it's not.
I mean you'll see an XFAT drivejust flake out on one system,
you plug it into another system.
It'll sort of work.
It'll work where you can atleast read the data off, but
five minutes before that itabsolutely wouldn't show up, no
matter what you did on system A.
Moving to system B, it's a filesystem with no protections NTFS
(31:36):
, windows, apfs if you're on Mac, if you have to use back
Windows and or iPad, use APFS,because it's a modern file
system with protections that youabsolutely want.
Gary Pageau (31:46):
It seems like you're providing a lot of
insight and help.
I mean, that is one of thethings that OWC is known for is
kind of customer education,customer training.
Do you have regular likewebinars and classes for people,
or how do you convey this toyour customers?
You?
Larry O'Connor (32:01):
know we should.
We try to make it easy.
A lot of these things are justplug and play and go, but we
absolutely need to do more toget the word out.
I mean that's we take thisstuff for granted.
It's interesting, I think, youto do more to get the word out.
I mean we take this stuff forgranted.
It's interesting, I think 10,15 years ago, you needed to
learn a lot more about your Macor PC and your data, your camera
, all these things, just to usethe technology.
Today, things are so playing inplay that I think we really
(32:23):
take it for granted.
Gary Pageau (32:24):
Yeah, oh absolutely .
Larry O'Connor (32:32):
There is some care and there's some things you
can do to so that things lastlonger and you, even if it
doesn't affect the longevity youknow you have just better data
stability and, quite frankly,you know better performance from
very simple, simple things youcan do because it is shocking to
me that you know technology haspermeated people's lives, right
?
Gary Pageau (32:47):
people just expect things to work all the time
right, and you know and and thething is it mostly does.
You know, I mean you can mostlydo things like you said without
much problems.
But I remember back in the daywhere, you know, windows did not
talk to mac at all and therewas a lot of juggling between
that.
And nowadays it's a lot simpler, a lot of more cross-platform
(33:11):
opportunities there, but youknow it's interesting, lot
simpler, a lot of morecross-platform opportunities
there.
Larry O'Connor (33:14):
Well, you know it's interesting.
We used to have to, you know,again, optimize the workflow.
I guess I'll just summarizelike this Things are so fast
today, even if you're notgetting all that you could,
maybe it feels fast enough.
You don't know what you'remissing because it's so fast,
maybe what you're comparing toRight Again, our goal with
everything we offer is toprovide real-world performance.
(33:37):
It is plug and play but, quitefrankly, as little effort as
possible, because we want to bethe boring part.
It's the stuff that just has towork.
Yeah, and you know simpleguidelines.
You know you rotate the tiresin your car.
There's little things you can doWheel change, check the fluid,
all that stuff.
I would compare, honestly, odbcgear this might not be the
(33:57):
right time to mention thiscompany, but I would compare if
you look at internal combustionversus a Tesla, teslas require
very little service.
You still got the brakes toworry about.
You got to make sure the brakeskeep your brakes good, although
regenerative braking eliminatesa lot of even wearing the
brakes.
But rotate the tires, replacethe tires and that's owc gear
right, all the other things youknow the transmission fluid, the
(34:20):
oil, all a lot of the otherhassles you don't have to worry
about with our stuff, yeah, butyou know the little things that
you can do.
You know you don't, you shoulddo.
I mean, well, again, on a car,you have to do with our stuff.
You can get away without doing,but you do the extras extending
the life.
You're extending the life andyou're getting more from it.
If you don't do those things, Ithink that you're still getting
(34:40):
a better experience and prettymuch 99 of what else is out
there.
I mean, we have such amazingtechnology from apple, even from
intel, I mean in the worldtoday that is easy to take for
granted.
I mean there's more than weneed.
There's, as you said earlier,there's abundance here, but you,
quite frankly, you said it wascorrectly.
It costs you less, you get moredone.
(35:02):
You can spend more time on yourcreative work, not having to
worry about the technology, andsleep more at night, because
that's just I mean.
You buy the right stuff, thingsingest faster, sleep more at
night because that's just I mean.
You buy the right stuff, thingsingest faster, things edit
faster, things work better andyou're spending time doing the
things you want to do, notchasing problems that require
(35:23):
solutions.
So plug and play and go and gofast and create more.
Gary Pageau (35:27):
Speaking of going, where can people go for more
information about OWC and someof the stuff you offer?
Larry O'Connor (35:35):
Sure, owccom is a great resource, a great place
to start at MacSalescom, a placelike B&H Photo, and, quite
honestly, I'm always happy tofield questions on LinkedIn as
well.
Gary Pageau (35:49):
Great, larry.
Great to see you, Happy thatyou shared something.
I learned a couple of things,which is always a good thing
when I do these.
You know I appreciate your timeand look forward to talking to
you again.
Larry O'Connor (35:58):
Yeah, likewise, gary.
They can have me on anytime.
Love sharing is well.
This is our passion, everybody,myself included, of course.
Erin Manning (36:07):
Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixels
Society podcast.
Read more great stories andsign up for the newsletter at
wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.
Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the
photo imaging industry'sleading news source.
Here's your host, Gary Pageau.
