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December 2008
When Apple’s Macintosh computers migrated from using PowerPC CPUs to using Intel chips, the hacker community took it as a challenge to find to a way to run standard PC operating systems – primarily Windows and Linux – on the new Macs. The ways they came up with worked – but as with so-called Hackintoshes […]
One of my interesting jobs at Low End Mac is compiling our price trackers, which have evolved quite a bit over the years. We do price trackers for all Macs that are supported by some version of Mac OS X, from Beige G3 Power Macs and WallStreet PowerBooks through today’s Intel-based Macs. We also track the […]
One of my interesting jobs at Low End Mac is compiling our price trackers, which have evolved quite a bit over the years. We do price trackers for all Macs that are supported by some version of Mac OS X, from beige G3 Power Macs and WallStreet PowerBooks through today’s Intel-based Macs. We also track the […]
2008 – You might think this is a rather old topic to examine, but with recent movements in both the Mac and PC worlds, it is more relevant than ever. OS X 10.5 Leopard is the Mac equivalent of Windows Vista. How do they compare?
Once upon a time, CPU upgrade vendor PowerLogix offered a 1 GHz G3 CPU upgrade for the Pismo PowerBook based on the IBM PowerPC 750GX CPU, doubling the clock speed of the fastest stock Pismo – and with a full megabyte of Level 2 (L2) cache also running at 1 GHz.
It’s not the way most Mac users work, but I’ve been partitioning my hard drives since my Mac Plus days. Back then, it allowed me to boot into System 6 or System 7 from my 40 MB Microtech hard drive. (That was a good size drive back then.)
2008 – I’ve written on this topic a few times before, and those articles continue to draw extremely high hit-counts despite the constant advance of technology. As it’s been well over a year since my last look at the subject and the tools available to Mac users have changed a bit, I thought it was time for […]
2008 – I just acquired an 867 MHz PowerBook G4. This is the slowest Mac officially supported by Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. For anyone wondering whether running a such a high spec modern OS on an older Mac works well, I say go for it. You will be surprised. I was.
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November 2008
Apple announced the next version of Mac OS X, code named “Snow Leopard”, about six months ago. Information regarding it has been vague – even the official 10.6 Snow Leopard site doesn’t really tell you much.
I’m not a conformist. Being a Mac user puts me in the minority of computer users. But I could go one step further. With my foot firmly in the door of Open Source software, would an Open Source operating system be the next step forward – or would it be a step back?
If you thought buying videos through the iTunes Store was the online equivalent of buying them on DVD or Blu-ray, think again. In a completely unexpected development, owners of the October 2008 MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air have discovered that the new Mini DisplayPort includes High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) – and this makes it […]
2008 – There has been lots of talk on various Apple discussion websites and Mac mailing lists that I subscribe to about how Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is not geared towards PowerPC Macs and was developed with Intel Macs in mind. I disagree with this.
As with operating systems, Microsoft also has the market cornered for office suites. Microsoft Office has long been the de facto standard in offices across the world – and in homes too – probably because it follows having Windows. There are good alternatives for Mac users – and for Windows users too.
The future of PowerPC Macs has been in question since Apple moved to Intel processors in 2006.
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October 2008
2008: I recently decided that it was finally time for me to purchase my first digital SLR. I’d been looking at various cameras, features, and megapixels, and I decided that the Nikon D40 fit my needs (and wallet). Uncle Sam’s recent generosity of the economic stimulus check made the purchase even easier.
My latest main Mac (since my Intel iMac died) is a Power Mac G4 Sawtooth that is way under Apple’s minimum requirements for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but I set out on a mission to get it installed. At Low End Mac, we pride ourselves in getting the most out of our Macs. I use G3s running […]
I have a lot of Macs similarly spec’d, and I began noticing a lot of difference between them, so I set about benchmarking them and comparing the results. I thought I would share my findings with you.
