For a couple of years now, Mac laptops have sported only a limited number of sockets, and Apple have phased out USB Type‑A connectors, preferring to provide Type‑C sockets that can host either Thunderbolt 3 or USB devices. The first of these is very much targeted at Mac users who have been short‑changed on expansion options by Apple. It would be impractical to review everything in OWC’s line‑up so, as a representative sample, I chose to look at three of their products: the Thunderbolt 3 Dock, the Envoy Pro EX external SSD, and the Thunderbay 4 RAID system. Other hardware in OWC’s line‑up includes a comprehensive selection of cables and adaptors as well as niche products such as Mac‑compatible RAM and the clever Data Doubler, which replaces the optical drive in older Mac laptops with a second SSD for additional storage. Another strong focus is expansion, with half a dozen Thunderbolt and USB 3 docks to choose from, alongside the Mercury range of PCIe expansion chassis and the Akitio Node Titan external GPU system. The hardware division of the company, meanwhile, offers a huge variety of storage options, including internal and external SSDs, network‑attached storage and hardware disk arrays. On the software side, they are responsible for the MacDrive utility, which allows disks formatted using Apple’s APFS and HFS+ systems to be mounted and used on Windows machines, and SoftRAID, a cross‑platform package which amalgamates separate drives into a RAID 0, 1, 4, 5 or 1+0 array at the software level, either for faster data streaming, redundancy or both. This, in turn, means the company have much more of a focus on the Mac platform than most manufacturers in their field.

One of the things that sets them apart is that many OWC products are designed to meet the needs of professionals working in audio and video.

Other World Computing are a long‑established supplier of storage and expansion solutions for computers. OWC make high‑quality computer accessories with musicians in mind. Perfect for the port‑impoverished Mac owner.

The Thunderbolt 3 Dock offers a comprehensive selection of connections and a pair of card slots.

Softraid review