MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro: Which Is the Best Value?

Apple made some interesting choices when it designed the new 12″ MacBook, which is the thinnest, lightest Retina Display Mac notebook ever. But its US$1,299 price is higher than the new 13″ MacBook Air, 13″ MacBook Pro, and new 13″ MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Where’s the best value?

The New MacBook and the iMac Effect

As technology marches forward, old tech gets left behind. Some of us have been using Macs since the 1980s and have experienced a lot of it, but the 1998 introduction of the iMac probably takes the cake for offending the most – and the 12″ MacBook may take second place.

Low End Mac in 2014

Low End Mac has been through some difficult times since we moved from static HTML pages to WordPress. Site traffic declined by 88% from our peak of 17.1 million pages in 2007, but it is turning around.

Can iOS 8.1.1 Free 500 MB on Your iDevice?

If you follow Low End Mac on Facebook, you’ve probably seen a link to an article from Redmond Pi claiming that upgrading from iOS 8.1 to iOS 8.1.1 may free up to 500 MB of space on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. As the owner of an 8 GB iPhone 4S, I had to test […]

iOS 8: A Brief Introduction

iOS 8 has one steep requirement for those who want to upgrade to it directly on their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. You need 5.6 GB of free space to load and run the installer – even though the core iOS 8 installation is under 1 GB. That can be a real problem with 8 GB iDevices.

iOS 8: Not Quite Yet

Low-end Mac and iOS users have a love-hate relationship with Apple. We love new hardware and new operating systems and new features. We hate old hardware and operating systems being left behind.

What About the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus?

As widely rumored in recent months, Apple unveiled the iPhone 6 this week – and in the two sizes expected. The smaller model, with a 4.7″ display, is called the iPhone 6. The larger one, with a phablet-sized 5.5″ screen is the iPhone 6 Plus.

Is the Mid 2014 iMac Really a Road Apple?

Road Apples. That’s our category for the worst products Apple ever made. Products such as the Apple III and the Performa 5200 that just had to many compromises or reliability issues for us to ever recommend using them. We think it’s fitting to name them after horse droppings.

1.4 GHz iMac: What Is Apple Thinking?

We’ve published our first article on the Mid 2014 21.5″ iMac with its 1.4 GHz low-power dual-core i5 CPU, and Chris Carson was not impressed with its value. I want to treat is as fairly and unemotionally as possible, so let’s take a closer look.

LibreOffice: A Free Alternative to Microsoft Office and AppleWorks

LibreOffice is a free alternative to the not-inexpensive Microsoft Office suite. I’m using it to replace AppleWorks, which I’ve been using since ClarisWorks 1.0 shipped back in the System 7.0 era. Unfortunately, AppleWorks is incompatible with OS X 10.7 Lion and later, so I’ve had to find an alternative since installing OS X 10.9 Mavericks […]

Half a Lifetime with Macs

It’s my birthday, and I realized I’ve been using Macs for half my life. I was 28 years old when I first used a Mac Plus way back in 1986, along with PageMaker 1.0 and the original LaserWriter printer. And 28 years later, I know a lot more about Macs – and myself.

Time for Macs with Apple CPUs?

There are frankly crazy rumors going about that Apple is ready to launch MacBooks, Mac minis, and perhaps even iMacs with up to four 4-core ARM-based CPUs. The next generation iPhone/iPad CPU will almost certainly be a 4-core 64-bit Apple chip named the A8. But in Macs?

Will Your Mac Run OS X 10.10?

Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about upcoming OS versions and hardware. We fully expect OS X 10.10 to ship sometime this year, probably after a preview at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) held June 2-6, 2014.

The Future of Macs and iPods

Back in 1997, when Low End Mac was getting started, Apple’s future was anything but certain. Could it find a white knight to come in and rescue the brand? Would Steve Jobs be able to keep the “beleaguered” company afloat?

Low End Mac: State of the Site 2013

This has not been a good year for Low End Mac. After switching to the WordPress content management system earlier this year, our Google rank took a nose dive, and while Google still accounts for most of the traffic coming to lowendmac.com, total traffic is about 20% of what it was in 2012.

Disabling the iOS 7 Passcode Screen

I’ve been using iOS 7 on my iPhone 4S since a day or two after its release, and while the new interface and rearrangement of some things frustrated me at first, I very much like it now. That isn’t to say I’ve had no issues with it.

Mavericks Already Dominates Among OS X Users

Apple certainly knew what it was doing when it made OS X 10.9 Mavericks a free update available to anyone running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.7 Lion, or 10.8 Mountain Lion. Released on Tuesday, Low End Mac site stats show that it passed Mountain Lion on Wednesday.

Early Impressions of Mavericks

I have OS X 10.9 Mavericks installed on my Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook, one of the older Macs to support OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and Mavericks. Until now I’ve held off upgrading past OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard because of software I’d have to leave behind, but with Mavericks available for free and a […]