The Aluminum MacBook uses the same unibody construction as the 15″ MacBook Pro and now has an LED-backlit display. The top-end 2.4 GHz MacBook also has a backlit keyboard. The Unibody MacBooks use new, more energy efficient versions of the Core 2 CPU: P7350 in the 2.0 GHz model and P8600 in the 2.4 GHz […]
It looked like the end of the line for the plastic bodied MacBook design introduced in May 2006. The October 2008 MacBook White was the first to dip below the $1,000 mark, but that was because there was not much new about it. Apple had pretty much taken the 2.1 GHz Penryn MacBook, replaced the […]
The Late 2008 MacBook Air (MBA) has the same Mini DisplayPort introduced with the 15″ MacBook Pro. Drive options are a 120 GB hard drive or a 128 GB solid state drive (SSD), but now on a SATA bus for much better speed. Perhaps the biggest improvement comes ditching integrated Intel video for the Nvidia GeForce 9400M […]
The era of formed aluminum Apple notebooks has come to an end. The new 15″ MacBook Pro (MBP) is carved from a 2.5 lb. block of solid aluminum. The result is a quarter-pound enclosure – and 2.25 lb. of aluminum that’s recycled to make more enclosures. It’s even thinner, the first time Apple has built […]
A mate of mine who has only been using Macs for a few weeks has been using a PowerBook G3. We installed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger on it, and then he got a larger hard drive. He was about to reinstall OS X when I suggested cloning.
I recently joined the ranks of the iPhone enabled and am having a generally marvelous time with my new iToy. One of the best features is how seamlessly the iPhone works with my Mac’s Address Book and Calendar data via Apple’s Sync Services. No third party data conduit is needed – unlike Treo or BlackBerry […]
I love G3 Macs, but I’m no fool. A G3 machine in its original Apple-shipped state won’t cut it in today’s computing world – but with a few upgrades and additions you can easily get a little extra usage out of older Macs.
Last week fellow Low End Mac columnist Simon Royal posted a feature comparing nine Web browsers in the context of use on G3 and older G4 Macs. That’s a space I inhabit.
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September 2008
I’ve been an avid reader of Low End Mac for a number of years and have recently shown my appreciation and become a writer. But what exactly is a low-end Mac? Different people have different ideas.
As a user of older Macs, especially G3s, lightweight apps make your day-to-day usage a lot easier, and this extends to web browsers.
I have been in several discussion with people who claim that all operating systems are rubbish these days, whether Windows, Mac, or Linux. In this day and age of cross-platform computing and the Internet, does it really matter what OS you are running?
We have had time to get used to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. How does it compare to the legendary Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger?
Everyone seems to want portable computing, but are laptops now considered too big? Could a smartphone be a suitable replacement for a laptop?
2008: This one boggles the mind: The iPod and iTunes Music Store were essentially invented in 1979. That’s more than 20 years before the first iPod shipped – and three years before the first CD players came to market!
Kudos to Apple for some real changes in the iPod line. It’s been a year since Apple overhauled the entire iPod range with the 3G iPod nano, the iPod touch, and the new name for the “classic” iPod – the iPod classic. Yesterday saw the introduction of a new form factor for the iPod nano, […]
Wow, we’ve received a lot of suggestions for a content managment system in response to Looking for a Content Management System That’s as Easy as Mac. One reader suggests that it’s too early to write off ExpressionEngine, while six tell me that I ought to be looking at Joomla. WordPress is in second place, and […]
The 2G iPod touch is about 30% more powerful than the original iPod touch and was the first one with Bluetooth. It was also the first iPod touch with volume buttons and a built-in speaker. The 2G iPod touch was the first one to ship with iPhone OS 2, so it came with full support for […]
I’ve been suffering from Product Confusion Fatigue (PCF). It happens a lot in the world of computing. You want to upgrade something simple like a hard drive. Instead of just looking for the best price, you find a half-dozen different product descriptions – and now you don’t know which one is compatible with your computer.
Open source high-end image-editing software is an unlikely concept when you think about it. For one thing, anyone who really needs an industrial strength image editing application for professional purposes can probably afford and will more often than not have the undisputed king-of-the-hill in bitmap graphics software, Adobe’s Photoshop CS, and most users – professional […]
I am a firm believer in getting the very most out of older hardware – part of the reason I like and write for Low End Mac. With the move to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple cut out a lot of older computer users and began a slow death for the G3.
My first Mac helped to change my life for the better. It was a 1.42 GHz G4 Mac mini, which later became 1.5 GHz thanks to overclocking. I was hooked from that moment on.
You spent $4,500 on the IBM PCs we have at home? The one you brought home one sunny evening as I was causing great amounts of stress for one of our baby-sitters?
This article aims to show which Mac browsers are best, in terms of stability, speed, general features, and compatibility.
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August 2008
2008 – Low End Mac needs a good content management system.
This article aims to show which Mac browsers are best, in terms of stability, speed, general features, and compatibility. This article was superceded by 11 Mac Browsers Compared on 2008.09.03.