The Dead Pixels Society podcastis brought to you by Mediaclip,
(00:23):
Advertek Printing, andIndependent Photo Imagers.
Gary Pageau (00:23):
Hello who's joined by Larry O'Connor,
who's the founder and CEO ofOther World Computing, or, as
mostpeople know it these days, OWC.
Hi Larry, how are you today?
Larry O'Connor (00:35):
I'm doing great, Gary.
Thanks for having me onappreciate being here.
Gary Pageau (00:38):
So you've been in the computer hardware world
almost as long as there havebeen computers.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthe founding of the company in
terms of you know where you camefrom and starting the business
back in 1988?
Larry O'Connor (00:52):
You know it's always been about giving users
more from Macs technology thatthey have.
You know where can we put theenvelope and just let you do
more.
And back in 1988, there was alot of untapped opportunity with
memory upgrades, later storagethat you know.
Apple made it seem verycomplicated.
You know, focus on Apple and wemade it really really simple.
(01:13):
But it was all about againthese are great machines, let's
make them do more.
Let's let the users do morewith what they already have.
Gary Pageau (01:20):
And yeah, I've noticed that because I bought,
as I mentioned earlier, I boughta few things from you guys over
the years and it always beenSanta Mac focused.
But you have other prod memoryproducts and that seems to be
like the main focus has been thememory piece, which has always
been a I wouldn't say achallenge, especially in the
early days of Macs.
They were almost, I wouldn'tsay underpowered, but
underutilized.
What was the reason you decidedto focus on that market as
(01:44):
opposed to even at 1988, I thinkthe DOS market was probably
larger?
Larry O'Connor (01:51):
Well, I was an Apple user.
Ultimately, I was my owncustomer.
I mean, this was something thatI needed, right, and looking at
how, for all intents andpurposes, how easy it was, this
is something that anybody coulddo at home, and it was such an
easy way to substantiallyimprove the performance of, well
, the computer you already had.
And, as opposed to having tospend you know whatever number
(02:12):
of time driving, ripping yourcomputer apart, driving it into
an apple store, leaving it therefor a couple days, this was
something you could do in lessthan 10 minutes in your house,
right in your business, whereyou were, and and this was.
It just made a ton of sense,and that's that's how we got
started, did?
Gary Pageau (02:30):
you start as like a shop that would repair people's
Macs and then got into mailorder, or were you always
providing components?
Larry O'Connor (02:39):
started right in the components.
It was something to me again.
To me it was just highwayrobbery.
What was was happening withservice, especially with HRs,
yeah, how long it took.
And it was something that thiswas very, this was something
very easy to do.
So it was.
This was also where OWC becamevery educational.
It wasn't just selling theproduct, it was also putting out
documentation and explaininghey, this is how you do it,
(03:01):
these are the benefits, you know, this is why you want to do
this.
And hey, you know, if you breaka chip?
I remember the first customerthat we shipped, and one of the
first customers was worried well, what if I break a chip?
I said well, you know, it costsmore to pay somebody to install
it than to buy another set ofmemory.
You're not going to first off,you're not going a chip.
This is back in the Sims and itdepends on what computer you had
(03:24):
.
It's either the chips or theSims.
But this is really easy,Nothing to worry about.
Off to the races.
Then got to external storage.
I mean, everybody needed morestorage and actually in 1992,
OWC had the very firstbus-powered hard drives.
For anybody who had bus-powereddrives.
Back in the day there werefloppy drives, so everybody had
(03:50):
a floppy drive port.
Our hard drives powered off thefloppy port.
There were SCSI drives that usedthe power off the floppy port
to the power up, so verycost-effective, very convenient
and looked like a three and ahalf inch floppy drive back in
the day which, you know, I'menvisioning several of perhaps
our younger listeners runningaround going what's scuzzy,
what's floppy?
Gary Pageau (04:08):
I mean these are all antiquated phrases these
days, but it was really quitedifficult back then to add
peripherals and componentsbecause of the varying, you know
standards there.
You know it wasn't plug andplay, certainly back then in
those days.
Larry O'Connor (04:23):
Yeah, there are a few more, certainly barriers.
I mean it wasn't superdifficult but, like everything
you know, there were thesebarriers and they and, if
nothing else, just thesemisconceptions of maybe, perhaps
why you shouldn't do it or whyit was difficult to do.
And again, our goal was to makethis as easy as possible and
show people the light so thatthey could take advantage again.
I mean unleash, you know thebeast and those great Macs that
(04:45):
they had.
Gary Pageau (04:46):
You know you started in Illinois but you're
worldwide now.
How did that evolution takeplace?
Because I mean, certainly therewere a lot of years there where
Apple was struggling even tostay alive, like in the 90s.
There was a lot of issues there.
Was that a concern for you?
Or did your growth kind ofparallel Apple's growth?
Because you know, I've read thebiographies.
(05:07):
I was around back in the day.
You know there were a lot ofyears when, you know, apple
wasn't selling a lot of Macsback then there were some
challenges.
Larry O'Connor (05:16):
You know, in good years and difficult years,
people always need to get morefrom the technology that they've
already purchased.
Gary Pageau (05:22):
Right right.
