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December 2018
Macs are known to be generally more secure than their PC counterparts and relatively free of virus and malware attacks. But with the rise in popularity of Apple computers in recent years — thanks first to the so-called iPod halo effect and the iPhone, which brought on the dawn of the iOS ecosystem — the […]
Apple, Inc. has always been at the forefront of some leading technologies and innovations. Two of its three alternate computing interfaces that were designed to assist the disabled — touch and voice control — which were ahead of their time when first deployed back in the late 1980s, are now mainstream interfaces for use by […]
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November 2018
Apple did a very nice thing when it introduced the Power Mac G5 in June 2003 – it introduced a line that would use the same upgrade options across the board. Well, until the dual-core models shipped in October 2005, which we will mostly ignore in this article.
I love being able to plug in some headphones and listen for hours, but is the ageing 3.5mm (1/8″) socket disappearing or is it here to stay?
The earliest Macs with their all-in-one design used a simple coiled keyboard cable similar to what telephones used to use – and the perfect length for use on the desktop. But in 1987, we got the Mac II, a powerhouse computer that could sit on your desk or be set vertically on the floor beneath […]
Last year I made the switch from AT&T Mobile to Consumer Cellular. I was paying for more service than I needed, and I recently went through my data usage records to see if it is still enough for me.
Not everyone uses modern Macs. I spent a day with a friend who still runs 1997 and 1999 Macs 20 years on.
The Mac mini has been one of the most affordable desktop Macs ever made since the original G4 model was introduced in January 2005 at US$499 and $599. The entry-level price has varied over the years, jumping $100 with the first Intel Mac minis in 2006. The 2014 model started at $499 with a 1.4 […]
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October 2018
The Mac mini seems to be the Mac that Apple forgets about for years between updates. The 2014 model came out two years after the 2012, and the 2018 a whole four years after the 2014. It may have been a long wait, but the new model is a huge step forward from the Late […]
In addition to lowendmac.com and our communities on Google Groups, Low End Mac has had a presence on Facebook since December 2008 – and we’ve had requests to create new Facebook groups for similarly low-end interests.
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September 2018
I was not aware that Apple had ever produced a RAID card for the Mac Pro until today. And at the same time I learned how relatively useless this once-costly card is.
I was going to write an article about what a great value a used 4G iPod touch was for grandma or someone else who wants to video chat with family members without paying for an iPhone and mobile service. But Apple killed that idea.
Palms were designed to be a digital replacement for a paper planner. There were simple built-in programs with the business customer in mind. And there were people that happily used those built-in programs to keep track of appointments, lists, bits of information, and expenses.
The first SLRs had clip-on external light meters, and those meters eventually became standard components. Unfortunately with interchangeable lens cameras, the meter’s coverage only matched the standard lens and perhaps a 35mm wide-angle lens. It wasn’t through-the-lens (TTL) metering, but at least it eliminated the need to carry a separate light meter. The Topcon RE […]
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August 2018
SuperMac was once a major player in the Macintosh video market, building graphics cards, monitors, and the legendary Video Spigot. SuperMac was acquired by Radius, it’s primary competitor in this market, in 1994.
I bought my Palm Zire 71 new. I’d been using an M130, and the 71 seemed like a great step up. I used it for several years, then in 2008, I had a bad experience where I was unable to charge it and couldn’t access the information on it. I went analog as a result […]
We are helping to launch localized geographically based Apple/Mac groups to facilitate local support, local pickup of used gear, and perhaps – at the discretion of each group – the opportunity to get together for a swap meet.
This past Friday was one of those summer days here in western Michigan that you’d just as soon forget. Bright, sunny, pretty humid, and 93° in the shade. I had to drive somewhere that I had never been before that afternoon, and Waze had me mostly heading into the sun (the destination was southwest of […]
Processors keep getting faster and faster. Hard drives and SSDs are getting faster and faster. System memory gets faster and faster. Graphics processors get faster and faster. Network speeds get faster too. So why does so much feel slow?
2008: For the second time in a year, Apple is being sued for Macs that display “millions” of colors but using displays that can only display 262,144 colors per pixel.
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July 2018
I don’t know if you’ve seen the ads on Facebook for a 9″ Windows 10 notebook selling for $120 and up (advertised as 80% off), but if you’re looking for a Windows notebook computer, it may not be for you. And if you’re the PC go-to guy for family and friends, you need to know […]
With every story there are two sides. While there was certainly some negative sentiment in my previous article – Original Apple TV: Apple’s Improper Abandonment and What to Do – you have to also take the good with the bad. Change forces us to move forward sometimes and get creative.
