Dear Low End Mac friends:
Apologies for the very long hiatus on new articles on the website. Things haven’t been easy for a while. Over the summer/early fall, our founder Dan Knight decided to step away after around 24 years of running Low End Mac and its day to day operations as Editor in Chief. This duty has now transitioned to me. Around that same time unfortunately, I too hit some personal bumps in the road, which required me to put a lot of focus on life and family, but things are going much better now and the future certainly is looking bright.
For those who don’t know a lot about my history with Low End Mac – I began writing for the site in 2009 and while that starts to sound like a long time, it really is not so in the grand scheme of things considering the lengthy history of Apple and the 12 years of Low End Mac’s existence before my time (I had been reading since the early days though). I was always interested in Apple computers and Macs since I was just a kid and in 1987 my family got our very own Apple IIc+ and with dad in the public relations agency arena (and shortly after as sole proprietor of his own business – George Bashur, Accredited Public Relations), all of a sudden there was a Macintosh LC in the house in 1990 and then a Power Mac 6100/66/DOS in early 1995 and then with me off to college, not long after dad had a beige G3 and then a G4 Cube and iBook G3 while I bought my very own iMac G3 Graphite 600 MHz Summer 2001. After I graduated college and started my own family, dad got his 2006 Intel Core Duo Mac Mini, which would turn out to be his last Mac.
At this point after graduating from college with a strong background in Macs (and technology overall) as well as knowledge of graphic design and good writing skills, you would have thought that I too was well on my way to a career in graphic design or something IT related. Unfortunately, the economy and job market were simply awful in the early to mid 2000s and I thought I was just stuck as a career retail guy since that was all I ever knew (at least profession-wise), but that all changed when I began to speak to Dan Knight and started writing for Low End Mac. Not long after I had done so, in March of 2010 my dad would sadly pass away far too young at age 56, but not before he saw the beginnings of me starting over on a new career path, which would lead me towards technical writing and shortly after as a junior IT analyst and later as a senior IT analyst and project manager. Dad would have been proud that I took the knowledge I had in technology, the hard work ethic I built in retail and my education and combined it all to make the career I have now, but I couldn’t have done it without the spark that Low End Mac gave me to start over.
To get to the heart of the matter here – it’s now Low End Mac’s time to start over too and while technically it has never really ceased, things have been pretty stagnant for a while. It’s time for us in the Low End Mac family to work towards giving Low End Mac to a new generation of readers. A fresh coat of paint on the site with some new design elements and a more constant flow of content again will be my New Year’s Resolution for 2022, while maintaining other things that have closed out 2021 on a positive note. With things getting back on track again, I plan at the very least putting a couple new articles out a month while I work on recruiting some new writers to get more content flowing again. The mission and message will always be the same at Low End Mac though – we’re here to help others get the most out of their Apple gear. Dan Knight used to always say “Low End Mac – Worth it!” which is still right on point.
Just remember, that “Low End” to some might mean trying to find ways to push along a PowerPC Mac for light production and entertainment value in 2022 and beyond, to others it might be finding ways to get the most out of a $5999 2019 Mac Pro 7,1 for the foreseeable future without dumping a lot of unnecessary funds into such a production rig given the path things are on with Apple Silicon if your sole purpose is professional video/music production. It’s all in the eye of the beholder and conveying the message to the audience. Consider that right now most scoff at the $5999 Mac Pro 7,1 price tag (which might simply be unobtainable for most), but one day when used units are selling for $2000 or less, it will likely finally replace the Mac Pro 4,1/5,1 people are still hanging onto today and thanks to Low End Mac and it’s great community, people will be well educated on the potential upgrade paths. Speaking of the Low End Mac community at large – we are quite the group on Facebook with over 10,000 members! Come and join us if you haven’t yet to get the latest and greatest!
All in all though, 2022 will be the year we get back to our roots and teach a new generation what Low End Mac was always all about. The kids of Generation X and Millennials are going to need to know how to use this stuff. Libraries exist full of books to read to learn about various technologies. YouTube videos and Facebook posts are there, but will come and go when content and accounts age off, are deleted, etc. but well-maintained and curated websites are far more valuable. It’s almost like having another library full of books that you can readily read and learn about something and you can count on the content always being there (maybe not always those pesky external links, but I digress).
Nonetheless, one day we’ll want to pass along those beige boxes or that G4 Cube and teach a little history lesson about them to our kids or grand-kids or perhaps yank out that 12″ PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz or 15″ Titanium 1.0 GHz and show that it still can do some pretty neat stuff in ways that are frankly more intuitive than one could imagine in modern computing that heavily relies on cloud services (not always the greatest plan). We might also want to pull out that old clickwheel iPod and show that it’s still a lot of fun to sync it up via FireWire and discuss how to replace those ailing original hard drives. With pushes for “Right to Repair” becoming more and more of a big deal and with the world thinking more and more green (with less trash/eWaste in landfills), it’s going to make places like Low End Mac, iFixit and many others with the same mission at hand (again – to get the must use and life out of your Apple/Mac products) more important than ever. It feels so good to keep old gear going and to pass it along – a purpose can almost always be found by someone for an old Mac or Apple device, no matter how old it is.
Thanks for sticking with us, whether you’re brand new to the site or have been reading since 1997. In closing I also personally want to thank Mr. Dan Knight himself for starting such as great place on the World Wide Web for those interested in getting the most out of their Apple/Mac gear and for him passing the torch along to me. I plan to take it as far as I can and I too one day will pass the torch along myself to someone who can lead the next generation onward.
Low End Mac forever!
Sincerely,
Daniel G Bashur
Editor in Chief, Low End Mac