Larry O'Connor (05:23):
So on the upgrade space, I mean we were
always what people needed andquite honestly, we were doing
this.
I mean, again, we were our owncustomers.
We enjoyed doing this.
We certainly absolutely benefitfrom the growth of Apple, but
even when Apple was struggling,there was such a large market
opportunity I mean, there's justso much you can do with these
machines that nobody was doingat that time and, honestly, we
(05:45):
were there to open doors and,like I said, we were our own
customers.
Our customers also gave usgreat feedback.
There was again, the world waspretty wide open.
It absolutely helped when thejobs came back and got them on
the right track, to say theleast.
That created an opportunity forexplosion.
That created an opportunity forexplosion.
But even before that, hey,these were always.
Apple has long built some ofthe best machines in the world
(06:09):
period, and having theopportunity to make those
machines better, hey, that waswhat we were there for.
Gary Pageau (06:27):
But also part of the challenge you've got, though
, as an accessory maker is, youknow, the reality is they've
closed up the machines.
Now I mean, you can't pry opena macbook like you used to and
insert more memory, and noteasily.
It's much more difficult thanyou said, because they either
want you to, you know it'ssealed tight.
So when did you realize youneeded, like kind of pivot, a
little bit from that?
Larry O'Connor (06:41):
well, if you look at the history of abc, I
mean started in memory, got intoexternal storage actually, and
then in the early 2000s we werethe first company to have, how
do I say, some firewire storagefor off-tracker purposes and
that was a great way toexternally upgrade systems,
processor upgrades, firstcompany to actually really dive
(07:03):
into processor upgrades in thelate 90s.
I mean this is, you know,there's always these different
steps along the way and if yougo back about that it's already
now about 15 years.
Got in the solid state drives,got in the Thunderbolt and today
, you're right, actually youcan't even upgrade the memory of
these systems.
Right, and upgrading solidstate, I mean there's ways to do
it, but the flash, the realityis you really can't get the
(07:26):
flash that you need to do theupgrades, not in Viome, it's
very difficult because it's I'lljust leave it like this, it's
without throwing others underthe bus, it's a very proprietary
flash.
Right, it's using these andunfortunately it's just not
something you really can getyour hands on.
Right, but Thunderbolt openedup brand new paths, starting
about again 15 years ago, toexpand machines externally, so
(07:50):
what you couldn't put insidesystems you could connect
externally.
And that's I mean it's really.
And again you go.
Anybody who's you know, today,buying a mac, even a pc, for a
greater purpose is what you cando with a thunderbolt cable.
It's really, I mean it's.
To somebody you know, 20 yearsago it's almost unimaginable.
Oh sure, the simple cable.
(08:12):
What was fast, you know, 20years ago.
Yeah, you know, it doesn't evenhold the can.
I mean it is.
I mean it's today thunderbolt.
This is a blink in terms of thehow much faster it is by
comparison.
And it's just a simple cable.
You can plug it in.
There's no direction to it, youdon't have to worry about
lining anything up, it justplugs in whichever way you want
to plug it in and it just goes.
Gary Pageau (08:32):
That's anywhere, yeah, and it's faster.
It's universal and you can dodifferent things with it.
It's a power cable as well as adata transfer cable and other
things.
Larry O'Connor (08:42):
Yeah, for cable and other things.
Yeah, actually in advance.
I mean something our customers,a lot of our customers, take
advantage of with Thunderboltsingle cable that works for
everything.
On a trip I bring a Thunderboltcable because I can use it for
power, I can use it for data andI never have to worry about
what I'm using it for.
Anything that's C to C if it'sa Thunderbolt cable, thunderbolt
(09:04):
4 cable, thunderbolt 5 cablewill give me the maximum
performance and maximum power,maximum data.
It works with everything.
If I pull out a USB C to C cable, I got to really make sure that
cable is compatible.
A lot of C to C cables are justpower.
I mean people.
You know the number one techsupport call that we still get
(09:24):
is from somebody who's usingtypically their Apple cable,
their Apple C2C cable.
That came with their poweradapter and they're trying to
connect a dock or data deviceand it's a really high quality
cable.
The only problem is it's justbuilt for power.
Every cable, though the C2C,has to do at least USB 2.
So you get this little bit ofdata stream, which is what's
(09:45):
used also to navigate powerdelivery when you plug it into
the device.
If it even registers.
It's like what's going on here?
I mean it's barely working.
It's like, and it's, orespecially with the dock.
I mean some of the questions,and I'd never assumed this.
We had a customer who had aniMac and a MacBook Air.
We'll, who had an iMac and aMacBook Air, will never forget
us.
After an Apple update, you know,the assumption was I mean, the
(10:06):
customer had assumed this waspushing us hard that something
broke up with their iMac.
It's like this doesn't make anysense.
It's working fine with theirMacBook Air.
It doesn't work with their iMac.
And I can't take credit for ourtech support.
I'm just turning over to ourproduct.
I don't know what's going onhere.
He Turn it over to our product.
I don't know what's going onhere.
He was using his Apple cable.
He was using a different cable.
He was taking the dock back andforth, not the laptop back and
(10:29):
forth.