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June 2018
Apple left the 1st Generation Apple TV behind as of May 25, 2018. You can no longer connect it directly to iTunes. Even if you attempt to sync authorized content to it through an authorized Mac, it’s over.
Life is too short to argue over operating systems. Does it really matter what you use as long as you are happy with it?
After a brief tinker with Linux again, I am back using macOS – and I couldn’t be happier.
Most of my computers were older when I got them – and much older when I moved on to something newer. I got my first Mac, a Mac Plus, in early 1990, over 4 years after Apple had introduced it. I earned enough Apple points during the holiday sales promotion to get it and a […]
It was 2011, the year after Steve Jobs had unveiled the 9.6″ iPad to the world. Apple’s new tablet was exactly the right size, according to Jobs, with its 9.56″ by 7.47″ footprint. However, at 1.5 lb., it was no lightweight. It’s 1024 x 768 pixel display was that same resolution that had been used […]
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May 2018
Iomega, founded in 1980, was a big name in removable media drives starting with its original 5 and 10 MB Bernoulli Box in 1982. Instead of using hard platters, as SyQuest did, the high capacity Bernoulli system was essentially a big floppy disk that used the Bernoulli Principle to keep drive heads from actually touching […]
This is a cautionary tale about listening to your gut feeling. I have always preferred the look of a blackbook (black MacBook) and had come across one on a local selling website. It was advertised as a 2008 MacBook in working order, except that the trackpad button didn’t click so it required an external mouse. […]
SATA standards are all backwards compatible, right? Well, not necessarily. Researching upgrade options for the 2010 iMac on my desk has been a real learning experience. Some SATA III hard drives are auto-sensing and thus compatible with SATA II and SATA I ports, but some SATA III hard drives are fixed speed only and thus […]
The Commodore PET 2001 was one of the first three personal computers that came to market in 1977, launching the home computing era along with Tandy/Radio Shack and Apple. Commodore’s entry was unique for having an all-in-one design.
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April 2018
Mac sales have been growing ever since Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel processors, in no small part because that made it possible to run Windows on Macs at full speed. No more Intel emulation. No more DOS cards. Boot Camp and then virtualization apps made it easy to run other operating systems on Intel-based […]
If you’ve got the passion, patience, and money, you too can be an online thrifter. For this week’s article, I thought I would share some of the tricks I have used to amass my collection at a fraction of the price.
When I started adding some profiles of Macs to my personal web space in April 1997, who would have thought that it would grow into something enduring? We used Macs at work, I had a Mac at home, and I was teaching myself how to make web pages using Claris Home Page. So I put […]
The PC Card was originally called the PCMCIA card when it was launched in November 1990. It is compatible with the Japanese JEIDA memory card 4.0 standard and supports a 16-bit ISA-compatible data bus. PC Cards may be 5V, 3.3V, or both, and 3.3V cards have a key that prevents them from being plugged into […]
After years of barely growing the number of Macs sold, in 2006 Apple moved to Intel CPUs – and sales took off immediately. Prior to 2005, Macs had peaked at 4.5 million units in 1995, dropped to 2.7 million in 1998, and hit a new high of 4.7 million in 2005.
As of April 1st, 2018, Low End Mac is changing its funding model. While we will still accept donations from people who find the site helpful, we will begin the process of taking each and every article apart, updating it for our new format, and waiting for the money to come to us.
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March 2018
I was shocked to learn that Apple has introduced an update to its full-sized 9.7″ iPad line, giving it an A10 processor running at 2.34 GHz (vs. an A9 clocked at 1.84 GHz in the 2017 model) – and offering it at a retail price of just $329!
The Macintosh Quadra 700. This was always a Mac that interested me; essentially the same old beige tower, but with a twist. Sitting on molded plastic legs, the tower has a vertically placed 3 1/2” floppy drive at the top center of the computer. This Macintosh has a 25 MHz Motorola 68040 processor, can take […]
Most of the visitors to Low End Mac work comfortably in English, whether they grew up speaking it or learned it along the way. We think Low End Mac is a wonderful resource, one of many on the Mac Web, which has a wealth of wonderful English-language resources.
Macs have had networking since the “Fat Mac” shipped in late 1984, but over the years Apple has changed the file sharing system, so not all Macs can share files with each other. This article provides a brief overview of which Macs can share files based on the system software they are running.