Running system maintenance utilities is more often than not an act of faith – or at least hopeful optimism – with no really tangible evidence to indicate that it’s doing anything. However, once in a while it does fix an obvious problem. Some folks disparage running OS X system maintenance routines “routinely”, most conveniently executed […]
I purchased a Lombard PowerBook G3 in 2005 and started upgrading it, adding everything from more RAM, and a bigger hard drive to a DVD-RW.
Questions I get asked fairly frequently are variations on the general theme of upgrading the operating systems of older Macs to more recent system versions. There is no all-purpose boilerplate answer. The appropriate system to use depends on variables like the speed of your machine, how much RAM you have, what you use the computer […]
2008 – The G3 range of iMacs had propelled Apple into the public eye, had sometimes been the best selling personal computer on the market, and had helped Apple come back from the brink. Between the iMac and the iPod, the whole world was watching Apple.
2008 – Ten years ago today, on August 15, 1998, the iMac first went on sale. Some Apple dealers had special midnight hours to help meet demand for the Bondi blue desktop that Steve Jobs had unveiled in May.
This guide shows you how to replaced the optical drive in both the Lombard and the Pismo PowerBook, which uses exactly the same drive bay modules.
A few weeks ago, Dwight Silverman reported in The Houston Chronicle that the total count of known malware for Mac OS X had reached 3.
Getting your PowerBook online wirelessly can be tricky. I take a look at which cards work.
It’s been almost two years since I last wrote for Low End Mac, but my love of all things Apple hasn’t waned. Most recently, I’ve become the proud owner of an iPhone 3G, which may finally stop me hunting for an elusive MessagePad 2100 on eBay.
PC Magazine’s Lance Ulanoff says, “Macs are PCs, dammit!” He then goes on to explain that the “PC” at PC Magazine stands for personal computer. I am not convinced. You see, I was there when the first IBM PCs reached the local ComputerLand store in 1981. And I know that was not the birth of […]
The 17″ and high-end 15″ aluminum PowerBooks, aside from their modest (by today’s standards) 512 MB of standard RAM, are pretty lavishly equipped in standard trim. Even the “entry-level” 15-incher is no slouch. However, that doesn’t mean these ‘Books aren’t candidates for a bit of upgrading – especially now that we’re closing on three years […]
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July 2008
My wife worked for a printing company, and in 1997 her boss thought that their Macintosh LC III was broken and asked me if I wanted to play with it. It turned out to be a simple repair to the video connector.
As a child of the 1970s (albeit by only two months), I grew up when computing was at its ripest. I started my computing venture with the likes of a Commodore 64 and Acorn 3010.
In his blog, Tim Bray states: “There’s a design flaw in Apple’s current lineup of Mac keyboards; easily fixed though.” He goes on to complain about both of Apple’s current keyboards, the USB ‘board with its full complement of keys and the Bluetooth keyboard with its significant lack of keys.
2008: The iPod very much dominates the MP3 player market, the iTunes Store dominates the digital music market (and probably video as well), the iPhone has redefined the smartphone market, and the Macintosh is the #3 personal computer brand in the US – and the #2 personal computer operating system, growing at an impressive rate […]
Some programs seem to do a thousand different things. Others are one trick ponies. HyperDither falls in the second category, and compared to image editing powerhouses like Photoshop and even Photoshop Elements, its feature-set is incredibly sparse. In fact, it only does one thing – it dithers images.
2008 – While it transcends the topic of computing by a vast margin, ocular vision is a key element of the computing interface. Being able to see the display is pretty elemental.
I’ve been into computing for over 15 years, but I didn’t see the Apple light until 2000. I had always liked Macs, but they were way out of my budget. I started working for a publishing house and was using an old Quadra. Even though it was old, it was amazing. It was my first experience […]
One of the biggest complaints about the original iPhone was that it didn’t use 3G for wireless data, instead depending on the far slower – average data speeds between 75-135 Kbps – EDGE protocol. Another complaint was the lack of third-party apps. The iPhone 3G addressed both of these. The iPhone 3G is very similar […]
2008 – Apple released the Time Machine backup utility as part of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in October 2007. Time Machine is most commonly used to back up to an external USB or FireWire hard drive directly attached to a Mac running Leopard.
