We believe in the long term value of Apple hardware. You should be able to use your Apple gear as long as it helps you remain productive and meets your needs, upgrading only as necessary. We want to help maximize the life of your Apple gear.
We live in a consumer society. For the most part, things are not
built to last and last. In Europe, there are town halls and castles and
churches nearly a thousand years old. Here in America, we no longer
seem to create buildings to last more than a few generations.
Yes, things wear out over time, but in our capitalist desire to
maximize profits, too many products are built down to a price rather
than up to a quality. And it shows in our buying habits - witness how
many Americans will spend hours on Thanksgiving Day poring over ads and
then showing up at stores at 4, 5, or 6 a.m. to start buying from
whoever offers the lowest price on what they want.
Apple Is Different
Apple breaks that mold to some extent. While its products are not
designed to last forever, they are built up to a quality. Macs don't
really compete with commodity PCs, where it doesn't matter whether the
nameplate says Dell, HP, Acer, or Bob's Homebuilt PC. In the PC world,
everyone can use the same CPUs, the same memory chips, the same video
cards, the same hard drives, the same optical drives, the same USB
controllers, the same SATA chips, and so on. To a great extent, they
can even use the same motherboard, power supply, and case.
Not
so Apple. While many of the authorized
Mac clones did use commodity cases, that was the only time in
Macintosh history that you could buy a Mac that looked almost exactly
like a PC. Apple has always designed unique products that the rest of
the industry either ignored or emulated. How few all-in-one PCs have
there been since the
original Macintosh? And how many companies added swoopy colored
plastics after the iMac
launch?
At the end of the day, Apple is a consumer company. It has a
brilliant strategy of creating branded products with extra value that
enable it to sell at higher prices and higher profit margins than its
competitors because, quite frankly, we believe they are worth it.
Still, to generate profits, Apple has to design products that you'll
eventually replace - whether that's a Mac, an iPhone, or an iPod.
The key to consumer strategy is to create a dissatisfaction among
users of older products. How Mac owners gripe when the new version of
the Mac OS - whether that was System 7.0 or OS X 10.6 - no longer
supports their beloved computer. As if there's a good business reason
for Apple to keep supporting increasingly dated hardware!
Apple has the numbers. It knows its development costs, its potential
sales, and the demands of each new version of the Mac OS.
Apple does the math. Apple knows when it's time to drop support for
pre-FireWire G3 Macs, sub-867 MHz G4 Macs, and the entire realm of
PowerPC Macs.
Apple continues to add power sapping features to Mac OS X, and
it's not above asking its partners, such as Microsoft, to develop
products that will force Mac users to migrate to newer hardware to use
the latest version of Office - or whatever the app. (Likewise,
Microsoft's feature bloat in Office is its way of getting people to
upgrade from previous versions.)
Low End Mac Is Different
The reality is that those old computers running old software on old
operating systems are no less capable than the day they came off the
assembly line. In many cases, those old Macs have become more capable
both through hardware upgrades (RAM, hard drives, video cards, etc.)
and software upgrades (newer versions of the Mac OS and Mac apps).
Yes, it's a sad day when your Mac can no longer run the latest
version of your favorite app, but the reality is that thanks to
upgrades it can be a far more capable machine than it was when Apple
first produced it. You can be the beneficiary of every newer version of
the Mac OS that your hardware supports, and every Mac ever built has
been supported for several years of Mac OS upgrades.
At Low End Mac, we recognize the enduring quality and usability of
older Macs. I'm typing these words on a long-discontinued Logitech
keyboard, using a long-discontinued Logitech mouse, running a
long-discontinued Mac (dual 1
GHz Power Mac G4 from 2002) and a long-discontinued operating
system (Mac OS X 10.4,
first released in April 2005). I still use Claris Home Page 3.0 (1996)
to write, edit, and upload articles. I have Microsoft Office 2004,
which is more than enough to open the Word articles and Excel
spreadsheets some people send me. I prefer AppleWorks 6 (from 2000, and
descended from ClarisWorks 1.0, which I ran on my Mac Plus in 1991) for my word
processing and spreadsheet needs.