I have been using my PowerBook G4 as a writing and e-mail tool for a while now, and I thought I may be able to make it a complete daily driver. I work as an IT manager for a small design firm, and I oversee a network of Windows and Linux servers and Windows workstations. […]
Patience is a virtue, or so it is said. It came in handy with a local seller who was selling a 1991 Apple “for parts” (as the ad stated). It was a small nostalgia and collectibles store that seemed to specialize in music, bikes, and anything else that caught the owner’s eye.
Facebook is really good at providing all sorts of information about groups. For instance, our group has 5,317 members, but only 3,356 have been active in the past 28 days. Men make up 89% of the group; women, 10%; and “other” or unidentified, 1%.
We had a good-natured discussion in our Facebook group on Thursday when I laughingly posted that Low End Mac’s new motto was Nerds Helping Nerds. And that led to a discussion of the meaning and negativity sometimes associated with the words geek and nerd. And the dangers inherent in calling ourselves geniuses.
It irks me every time someone refers to Low End Mac as a blog instead of a website, and that really begs the question: What is a blog? That’s a simple question without a simple answer.
Camino is a port of Netscape specifically to Mac OS X. It began in late 2001 when Mike Pinkerton and Vidur Apparao launched a proof-of-concept project to embed Netscape’s Gecko rendering engine in a Cocoa application. Cocoa is Apple’s native object-oriented application programming interface (API) for Mac OS X and is rooted in NeXTstep, which […]
Did you know that Apple once released a Macintosh with the Mac System in its ROMs? Did you know that Apple released an 8 MHz model in October 1990, so it was available at the same time as the “wicked fast” 40 MHz 68030-based Mac IIfx? Do you know how much Apple left out to […]
Certain Apple computers are harder to find than others. The Macintosh Portable, the 128K, the G4 Cube, TAM, etc. My find was just as rare, due to it only being available to the educational market. Some call it the Molar Mac.
The Growing Windows Threat: Jean Louis Gassée, now the head of product development at Apple, predicted that Apple would maintain its lead in the personal computing world indefinitely. He oversaw the introduction of the critically acclaimed Mac IIci and System 7 (and also several flops) and felt that no company would be able to wrest […]
1986 marked the replacement of Mike Murray as head of marketing with Jean-Louis Gassée. Gassée started Apple’s French division and drove it in a few years to become one of the most successful divisions in Apple. Unlike Steve Jobs’ vision of an information appliance, Gassée hoped that the Macintosh would turn into an open platform […]
Even with the fabulous press reception given to the Macintosh upon its release (see my previous article), it did not sell well. There were a number of reasons for that.
Except for its earliest models (see Acorn 8-bit Computers), Acorn had built its computers around the 6502 microprocessor, which was also used by Apple, Atari, Commodore, and others. Seeing the end of the 8-bit era approaching, Acorn knew that it was time to move to a new architecture
Except for its earliest models, Acorn had built its computers around the 6502 microprocessor, which was also used by Apple, Atari, Commodore, and others. Seeing the end of the 8-bit era approaching, Acorn knew that it was time to move to a new architecture. However, the cost of existing 16-bit CPUs was prohibitive, and quite […]
One of the early “home computers” was hardly known outside of the United Kingdom, but in its home country, Acorn owned the education market. Launched by Cambridge Processor Unit Ltd. (CPU) in January 1979, a little over a year after the Apple II, Commodore PET, and Radio Shack TRS-80 came to market, the Acorn System […]
The Intel 80186 is based on the earlier 8086 CPU with the same 20-bit address bus as the 8086, allowing it to access up to 1 MB of memory. Introduced in 1982, the 80186 and 80188 are fully code compatible with the 8086 and 8088, but they also introduced 10 new instruction types.
There are noticeably few articles, if any, about the 2006 and 2007 Mac Pros, that help you diagnose memory issues. I am changing this by documenting my own experiences with my primary computer, a Mac Pro 2,1. This article should help you recognize any memory symptoms with your Mac Pro and resolve them quickly.
Although the World Wide Web had been created many years earlier, it was in 1995 that it rocketed into public view. Window 95 shipped in August, and Intel unveiled the Pentium Pro in November. Apple used the new PowerPC 603 CPU in its Performa 5200 and 6200 models, both running at 75 MHz. The 603 […]
Microsoft first shipped Windows 1.0 in 1985, and this DOS shell was content to run even on old 4.77 MHz PCs, albeit slowly. That was also the year Aldus invented the fourth major productivity software category – after word processing, spreadsheets, and databases – by releasing PageMaker. Desktop publishing was born, and Apple found a […]
It’s all about the hunt and the thrill of the deal. I scour online ads for days at a time, looking for that precious PC being cast aside. This week’s bounty: a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver, an Atari 600XL, and a TI 99/4A.
