The Mac Pro 3,1 to 5,1 Gets Thunderbolt 3

Expansion and I/O Challenges with Older Macs Imagine the average 8-12 year old Mac sitting on your desk today.. Many are getting long in the tooth and have limited external upgrade potential or simply can’t even keep up with the best options offered today in terms of approaching optimal throughput for external graphics (also known […]

Thoughts on the First Generation Power Macs

It was 26 years ago that Apple first introduced the Power Macintosh Line of computers, the Power Macintosh 6100/60, 7100/66, and 8100/80.  The first Power Macs were an important step towards faster performance, and on paper they offered an incredible boost in performance compared to any of the 68040 based machines.  The most basic Power […]

Thoughts on the Apple IIGS

Here I am writing on an old machine, again. This time is a little bit different, though. I am not writing on an old Mac; this time I am writing on an Apple IIGS.

iTed Returns

Greetings to all of you out there in Vintage Mac Land! It’s great to be back! 15 years ago this month my first ever article was published here on Low End Mac. After a nearly 13 year hiatus I am back writing for Low End Mac, and I am extremely excited to be here!

Tri-Booting a Mac Pro 2,1

Hi Low Enders! It’s the Bash man again, with another happy episode of trials and tribulations getting my Mac Pro 2,1 in a stable triple boot state (queue crickets, darkness, and crackling campfire as you roast marshmallows and read on).

The Pismo at 20: An Enduring Legacy

Hi Low Enders! It’s been a while, but like a fine wine some vintage Macs just get more sought after with age.  One of those happens to be the PowerBook G3 “Pismo”.   The Pismo PowerBook was announced this very day 20 years ago while Apple was in the middle of their “Think Different” campaign […]

RCA MM36100 – Amazing “Under the Radar” Consumer CRT Display

Dear Low End Mac Friends: It’s been a while.  Life and other typical duties keep one busy, but when something extraordinary comes up, there’s always time to talk about it with our community.  In this article, I will be discussing an interesting piece of hardware (a display to be precise) – the RCA MM36100.   […]

DVI Scaler for All Low End Mac and Gaming Needs

Greetings Low End Mac friends! It’s been a while since I have written an article solely dedicated to Apple Tech and Gaming, but this one fits the bill perfectly. A while back I had gotten a hold of a Sony Trinitron KV-36HS420. I covered that TV in the article TV Technology: No ‘Catch-All’ Solution for Low […]

My Oldest Low End Mac, a MacBook Pro, Turns 10 Years Old

A Mac I acquired brand new ten years ago this month, the first aluminum unibody MacBook Pro, is now the oldest of three modern low-end Macs I currently own which I have purchased (not counting two vintage ones that were given to me), and the story of how it became my computer was the result […]

SIP: A Lesser Known Security Feature Built into Modern Macs

Macs are known to be generally more secure than their PC counterparts and relatively free of virus and malware attacks. But with the rise in popularity of Apple computers in recent years — thanks first to the so-called iPod halo effect and the iPhone, which brought on the dawn of the iOS ecosystem — the […]

Power Mac G5: Cheap Power, Easy Upgrades

Apple did a very nice thing when it introduced the Power Mac G5 in June 2003 – it introduced a line that would use the same upgrade options across the board. Well, until the dual-core models shipped in October 2005, which we will mostly ignore in this article.

The Long and Short of Keyboard Cables

The earliest Macs with their all-in-one design used a simple coiled keyboard cable similar to what telephones used to use – and the perfect length for use on the desktop. But in 1987, we got the Mac II, a powerhouse computer that could sit on your desk or be set vertically on the floor beneath […]

The Late 2018 Mac mini Value Equation: Wow!

The Mac mini has been one of the most affordable desktop Macs ever made since the original G4 model was introduced in January 2005 at US$499 and $599. The entry-level price has varied over the years, jumping $100 with the first Intel Mac minis in 2006. The 2014 model started at $499 with a 1.4 […]

Mac mini (Late 2018)

The Mac mini seems to be the Mac that Apple forgets about for years between updates. The 2014 model came out two years after the 2012, and the 2018 a whole four years after the 2014. It may have been a long wait, but the new model is a huge step forward from the Late […]

Low End Communities on Facebook

In addition to lowendmac.com and our communities on Google Groups, Low End Mac has had a presence on Facebook since December 2008 – and we’ve had requests to create new Facebook groups for similarly low-end interests.