My other production machine
is a Digital Audio Power
Mac G4 (2001) with a dual 1.6 GHz G4 CPU
upgrade. It's running Mac
OS X 10.5, and my primary reason for migrating to "Leopard"
from "Tiger" was a single app - NetNewsWire
switched to using Google Reader to manage RSS, and the version that
supports Google Reader isn't compatible with OS X 10.4. I depend
on NetNewsWire to track new content on dozens of websites.
I use Teleport to
tie the two machines together. Teleport lets you use one mouse and
keyboard to control two or more Macs, and by holding down the Ctrl key,
I can move the cursor from one Mac's display to the other. The Leopard
machine is my primary, as Teleport won't let me control an OS X
10.5 machine from one running 10.4. It also has my lone LCD monitor, a
wonderful 1280 x 1024 Dell display with a 4-port USB 2.0 hub. It's my
primary machine for working on the Web, doing email, and working in
KompoZer.
The Tiger machine has a cheap old Samsung monitor that tops out at
1280 x 960 with a 60 Hz refresh. This CRT display is adequate, but not
as crisp as the Dell LCD. With file sharing enabled, the Leopard
machine can work with files on the Tiger Mac.
Both of these Macs have been upgraded with USB 2.0 cards, additional
RAM (2 GB in the Mirrored Drive Doors and 1.25 GB in the Digital Audio,
which tops out at 1.5 GB), higher capacity 7200 rpm hard drives, and
16x Pioneer DVD±RW drives. Both can run the latest version of
Safari (which I rarely use), Firefox, Camino, and Opera.
With the exception of NetNewsWire, Mac OS X 10.4 did everything I
need a computer to do. I haven't yet begun using any "new" Leopard
features, although I am experimenting with Spaces. For my purposes, I
could get by with my 2002 Power Mac and 2005 operating system if I were
willing to switch RSS readers.
Getting the Most from Your Mac
There's
something of an anti-consumption backlash in the way we think at Low
End Mac. Our writers rarely buy brand new Macs, and when we do, we
expect them to last for years before being relegated to backup or field
duty. We love our old PowerBooks and iBooks (PowerBook 100, 1400, WallStreet, Pismo, and Clamshell iBooks among them). We love
our old G3 iMacs, G4 eMacs, and G3 and G4 PowerMacs. Most of
us are very productive using Mac OS X 10.4 and/or 10.5. Few of us
use Intel-based Macs, and even fewer are running Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow
Leopard".
We are productive with older Macs, older operating systems, and
older software - and we know that you can be productive as well. Most
of us have upgraded our Macs with more RAM and larger, faster hard
drives. We know that newer, more powerful Macs could rip our CDs faster
in iTunes or process video with more alacrity, but we're pretty content
with what we have.
Part of the reason Macs are worth more than commodity PCs is that
they continue to just work. Pop in commodity RAM or a commodity hard
drive/optical drive as necessary, and those old Macs become more
capable at very little cost. Upgrade your OS and apps only when
necessary to minimize your investment in productivity. Use freeware and
included apps when possible. Keep it cheap.
Living the Low End way is a lifestyle. Whether you keep using your
old Mac as long as practical because of your budget or because your
philosophically opposed to unnecessary consumption, you're on the Low
End Mac page. And best of all, if you're a true Low End user, when it
does come time to get a newer Mac, you may well choose a discontinued
Mac that's still several steps ahead of your older one - and then
you'll repurpose the old one as a home server, a family Web and email
machine, an iTunes player, or a first computer for a grandparent who
has never taken to these newfangled PCs.
Like everything, Macs do wear out, although they tend to do so more
slowly than PCs and remain useful a lot longer. We love the value of
Macs, old and new, and we hope we're not just preaching to the choir
when we say that older Macs are worth it. We hope new Mac users will
hear the good news as well - every Mac has a whole lot of life in it,
so use what you have for as long as it makes sense.
Macs are worth it. Definitely something to be thankful for!
Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986,
sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and
has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.
Links for the Day
Mac of the Day: Power Mac 6100, introduced 1994.03.14. The entry-level first generation Power Mac had a 60 MHz PowerPC.
Not
so Apple. While many of the 
My other production machine
is a 
There's
something of an anti-consumption backlash in the way we think at Low
End Mac. Our writers rarely buy brand new Macs, and when we do, we
expect them to last for years before being relegated to backup or field
duty. We love our old PowerBooks and iBooks (