He was just using the Applepower cable.
I said, yeah, that would barelywork.
That's the problem.
But Thunderbolt makes it so, soeasy.
Thunderbolt cables especiallytake the guesswork out.
I mean, if you are a missioncreator, you want to be in a
situation where you don't haveto think about what you're
connecting, or connecting withThunderbolt cables just always
work.
Erin Manning (10:48):
And.
Larry O'Connor (10:48):
Thunderbolt is an amazing, fantastic technology
.
Usb-c and hey, we sell USB-C.
Usb-c is just a connector.
I should actually kind ofclarify that USB devices really
aren't certified.
If it's Thunderbolt, it'scertified.
You've got to be very carefulwho you buy a USB product from,
(11:08):
because there's a lot ofvariability and there's even
some risk in using just USB.
Thunderbolt can guarantee thework.
Gary Pageau (11:15):
You could use.
For example, if you'reconnecting a USB-C device, you
can connect that to aThunderbolt dock through a cable
.
I mean they're not incompatible, it's just the dock right
through a cable.
I mean they're not incompatible, it's just the other way around
.
Might be a challenge.
Larry O'Connor (11:31):
Correct you can't plug a Thunderbolt device
into a USB-only system.
Right, but you can plug a USBinto pretty much anything and
you can use a Thunderbolt cableif it connects C to C.
If it's a C connection on bothends, you can use a Thunderbolt
cable to connect any device thatconnects C to C.
If it's a C connection on bothends, you can use a Thunderbolt
cable to connect any device at.
C to C.
Gary Pageau (11:48):
It's kind of good this stuff is settling down.
I mean I know you know Applewas thrilled with you know the
lightning, you know cable for awhile because it was proprietary
and I believe it was more.
It had more to do with the EUtelling them they needed to do
USB-C.
That kind of forced them tokind of adopt Thunderbolt, which
I think is going to benefiteverybody in the long run.
Larry O'Connor (12:07):
It's always tough and you know this
proprietary, separate interface.
I kind of understood what Applewas doing with lightning.
They had some pretty coolthings enabled, you know, with
that lightning chip and somesecurity.
But of course they couldintegrate that into the system,
into the silicon chip with C2C.
So you know they made thetransition and well, for all
usbc now and I, it is certainlysimpler.
(12:28):
Like I said, my iphone when I'mon a trip I'm using a
thunderbolt cable to the powerto charge my iphone yeah, you
can bring far fewer things forthe consumer, certainly, I mean.
Gary Pageau (12:37):
And then if you lose it and you need to go to an
airport kiosk to get areplacement, it's easier to get
as opposed to.
I mean, how many flavors of usbwere there for a while there?
I mean there was the mini, themicro, I mean there were like
seven different kinds of one.
Larry O'Connor (12:51):
I think at one point it was crazy there are a
few, yeah many, uh tech b andthen the micro, the trapezoid,
that the big one it was.
Gary Pageau (13:00):
It was crazy so let's talk a lot about how you
know people who are kind of inthe in the creative world are
using your products, right?
A lot of my audience are thepeople who service creators or
whatever, and you know, workingwith choosing devices, attaching
different devices these days,with Lightning, you're not going
(13:20):
to get a performance hit byattaching multiple devices to
one of your docks, right,because the throughput is so
great.
Larry O'Connor (13:28):
Correct Depends.
I mean, if you look at our ownmedia cards, I mean we're
providing ingest speeds on atype A card of up to almost
2,000 megs a second and a type Bcard approaching 4,000 megs a
second.
Sd, of course, is a lot slower.
I mean you're less than 500megs a second.
But in terms of the performance, when you're less than 500 megs
a second, but in terms of theperformance when you're plugging
(13:49):
multiple things into a dock,yes, there's plenty of bandwidth
to share and it'sbi-directional, which also makes
a big difference.
Time is, I think, the mostimportant thing that creators
value a lot more, especially inthe bigger shoots.
I mean, if you're doing rapidstills, there's so much more
video being shot, even forphotographers, and if you can
cut that ingest time down from,you know, 20 minutes down to 10
(14:12):
minutes, down to five minutes,which requires fast storage as
well as a fast reader that makesit big.
Gary Pageau (14:17):
I mean that's more time to be out there, because a
lot of these folks, time ismoney and if they're opting for
you know budget cards, they'reactually costing themselves
whatever time they probablywould have been saving buying a
name brand card.
Larry O'Connor (14:31):
Well, it's more than that, though.
If you look at again, I'll plugour Atlas cards.
Gary Pageau (14:36):
A plug is okay, so please.
Larry O'Connor (14:40):
We were the first company to bring out PCI
Gen 4 cards, which for thecameras.
You see all the compatibility.
You're going to get the maximum, whatever the different modes
your camera supports.
That's not the issue.
The benefit becomes on theingest side.
I mean, you're ingesting at twoto four times the speed that
you do with a lot of other cards, so you're getting the data
onto your drive, off that card,at a much higher speed, a much
(15:03):
higher velocity.
The other piece of the equationthat comes with the Atlas cards
is Energize and what Energizeallows.
You know, for lack of a betterway to really explain this in a
game.