I have a 2007 Mac Pro sitting in front of me that I wanted to make much faster than a hard drive allows. If having a single SSD (Solid State Drive) is nice, works well, and really brings the life out of these older Mac Pros, what if we wanted even more speed? What if […]
There is an earlier article by Dan Knight about CPU upgrades in the 2007 iMac that omits a few possible upgrades. This article is predominantly aimed at helping people get a “Penryn” Core 2 Duo CPU into their Early 2007 iMac, as the chipset does allow several “newer” CPU upgrades.
Sometimes we think too much into whether we can – so much so that we don’t question whether we should. This is a dilemma which faced me several times as I pushed the envelope, took the risk, and got away with jamming 64 GB of RAM right into my Mac Pro 2,1. In this article, […]
Despite the Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 (2006/7) models hitting past the 10-year mark, there is, surprisingly, a great amount of hardware that is still available for use. In contrast to the age of the older (first) Mac Pros, there is still some new hardware that is being released, which can be used on these […]
In nearly 21 years of existence, Low End Mac has been through a lot of changes. We originally had a very flat structure – files in the root level and one level down with folders for compact Macs, Mac II series, and LC series. And that structure kept getting broader and broader as we added […]
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February 2018
It was only $30 on Black Friday, and the 4″ screen on my iPhone 5 wasn’t particularly kind to my eyes. Facebook on a small iPhone is not a great experience, Clash of Clans and Euchre 3D, about the extent of my gaming, can be hard to read. Ideally, I’ll have an iPhone 6S someday […]
QacQoc is making a name for itself for its environmentally friendly and very affordable line of accessories, most of them with USB-C ports. None of my Macs have USB 3, let alone USB-C, so when QacQoc contacted me about reviewing their very nice USB-C hub, I had to share my predicament. They sent two items […]
It’s not particularly easy to create a bootable USB flash drive so you can try running Linux on a PowerPC Mac. It took me a couple weeks of research, asking questions of our Linux on PowerPC Macs group on Facebook, and experimenting before I could finally boot into Linux 14.04 from a thumb drive. I […]
QacQoc is making a name for itself for its environmentally friendly and very affordable line of accessories, most of them with USB-C ports. None of my Macs have USB 3, let alone USB-C, so when QacQoc contacted me about reviewing their very nice USB-C hub, I had to share my predicament. They sent two items […]
When Steve Jobs debuted the MacBook Air on January 15, 2008 at the San Francisco Macworld conference, he famously demonstrated its thinness by pulling one out of a manila envelope. He claimed it was the thinnest laptop in the world.
Apple made an unusual decision when it designed the original iBook, the one with the handle. Unlike most Macs before and since, iBooks do not have a PRAM battery. Neither does the 12″ PowerBook G4, which is based on the iBook G4. Instead, the parameter RAM (PRAM for short) is maintained by using the charge […]
If anything, Apple’s success in getting the Apple II family of computers into elementary schools was a mixed blessing. The education market kept the Apple II line going, prevented DOS PCs from getting a foothold in most elementary schools, but it also kept schools from buying Apple Macs because they couldn’t run all that Apple […]
No, it isn’t a typo. Compleat is a legitimate, albeit archaic, spelling for complete. As Kenneth G. Wilson says in The Columbia Guide to Standard American English: “This obsolete spelling of the adjective complete suggests an air of antiquity that seems to please some of those who name things….” We find that fitting for Low […]
When Apple designed the original iMac‘s system board, it left a connector marked “mezzanine” without explaining its purpose. The official explanation is that it was used for testing logic boards before installing them in the iMac’s swoopy case. But once people saw prototype iMacs with video output, the cat was out of the bag and […]
I’ve been doing a bit of reflecting lately, and it’s hard to believe that the G4 Cube is turning 18 later this year and that it’s now been over 8 years since one of my earliest articles was published, Reimagining the Mac Cube for the Intel Era.
Back in 2015, a proof-of-concept piece of Mac malware arrived under the name Thunderstrike. The name was chosen because the software specifically used the Thunderbolt port in newer Macs as its infection vector, and it was designed to use an ethernet adapter as its carrier. Apple addressed the issue with the Mac OS X 10.10.2 […]
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January 2018
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, […]
It’s been a while my Low End friends, but moving your whole life is never easy. Settled nicely into my next home now, I have some catching up to do! Let’s start the New Year off discussing the age-old “idiot box” – better known as your television. As we all know, not all TVs are […]
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 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 […]