When Steve Jobs introduced the white dual-USB iBook in May 2001, he described it as “amazing”. I had to agree. In the context of the time, it was amazing that they were able to pack all that good PowerBook stuff into a package with about one-third less volume than the PowerBooks 5300 and 1400 – […]
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June 2008
The ability to view and optionally control the screen of a remote computer can be very handy in a number of scenarios. Maybe you have a parent living in another city with questions about their computer or problems. Trying to help someone over the phone can be problematic, if when you say “Open the Finder” […]
2008: Has it really been five years since Apple introduced the Power Mac G5? Yes, and the new enclosure introduced on June 23, 2003, lives on as the housing of the Mac Pro.
Five years ago this week, on June 23, 2003 (although it seems longer somehow), Apple Introduced the G5 Power Mac, claiming it to be “fastest personal computer ever” and “first 64-bit personal computer”. Speculation soon began about the possibility of a G5 PowerBook. Not so much at first, since the G5 was launched as a power […]
2008: Bigger, more, cheaper! Those are the cries of computer buyers – and successful manufacturers answer in spades with faster CPUs, more RAM, bigger hard drives, and higher density displays. Oh, and sometimes smaller, cheaper computers as well.
2008 – Macs have been around for a long time, waxing and waning in popularity – 24 years as of this writing. Many people have used Macs in grade school or college, as business users, or personally, and have old data and software stored on floppy disks, SyQuest cartridges, hard drives, etc. from these Paleolithic […]
Being a long suffering Windows user, I finally gave into the peer pressure of my upwardly mobile friends who constantly urged me to go Mac. Ever since 2001, when I was helping a friend with a short film (which he edited using Final Cut on a Sawtooth Power Mac running OS 9), I’ve thought they were beautiful […]
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May 2008
During the mid-90s, Mac users were prone to dealing with poorly trained and ill-maintained Mac sections in big box computer and electronics stores. These environments did not foster customer loyalty, nor did they help differentiate the Mac user-experience from Windows.
When I saw the other My First Mac articles, I figured I’d share my story too. My Macintosh experience begins in 2003. My school had two Bondi blue iMacs, and these things were always unplugged.
One of the things that sets Macs apart from other computers is their longevity. People don’t just throw them away. Macs tend to soldier on long after their spec sheets say that they’re “obsolete”. This may explain another phenomenon almost unique to the Macintosh subset of the computing world: Mac collectors. It’s understandable when you […]
Early in 2006, I wrote an article for Low End Mac entitled VNC, Basilisk II, and SheepShaver: 3 Ways to Run Classic on an Intel Mac. In it, I noted that the then-new Intel-powered Macs were unable to run older Mac software in called Classic Mode, but that there were at least a couple of […]
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April 2008
Apple updated the iMac with Intel’s more efficient Penryn processor in April 2008, which has a larger Level 2 cache and includes the SSE4.1 instruction set. The Early 2008 iMac also moved from the 800 MHz system bus in the Mid 2007 iMac to 1066 MHz, and clock speeds now range from 2.4 GHz to […]
2008: It’s called the KPC. It sells for $99 bare bones (no CPU, RAM, or hard drive), and as low as $229 configured. And it makes me wonder, “Can it run OS X?”
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March 2008
Is Microsoft a monopoly? Has Microsoft been guilty of monopolistic behavior? These are questions we’ve been asking for well over a decade, and the subject surfaced again this week [mid March 2008] after the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Novell to file an antitrust case against the Redmond behemoth over the way WordPerfect […]
I’ve had this Blue and White Power Mac G3 in my office on and off for a few months. I spent several weeks working on it and a Mystic Power Mac G4/450 trying to get them both working reliably. Long story short, the problems turned out to be bad RAM.
2008: It’s been the hallmark of serious photographers – professionals and advanced amateurs alike – for nearly 50 years now. It’s the single lens reflex (SLR) camera, and it’s seen a lot of changes, especially in the digital era.
2008: I’ve been into photography since the mid-1970s, and I’ve worked in camera stores several times over the intervening years. For me, one of the banes of good enlargements is dates in photos. I’ve seen more nice candids, animal shots, sunsets, etc. that would make excellent large prints – but they have a big, ugly […]
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February 2008
With the introduction of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple upped the ante on Mac remote control. All of the methods covered in previous articles still work, but new options now exist in the operating system and via associated services.