When we got into the space, welooked at two things.
The first thing we looked athey, we've been building
solid-state drives for a verylong time.
This is a relatively easy spacefor us to come into.
(15:25):
It wasn't that easy as it wouldturn out by the time when we
did come into the game.
I mean the different modes, theperformance demands on cards.
It's insane.
You know what cameras do todayversus even five years ago.
Oh sure.
Erin Manning (15:38):
Yeah.
Larry O'Connor (15:40):
The certification.
You know we don't lean on otherpeople's specs.
I mean, we bring in all thecameras.
We're RED certified on cardsthat work with RED.
We don't just kind of, you know, put them down, we match the
specs.
We actually do the testing anddevelop firmware to ensure that
there's complete reliabilitywith every mode on the cameras
that we list as compatible.
So we haven't just said they'recompatible because of certain
(16:02):
speeds, meant these are actuallytested and extensively tested
in these cameras.
But, the other piece that youknow and this is another reason
we got into this space we lookedat how much waste and how much,
and again we are a waste, notwant, not type of organization.
I mean it's what we looked atupgrading, enhancing systems.
We want people to get the mostfrom their investment and it's
(16:24):
crazy how many camera cards areput up on a shelf thinking that
they're bad and they've reachedthe end of their life, when it
just has to do with the cashbeing dirty on these cards.
Owc brought out the Atlasseries.
We also released, with no cost,software application called
Energize, and what Energizeenables is you to sanitize the
(16:44):
card and restore the factoryoriginal performance within
about three to five seconds.
It does a complete clean wipeof the card and it resets the
card, cleans the cache, so thatcard gives you the same
performance as it did the veryfirst time you used it.
When cards start to get alittle choppy or you see the
frame rate start to go down,typically that has nothing to do
(17:05):
with the card's lifespan.
Gary Pageau (17:06):
Right, because there's not really moving parts.
I mean you would think it wouldbe.
Larry O'Connor (17:10):
Well, it is a consumable.
I mean with heavy use.
You're still talking yearsbefore you actually resolve the
flash lifespan.
But the cache gets dirty.
There's no trim, there's nointerface for the card, via USB
or on the camera, effectively toclean itself up, to clear the
cache and reorganize the blockson the card with, via USB or on
the camera, effectively to cleanstuff up, to clear the cache
and reorganize the blocks on thecard.
(17:31):
And I don't want to get crazyinto the weeds, but at the end
of the day you see these carsslowing down, it's just because
the card needs to be cleaned andnobody actually enables us.
There's that?
Well, there's, I guess I saythere's one and a half companies
other than us that sort ofpromote it.
We're the only company toprovide a free utility.
And the big guys and I won'tmention them by, I wouldn't even
(17:53):
put them out there I thinktheir game is driven by
continuing to sell cars, drivecars to their existing audience.
People always need more cars.
There's so many customers outthere.
We want our cars to be used totheir full lifespan, not
replaced or put on a shelf justbecause somebody thinks
something's.
That is time we provide autility sanitize, recess the car
(18:14):
to factory gives you restoredperformance.
I mean you don't have to do itevery time Head to head.
Even without our software, youknow we go longer.
We've built cars to be morereliable than our competition.
Energize means those cars willgive you a longer useful life
because you can always keep themfresh.
And the health check on the card, which is another thing built
into our cards, allows you toagain with the same.
(18:35):
You know, easy click but in asecond say hey, okay, it is 90,
95% or 80% or 70% of this eventlifetime, so you have the
confidence to continue shootingwith it.
We hear from so manyphotographers and videographers
that they start to they see anissue with a card, they think
there's an issue with the card.
It goes on a shelf and they buyanother one.
And I get that.
(18:56):
You cannot lose a moment.
You know our goal is to makesure you don't lose a moment.
But you're not again retiring,you're not spending.
Gary Pageau (19:03):
You're not losing the card tour.
Larry O'Connor (19:09):
Right, I mean it , I mean it's, it's, I mean it'd
be.
I can't even make up an analogy, but I mean you can look at
your tires in your car and youknow your tires are good, or
right, yeah, I mean, you know,with the card, you know and, but
you don't throw the car awaybecause it needs to go through a
car wash effectively.
Yeah, and there's so many carsthat memory cars, camera cars,
that do get shelved early justbecause, well, they just needed
a quick cleaning.
Gary Pageau (19:29):
Media today.
Removal media today is so muchmore reliable than it used to be
.
You know even most.
I think problems could be takencare of even with just
reformatting the card as you mayneed to.
Larry O'Connor (19:42):
You can do it on cards that don't have a
sanitize.
Again, you can do a low levelformat.
Yeah, that does use a completeright cycle and you have limited
right cycles of that nature ona card and that's something you
can take.
It depends on the size of thecard it can.
I mean it's.
It could be an hour, it couldbe a few hours, and again, the
benefit to me is a benefit of uswith energize, where we provide
(20:04):
a solution that, hey, we knowwhat's going on with the card.
This is how the technologyworks.
You can use this card for threemonths a year, whatever it
might be, depending on how heavyor light your use is.
Run Energize, click this button.
Five seconds later, the card isat full performance.
