One Last Push: Supercharging the Early 2008 MacBook Pro through 2026 (and maybe beyond)

The Early 2008 15″/17″ MacBook Pro sits in a unique position among the pre-unibody MacBook Pros having SSE 4 in its Core 2 Duo CPUs, standing heads and shoulders above the 2006/2007 models. As a result, it was able to piggyback off the same “wave” the Mac Pro 3,1 – 5,1 did with patchers such […]

2018 i3 Mac mini Value Equation

It’s been a little over 6 years since the 2018 Mac mini was released on October 30th 2018, at the time of writing this article. Intel Macs are in their twilight era, as macOS Sequoia provides seemingly the last gasp of official OS support for the outgoing processor architecture. While “Macintels” miss out on certain […]

How to boot USB on PowerPC Macs

Ah, the elusive method of booting on a PowerPC Mac: USB. For far too long it’s been said it’s not doable, or the results have been hit-or-miss, or the answer hasn’t been straightforward at all. Well today, there’s a surefire way to boot USB on PowerPC Macs – all thanks to DistroHopper39B from MacRumors. While […]

Upgrade your Core Solo or Duo Mini to a Core 2 Duo CPU

The very first Mac minis came with ether a Core Solo T1200, or one of two Core Duo 32-Bit CPUs. These CPUs hold back the 2006 Mac mini from being able to take advantage of a newer OS, increased RAM capacity, and overall better performance. Now in 2025 these first-gen Intel minis are cheap to […]

27″ Retina 5K iMac (Mid-2020)

The 2020 5K Intel iMac was the very end of the line for any and all Intel iMacs, and was the third-to-last Intel Mac to be discontinued – selling until March 8th, 2022. This final model iMac receives some upgrades over the 5K 2019 model, as well as the notorious addition of the T2 security […]

LEM in the process of updating and reformatting old articles

As we are nearing completion of the “tech spec” index on Low End Mac with the release of the final remaining Intel iMac articles, we are looking into revamping existing articles overall. A lot of things have changed over time, much new software has released, community projects developed, etc; and it’s worth reflecting such things […]

27″ Retina 5K iMac (Early 2019)

This was nearing the end of the line for the Intel iMacs altogether, and perhaps you’re thinking: doesn’t this have a T2 security chip since it’s from 2019? Rest assured, it doesn’t. The appeal of the 2019 model 5K iMac is precisely about the jump-up to Intel Coffee lake, combined with the lack of a […]

Mouse History, 1978 to 1999

I have already looked at the origins of the computer mouse in Mouse Design: 1963 to 1983, ending the story before the Apple Macintosh was introduced in January 1984, the first affordable personal computer to ship with a mouse and Graphical User Interface (GUI). This is the story of mouse development on personal computers, primarily […]

Mini-PCIe, Express34, MXM eGPU compatibility index: Part 3

Certain older Macs are able to take advantage of adding an external graphics card through modification. This is article is broken up into 3 parts, as it contains a lot of information and pictures. Please refer to part 1 of the article for hardware/parts prerequisites. Sections 1 through 5 are contained in part 1, Sections […]