Fixing Security Certificate Problems in OS X

Since installing OS X 10.9 Mavericks, I’ve been plagued by problems with security certificates. I couldn’t visit Twitter or LastPass using Safari or Chrome. And I couldn’t log in to Messages or FaceTime. But after a fair bit of research, I found a solution.

Early Impressions of Mavericks

I have OS X 10.9 Mavericks installed on my Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook, one of the older Macs to support OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and Mavericks. Until now I’ve held off upgrading past OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard because of software I’d have to leave behind, but with Mavericks available for free and a […]

Mavericks Already Dominates Among OS X Users

Apple certainly knew what it was doing when it made OS X 10.9 Mavericks a free update available to anyone running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.7 Lion, or 10.8 Mountain Lion. Released on Tuesday, Low End Mac site stats show that it passed Mountain Lion on Wednesday.

Is the New Mac Pro the Next Cube?

I must admit to having Mac Pro lust for the new Late 2013 Mac Pro that Apple has promised to deliver “later this year”. From its radical styling and cutting edge features to its sheer power, this Mac in a black can is definitely lustworthy.

Why a 64-bit iPhone?

When Apple introduced the iPhone 5S, it brought the first 64-bit smartphone to market – and Samsung immediately promised that it would have 64-bit in its next generation as well. But what’s the point of a 64-bit processor in a smartphone?

The Late 2013 iPhones

No real surprises today. All those sites sharing leaks about iPhones in multiple colors, a gold iPhone, and a better-than-ever iPhone proved to be correct. Earlier today, Apple introduced the iPhone 5C in five different colors and the iPhone 5S, the new top-end model, in three.

12 Reasons to Keep Your Old iPhone

Some carriers have been offering iPhone owners a $100 discount on a new iPhone. A lot of independent companies selling mobiles are offering to buy used iPhones outright. There’s always an active iPhone market on eBay, and now Apple had entered the trade-in game. But should you sell or trade in your old iPhone? Or […]

Keeping Up with Low End Mac

There are many ways to keep up on Low End Mac (LEM) as we add new content, update price trackers, and continue to migrate old articles from HTML files to the WordPress content management system.

Waze: Free GPS Navigation with a Social Twist

It all started with Mapquest in 1996. Suddenly you could used that new-fangled Internet for something practical, finding the best route from point A to point B – whether across town or across the country. All you had to do was print out the driving directions and keep them handy while you drove.

What Is Chromecast?

The tech world has been abuzz with news of Google’s forthcoming Chromecast device, something Google hopes will change the way you use your TV. What exactly is Chromecast?

Mac Sales Decline

Mac sales have really taken off since Apple switched from PowerPC processors to Intel x86 CPUs in 2006. According to Apple’s data, over 90 million Intel Macs have been sold, with a peak of 5.198 million in the 2011 holiday quarter.

Classic Mac OS Downloads and Updates

Need a copy of System 6.0.8, 7.0.1, or a newer version of the Classic Mac OS for your vintage Mac? You can dig through apple.com and try to find them – or you can download them using the updated links on this page. (Apple does rearrange things, making it more difficult to find things.) All versions […]

Microsoft Word for Mac FAQ

Microsoft Word began life as Multi-Tool Word for Xenix in 1983. It was renamed Microsoft Word and ported to MS-DOS in 1983, the Macintosh in 1985, and Windows in 1989. It has been the dominant word processing program on the Mac since 1988 and on Windows since 1993.

iTunes for Mac FAQ

iTunes has grown from its roots as a program that let Mac users rip their CDs to MP3 format, manage their music libraries, and burn CDs. Today iTunes supports iPods, iPhones, iPads, Apple TV, Apple’s online iTunes Store (which distributes music, podcasts, video, and software), and online video rentals.

Adobe InDesign for Mac FAQ

Adobe InDesign was created as the successor to the aging Adobe PageMaker. InDesign supports features such as XHTML exporting, professional typographical controls, and long-document support. By 1998, much of the professional market had migrated from PageMaker to rival Quark XPress 4.1 due to PageMaker’s comparative lack of features. At that point, Quark announced that it […]

FileMaker for Mac FAQ

FileMaker Pro is a cross-platform (Mac OS and Windows) relational database (RDBMS) application published by Apple subsidiary FileMaker Inc.

Photoshop for Mac FAQ

Photoshop began life as a program called Display that was made to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. Photoshop has grown to support layers, filters, brushes, text, 3D objects, video, and much others.

iOS Safari vs. the Facebook App

Two years ago I made the move from a mobile phone with a keyboard to a smartphone, an iPhone 3GS, and it has served me well since then. I’ve been using Facebook for ages – perhaps sometime in 2008 based on a look at my timeline.

Best Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Prices

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was the longest-lived version of OS X with 30 months on the market. It was released on April 29, 2005 and replaced by OS X 10.5 Leopard on October 26, 2007. Tiger officially requires a G3 or later Mac with FireWire, 256 MB of RAM, and 3 GB of available […]

Anticipating the 2013 iPhone Lineup

Every year, Apple has an update to the iPhone, and 2013 will be no exception. We can expect an improved version of the iPhone 5, which will almost undoubtedly be called the iPhone 5S, and we can expect the current iPhone 5 to replace the iPhone 4S at the $99 (with contract) price point.

ScuzzyGraph and ScuzzyGraph II

Online information about ScuzzyGraph is minimal. We do know that it allows old black-and-white Macs with SCSI ports to work with an external display. It supports a 3-bit, 8-color palette (some sources say 4-bit/16-color with some Macs), which is a far cry from the 8-bit/256-color output introduced with the Mac II’s first color video card […]

So You Wanna Build a Macquarium

Who needs a screen saver when you can have real fish in your old Mac? Perhaps nothing else he’s done has brought Andy Ihnatko quite the same fame and notoriety as inventing the Macquarium – a compact Mac gutted and turned into a fishbowl. Following are links to online resources for those interested in converting […]

Avoid Password Insanity with LastPass

If you’re anything like me, you’ve had lots of different email addresses over the years – and lots of different websites you log into. The Mac’s password manager does a good job if you have a single Mac, but things gets messy when you use multiple Macs (or multiple versions of OS X on the […]

Low End Mac’s Brand and Spelling Guide

A style guide is where you turn when you’re not sure how to spell, capitalize, or punctuate a word or name. This is presented as a public service to Mac webmasters, who should feel free to contribute additions and suggest changes.