Gary Pageau (20:19):
Because it seems like you know, I think there may
be other people out there whojust say, okay, that's fine, we
just get a new card, we want youto use it more like a
consumable.
But I think that's sort of aclosed loop thinking, in the
sense that I think, as peopleare capturing more and more
images, right, there's more andmore video being captured.
There's more and more imagesbeing captured that there's just
(20:39):
more demand for more storage,more things.
So I think that's sort of aclosed way of thinking about it
is that, you know, we kind ofwant our stuff to be somewhat
erratic so that people will buymore, when you really don't have
to think like that.
It's almost an abundancementality.
Larry O'Connor (20:54):
Sure, it was interesting.
I mean they've allowed this tobe the consideration of a car
starting to get a few lessframes per second.
When I'm doing those, you knowthose big capture shots, it must
be time for me to replace mycar.
They've not corrected theconsumer and said well, you can
low-level format.
They've also not.
They've called it lazy.
In my opinion, they've notreleased utilities really that
(21:15):
provide proper management ofthat card.
The third thing that we do isprovide firmware updates.
So a new camera comes out, itmay require some special, you
know, some special sauce forthis mode or that mode.
An existing camera may have afirmware update that fixes a
mode or makes an adjustment thatcould negate compatibility with
a card for a certain setting.
And the other thing Energizedoes that we provide with our
(21:37):
cards are free firmware updates.
Even last year we worked withone of the manufacturers.
We knew they had a bug in theircamera.
We knew there was going to be afix coming out.
When they released the fix, wereleased an update, the flash
that you had our card and youhad a reader.
It was a very easy update tocontinue to have compatibility
with the new mode and with thefull, proper operation of that
mode in this particular camera.
(21:59):
You should not have to worryabout what cards are compatible.
If your cards can be compatiblewith a future camera if it
meets the spec, the manufacturerI mean there's a few years ago
there was a firmware change andcustomers none of our product
and we didn't have the productat the time.
But the situation was you hadto figure out what serial
(22:19):
numbers were compatible.
It broke compatibility if youhad this.
Yeah, if you're a creative, youwant to worry about being out
there in the field taking thebest shots, not having to worry
about what.
What car is going to work, howlong this is going to work yeah,
and quite frankly, there'splenty of other things you can
make.
You should be investing in notlooking at a car that should
last years as a consumable.
(22:40):
You know when it starts to dothings, that when it starts to
show well, just signs that needssome tlc.
Know, maybe after a few monthsof heavy use.
Gary Pageau (22:48):
And you know the reality is is.
You know, most people should betaking care of their gear
regularly anyway.
You know, if you're using acamera you should be cleaning
the lens and make sure that youknow the contacts on the bayonet
mount are fine and all of thosethings.
So you know, card care is oneof those things that you should
just normally be doing, right.
Larry O'Connor (23:07):
It should be.
And, again, this is somethingthat you know, we educate and we
always are sharing, and we'vemade it very, very easy.
So the short answer is yes, andit's just something you just
need to know, you need to do.
If you've always been told thisis just a consumable issue,
it's just consumption.
It's time to replace the card.
You're just doing what you'vealways done.
And that's where we get intotrouble.
(23:28):
And when we came into the space, you know it wasn't just about
being another brand in the space.
We wanted to do it better,right?
So we innovated with higherperformance on our cards.
You know, I mean toe to toe,head to head with anybody out
there in the real world, withcompatibility and performance,
that we come out on top and thenwe add this other layer where
(23:49):
hey, no, you know you.
You know how your existingcards might perform.
You see things over the courseof time.
You don't have to put up withthat.
With our cards, you run,energize and you can always keep
those cards at full performance.
It's a good security thing too.
If you're sharing cards withother people and you don't
necessarily want to share yourproject, you don't worry about
your data being shared.
The sanitizer also, in additionto resetting the card to best
(24:14):
performance, is a clean wipe ofthe card as well.
There won't be any media torecover by accident.
You know if you're using cars,sharing cars with other
photographers, videographers.
Gary Pageau (24:26):
Now, one of the things that's changed over the
years going back to you knowthat old days of early computer
components, of course, was, youknow, hard drives failed a lot,
and nowadays, with SSDs andother technology, you don't
really run into that.
Part of my audience are folkswho do photo organizing, photo
management for people, and someof them are looking for
solutions.
For you know, in addition tocloud storage, they always
(24:49):
recommend store your images inmultiple places once you've got
your family archive.
Really, ssds and some of theproducts you have are suitable
for that as well.
Larry O'Connor (24:59):
right, Well, the first thing I say is the wrong
hard drives might fail a lot,but quality solutions have….
Gary Pageau (25:06):
Right, yeah, well, I was saying back in the day,
they used to fail a lot, right,I mean, that was always one of
the… no, I would honestlystrongly disagree with that.
Larry O'Connor (25:13):
I mean, we've been building drives since the
90s.
It has to do.
I mean there's so manyvariables, but the right drive
mechanism and probably one ofthe most important things and
this goes for SSDs as well Imean some of our clients had
problems a year ago and it comesdown to overall design,
componentry and the power supplyas well.
There are so many solutionsthat are underpowered.