Just four months after moving the MacBook to Intel’s Santa Rosa chipset, Apple has refreshed the line. The entry-level MacBook now runs at 2.1 GHz (yeah, it’s only 5% faster), while the faster models now clock at 2.4 GHz (almost 10% faster). The updated Core 2 CPU (known as Penryn) has an enhanced SSE4 vector […]
Multitouch. Introduced with the iPhone, brought to the Mac with the MacBook Air, it now makes its debut on the MacBook Pro. Surprisingly, Apple is doing it using the same trackpad, not a larger one like the MBA has. Although nominally faster at 2.5 GHz, the new Penryn CPU used in the new MacBook Pro […]
Multitouch. Introduced with the iPhone, brought to the Mac with the MacBook Air, it now makes its debut on the MacBook Pro. Surprisingly, Apple is doing it using the same trackpad, not a larger one like the MBA has. Apple has refreshed the 15″ MacBook Pro in almost every aspect – except for its looks, […]
2008: Last month we looked at the megapixel myth. As we noted then, “in the rush to market megapixels, images can actually be worse with a high megapixel camera than from a lower megapixel one.” The sad truth is that it’s worse than we thought.
2008 – When you’re reviving an old laptop, you face one issue that you don’t when you rehab a desktop computer – power. Hence the need to have a least a power brick in order to use a laptop as a desktop. Of course, almost (but not quite) every different laptop has a different AC […]
Part 1 of this series covers general considerations and Apple-supported methods available for remote system control that will generally work on any version of Mac OS X (Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and Leopard) – and even OS 9. This article addresses some commercial solutions that also support multiple OS versions, along with how to force-reboot a remote Mac. Part […]
We’ve already suggested reducing your screen resolution, switching from millions of colors to thousands, and using Mac OS X 10.3.x Panther as ways to get better playback of YouTube videos. Several readers have written in with other suggestions, including adjusting video quality and using other programs to view the videos rather than using a web browser.
There’s an urban legend that Mac’s don’t crash. That’s not entirely accurate. Mac hard drives, for instance, are identical to those in Windows systems and suffer the same sorts of physical failures with the same frequency. And the Mac operating system, while based on a solid industrial-strength Unix core, can suffer from problems from time […]
The most important part of this mailbag is the analysis of how to get the best performance from YouTube an an older Mac. YouTube Videos Run Poorly on Older Macs How Many Dead Pixels Are Too Many? Which iBook G4 Is the Better Deal? Increasing Safari Problems in Panther Quartz Extreme Support for PCI Video […]
Remote control of your Macintosh allows you to access a remote (host) computer across a network or the Internet from a local (client) system. The screen of the shared host computer appears locally, and you use your mouse and keyboard to control the other system from afar. Historically there have been fewer options to accomplish […]
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January 2008
My first Mac was an old PowerBook Duo 2300 I got as a birthday gift about four years ago. That’s all it took to get me hooked.
2008: The prayers of many for an ultralight MacBook have been answered, but in an unexpected way. And that’s pure Apple.
Apple took a completely different approach to ultralight notebook computers with the MacBook Air (MBA). Where netbooks used small screens, shrunken keyboards, and underpowered CPUs, Apple has gone very, very thin so the MacBook Air can have a 13.3″ LED backlit display, a full-sized keyboard, and a 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU – along […]
2008: In the world of computers, you can never have too many megabytes or megahertz. That sounds dated in this day of gigahertz and gigabytes, but the principle remains the same: More is better, whether you’re looking at CPU speed, system memory, hard drive space, or graphics processor speed and VRAM. Where it’s not necessarily […]
I recently (nearly) completed a novel that I started over the summer. If you check my publication history, you can see that the rate at which I have published columns on Low End Mac has dwindled to nearly zero. That’s because nearly all my free time for writing has been dedicated to writing a novel.
Apple finally upgraded the Xserve from a base 2.0 GHz dual-core configuration to a base 2.8 GHz quad-core machine – with dual 2.8 GHz and 3.0 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon CPUs optional. It matches the power of the Mac Pro, whereas the previous model had lagged behind. The base 2.8 GHz 4-core Xserve benchmarks 37% […]
It’s been 17 months since Apple introduced the original Mac Pro, which shipped with two dual-core processors (an 8-core model with two quad-core CPUs was introduced in April 2007), and the new Mac Pro is a big step forward: every configuration uses quad-core Intel Xeon CPUs for even more power. The new 45nm Harpertown CPU […]
2008: There’s been a huge buzz in the past week about an Apple patent application for “Run-Time Code Injection To Perform Checks”, which many liken to Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage program and speculate could result in Mac OS X and Apple apps including the kind of serialization and headaches that Windows users are familiar with.
For years now, our PC brethren have been able to enjoy the simple pleasures of vintage games consoles through a process known as emulation, and article upon article can be found through a Google search relating to how to do this on a Windows machine. When it comes to emulation on the Mac, for the […]
