The 3 Laws of Low End Computing

The best thing about Macs is how long they can remain useful. I am typing this on an Early 2008 iMac. The 20″ model with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. And it’s running macOS 10.11 El Capitan quite nicely since upgrading from the 3 GB this used iMac came with to its maximum, […]

Throttlegate

Sad. Disappointed. Frustrated. Those are the words I would use to describe my feelings about “Throttlegate”, the recent revelation that Apple has indeed been slowing down older iPhones that have worn batteries.

Apple’s Tendency to Short Users of Enough USB Ports

Apple did a wonderful thing when it introduced the all-in-one iMac in 1998. It gave the world a fresh new colorful look at what an all-in-one computer could be with no floppy drive on the front. It included a built-in 100Base-T ethernet port and a 56k modem. And it forced the industry to recon with […]

Opera for Mac FAQ

The Opera browser was begun by Telenor, the leading Norwegian telecom company, in early 1994. In 1995, Opera was split off into a separate company, Opera Software SA, which remained in Norwegian hands until mid-2016, when the entire Opera browser business was purchased by a Chinese consortium for $600 million, leaving the parent company with […]

2008: The Beginning of the End for Low End Macs

The first Mac with memory expansion and a hard drive bus was the Mac Plus, introduced way back in January 1986. It came with an impressive 1 MB of RAM, and memory could be expanded to a mind boggling 4 MB. The SCSI port on the back let you add up to 7 devices, including […]

Ode to the Unibody MacBook

The MacBook range, first introduced in 2006, were a superb line of portable Macs. Keen Low End Mac reader Matt Risi recalls his experience and love of his Unibody 2008 MacBook and how it is still his daily driver.

Why I Switched to Consumer Cellular

I think my first mobile phone was a Sprint, and I later switch to Alltel with my wife because she had to travel in Michigan’s upper peninsula, and it was the only carrier with good coverage on those long stretches of road between towns. I was there when Verizon acquired Alltel in 2008, and I […]

Consumer Cellular: A Low End Mobile Solution

Most of us in the US are familiar with the Big 4 traditional mobile carriers: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Many are also familiar with their prepaid services – Cricket, Boost, Virgin, and MetroPCS – although you may not know that they are owned by the Big 4. There are other alternatives, one which I […]

Make a Better Pot of Coffee

I love coffee. It smells wonderful, good coffee tastes smooth (as opposed to bitter), and the caffeine has significant pick-me-up benefits. But there are several factors your need to look at when choosing a coffee maker and keeping it clean.

Net Neutrality: Who Wins?

Under the Trump regime, there’s a move afoot to end Net Neutrality, something the Obama administration championed. Everything supported by Obama seems to be subject to reversal in the current political climate. Net Neutrality should not be one of them.

Moving Forward

Friends, it’s been quite a year so far, and I’m ready to make some big changes. My divorce will be finalized soon, and I’m looking for a position as a technical writer or editor in either the US or Canada. I am willing to relocate.

‘Low End’ Means Good Enough

Low End Mac began 20 years ago as a way to share my knowledge of the earliest useful Macs with other Mac users. At that point I considered the Mac Plus – the first Mac with SCSI for adding a hard drive and expandable memory – to be the oldest practical Mac. Interesting thing is, […]

The Next Mac Pro

The current Mac Pro was introduced in December 2013 to mixed reactions. Yes, it’s beautifully miminalistic and it was very powerful by 2013 standards, but it lacked hard drive bays and expansion slots, two features that generally define a professional level computer.

2017: A Low End Odyssey

Twenty years ago today, Dan Knight began an odyssey. Using a Macintosh Centris 610 and Claris Home Page, he set out to make it easier to support low end Macs. Little did he know, April 7th, 1997 was a day that would change his life and the Mac Web forever.

The 2017 iPad Value Equation

What happens when an iPad Air and iPad Air 2 have a baby? You get the new iPad. The new 9.7” iPad that Apple recently released is a product that I am happy Apple has released. Even though I don’t agree with many of Apple’s recent decisions (including the discontinuation of the 32 GB iPad mini), […]

Low End Laundry

I’ve been living on my own for three months – and doing my own laundry a lot longer than that. I’ve made several changes in recent months after getting feedback from others on Facebook. Today I’m going to look at the world’s cheapest fabric softener, an inexpensive pretreat for stains that you can make yourself, […]

Using an iPhone in the Google Universe

The world certainly has changed since the late 1990s, when there were only two significant personal computing platforms – Windows with about 95% of the market, Mac at about 5%, and a tiny sliver of Linux users. Today we have mobile operating systems and another personal computing choice, Chrome OS. But what if you want […]