(25:34):
When I say underpowered, youuse a small for spinning drives,
especially that they use anunderpowered adapter, and you
put a lot of stress on thecircuitry when you're using a
power supply that has to go intoa peak output mode.
If you're in the audio space,you know you want an amplifier
that has plenty of headroombeyond your listening level.
(25:56):
Right, Because if you'returning it to the maximum to
hear it where you want to hearit, you get a lot of distortion.
Right.
Power supplies are effectivelythe same situation, except for
that distortion can wreak havocon the electronics.
It beats them up for allpractical purposes.
It creates probabilities offailure that you don't have when
(26:17):
you have a robust power supplywith plenty of headroom where
it's operating in a standard.
You got to use peak power tospin up a drive.
That's stressful on thecircuitry and that does lead to
more failures.
But going into SSDs,solid-state drives, certainly
from a physical point of viewthere's nothing spinning A car
drive is just I mean peoplebumping them, dropping them.
(26:38):
Things happen by action,something that's rotational and
it's mechanical and there's allthe probabilities it's kind of
spinning but there's not.
From a reliability point ofview, drives are still a very
large part of our offering.
Gary Pageau (26:58):
But I mean what I'm saying is that, even almost for
archival purposes, right?
I mean you'll probably be ableto use that drive, a solid-state
drive, in 10 years archive inthere and then want to access in
10 years I mean assumingthere's a cable somewhere
that'll attach to the Mac, youknow, the 2035.
Larry O'Connor (27:18):
Mac that it'll probably work Well.
A hard drive is the same way.
In fact there's two things.
If you, if you use the SSD asarchival, you still want to
energize that drive.
Probably Well, I think it'sthree, four if you go.
You know, and there's it's allabout probabilities, but
typically you want to energizethat drive.
You go more than two, threeyears, certainly actually really
more than a year or so, withoutenergizing an SSD.
(27:40):
You start to run the risk ofdata loss.
Five years, 10 years withoutpower up.
You know there's theprobabilities of how do I say?
A bit drift and that's probablynot the right term.
But at the end of the day,issues with the data that's
starting on that drive doincrease.
With a hard drive you have adifferent kind of issue.
You have capacitors and otherparts that support the mechanics
(28:01):
that they're not energized.
They can.
When they lose their charge,they lose.
They actually can dry up.
But if you power those units uponce a year, for example, a
hard drive can last a very, very, very long time.
We still have customers runningdrives.
If you're using a driveconstantly, I mean the
recommendation.
Our recommendation certainly isas you go past three, four
(28:22):
years, it's time to replace thatdrive as a primary drive and
make sure that you move it tosecondary or tertiary and shift
to something else for yourprimary data.
But ultimately hard drives canlast if maintained and they're
not being used constantly.
I mean they'll last certainlyas long as an SSD.
Wow, okay, Any of these things.
(28:45):
You need to energize them.
Don't take an SSD, load it withdata, stick it in the safety
deposit box and come back 10years later.
Right, power it up.
Ideally, power it up once ayear.
Just energize it, mount it youcan put it away at that point,
but just energize it.
And same with the hard drive.
Keep the electronics fresh forall practical purposes.
Gary Pageau (29:04):
I'm getting a continuous thread from you that
proper care of your electronicsextends their life right.
From you that proper care ofyour electronics extends their
life right.
I mean that seems to besomething that kind of has gone
through the through point of allof this discussion.
And you provide tools for this,for SSDs and smaller things.
What other software do you have?
I mean, I saw on your siteyou've got quite the list of
(29:25):
software.
Are they all in this vein?
Larry O'Connor (29:28):
Yeah, data is probably one of our most
prevalent areas.
You know we have CopyThat,which provides checksum, ingest
of data off cards andduplication make sure everything
comes off.
The memory card is well,exactly what it should have been
.
Soft RAID provides very highperformance.
I had to say well RAID.
I mean a lot of people buymultiple drives, whether SSDs or
(29:50):
hard drives, for higherperformance, but, like a lot of
RAID applications, this alsoprovides advanced
self-monitoring.
By the time smart privacy of adrive is failing.
You've already experiencedproblems, so I'll frame it for
you before a drive has failed,that we're predicting a failure
While the drive is still working.
It gives you time to replace.
Erin Manning (30:10):
And then there's Mac drive.
Larry O'Connor (30:11):
You know, one of the things that kills me in all
this out there is,unfortunately, for camera cards
you're still using exFAT andexFAT is fine in small doses.
You know you start to getlarger volumes it can become a
problem and you don't want toedit or use exFAT as a main
drive ever on Mac or PC.
It's really just to be able togo between platforms.
(30:34):
But we provide Mac drive.
Mac drive is an applicationthat lets you use APFS, which is
the modern file system,natively on Windows, so that
whether you're on an iPad oryou're on a Mac and or a PC, you
can take those volumes andsoftware, by the way, does this
as well.
But you can plug and play a macviam on a pc windows system
(30:55):
just like it, with the sameperformance, with the same plug
and play response, right, as ifa native pc volume.
Just don't use exfat to edit.
I mean please don't.
I mean but x fast, one of thosethings I mean, and we've seen
it where, especially as thevolumes go up, the loss risk
substantially increases.
(31:16):
And it's not.
I mean you'll see an XFAT drivejust flake out on one system,
you plug it into another system.
It'll sort of work.
It'll work where you can atleast read the data off, but
five minutes before that itabsolutely wouldn't show up, no
matter what you did on system A.
Moving to system B, it's a filesystem with no protections NTFS
(31:36):
, windows, apfs if you're on Mac, if you have to use back
Windows and or iPad, use APFS,because it's a modern file
system with protections that youabsolutely want.
Gary Pageau (31:46):
It seems like you're providing a lot of
insight and help.
I mean, that is one of thethings that OWC is known for is
kind of customer education,customer training.
Do you have regular likewebinars and classes for people,
or how do you convey this toyour customers?
You?
Larry O'Connor (32:01):
know we should.
We try to make it easy.
A lot of these things are justplug and play and go, but we
absolutely need to do more toget the word out.
I mean that's we take thisstuff for granted.
It's interesting, I think, youto do more to get the word out.
I mean we take this stuff forgranted.
It's interesting, I think 10,15 years ago, you needed to
learn a lot more about your Macor PC and your data, your camera
, all these things, just to usethe technology.
Today, things are so playing inplay that I think we really
(32:23):
take it for granted.
Gary Pageau (32:24):
Yeah, oh absolutely .
Larry O'Connor (32:32):
There is some care and there's some things you
can do to so that things lastlonger and you, even if it
doesn't affect the longevity youknow you have just better data
stability and, quite frankly,you know better performance from
very simple, simple things youcan do because it is shocking to
me that you know technology haspermeated people's lives, right
?
Gary Pageau (32:47):
people just expect things to work all the time
right, and you know and and thething is it mostly does.
You know, I mean you can mostlydo things like you said without
much problems.
But I remember back in the daywhere, you know, windows did not
talk to mac at all and therewas a lot of juggling between
that.
And nowadays it's a lot simpler, a lot of more cross-platform
(33:11):
opportunities there, but youknow it's interesting, lot
simpler, a lot of morecross-platform opportunities
there.
Larry O'Connor (33:14):
Well, you know it's interesting.
We used to have to, you know,again, optimize the workflow.
I guess I'll just summarizelike this Things are so fast
today, even if you're notgetting all that you could,
maybe it feels fast enough.
You don't know what you'remissing because it's so fast,
maybe what you're comparing toRight Again, our goal with
everything we offer is toprovide real-world performance.
(33:37):
It is plug and play but, quitefrankly, as little effort as
possible, because we want to bethe boring part.
It's the stuff that just has towork.
Yeah, and you know simpleguidelines.
You know you rotate the tiresin your car.
There's little things you can doWheel change, check the fluid,
all that stuff.
I would compare, honestly, odbcgear this might not be the
(33:57):
right time to mention thiscompany, but I would compare if
you look at internal combustionversus a Tesla, teslas require
very little service.
You still got the brakes toworry about.
You got to make sure the brakeskeep your brakes good, although
regenerative braking eliminatesa lot of even wearing the
brakes.
But rotate the tires, replacethe tires and that's owc gear
right, all the other things youknow the transmission fluid, the
(34:20):
oil, all a lot of the otherhassles you don't have to worry
about with our stuff, yeah, butyou know the little things that
you can do.
You know you don't, you shoulddo.
I mean, well, again, on a car,you have to do with our stuff.
You can get away without doing,but you do the extras extending
the life.
You're extending the life andyou're getting more from it.
If you don't do those things, Ithink that you're still getting
(34:40):
a better experience and prettymuch 99 of what else is out
there.
I mean, we have such amazingtechnology from apple, even from
intel, I mean in the worldtoday that is easy to take for
granted.
I mean there's more than weneed.
There's, as you said earlier,there's abundance here, but you,
quite frankly, you said it wascorrectly.
It costs you less, you get moredone.
(35:02):
You can spend more time on yourcreative work, not having to
worry about the technology, andsleep more at night, because
that's just I mean.
You buy the right stuff, thingsingest faster, sleep more at
night because that's just I mean.
You buy the right stuff, thingsingest faster, things edit
faster, things work better andyou're spending time doing the
things you want to do, notchasing problems that require
(35:23):
solutions.
So plug and play and go and gofast and create more.
Gary Pageau (35:27):
Speaking of going, where can people go for more
information about OWC and someof the stuff you offer?
Larry O'Connor (35:35):
Sure, owccom is a great resource, a great place
to start at MacSalescom, a placelike B&H Photo, and, quite
honestly, I'm always happy tofield questions on LinkedIn as
well.
Gary Pageau (35:49):
Great, larry.
Great to see you, Happy thatyou shared something.
I learned a couple of things,which is always a good thing
when I do these.
You know I appreciate your timeand look forward to talking to
you again.
Larry O'Connor (35:58):
Yeah, likewise, gary.
They can have me on anytime.
Love sharing is well.
This is our passion, everybody,myself included, of course.
Erin Manning (36:07):
Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixels
Society podcast.
Read more great stories andsign up for the newsletter at
wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.
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