NetMarketShare released its February 2012 online market share data with some interesting data for the month.
Author Archives: Daniel Knight
2012 – Apple really does Think Different. It always has. It always will.
Since first posting this article, we’ve heard from several readers and learned from other websites that our list of the oldest Macs that should work with Mountain Lion is on the optimistic side. It looks like all Late 2006 iMacs, all MacBooks without Nvidia graphics, all Mac Pros released before June 2007 (2006 and 2007 […]
Ever since Apple announced the iPad on January 27, 2010, people have asked, “Is the iPad a PC or not?” There has not been a clear-cut answer.
Matthew J. X. Malady has posted an interesting proposal on Slate about changing the computer keyboard. He wants the Caps Lock key gone, an em-dash key added, the exclamation point relocated, a “.com” key added, and “@” accessible without using the Shift key.
2012 – After years and years of offering a $100 rebate on inkjet printers, Apple discontinued the program this week. That got me looking back at the history of computer printing.
2012 – Bigger isn’t always better – witness the success of the iPhone and the MacBook Air – but it often is.
Can you really buy a decent iPhone case for under $4 shipped?
Apple usually makes the right choices, but it’s sometimes late coming to the party already underway on the Windows side of things.
Memory Cleaner is an app designed to make more system memory available and thus speed up your Mac by reducing dependence on slow virtual memory. I’ve been using Memory Cleaner on my 2007 Mac mini for quite a while now, and it’s about time I reported my results.
Charles W Moore raises a good point in Thoughts on Using Older Macs as Work Machines: As much as we may love our old Macs, some of them just don’t have what it takes to be productive in the wired and wireless world of the Internet today.
2011 – Netscape Navigator was the first widely popular Web browser, and when Netscape finally threw in the towel after years of fighting against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, it made Navigator an open source project. That project, Mozilla, has been producing new versions of the Firefox browser for over seven years now.
“Make every night movie night with the Discovery Expedition Wonderwall Entertainment Projector. The Wonderwall – which connects to your TV, DVD, camcorder, or video game console – projects an image up to 7.5 feet wide on any wall in your home, even the ceiling. As a result, you can catch up on your favorite cable […]
2011 – Yesterday’s hot Mac rumor, since picked up by just about every site covering Apple news, is that Apple is questioning the future of the Mac Pro and may be discontinuing its most expensive (and undoubtedly most profitable per unit) computer.
On Monday, Apple updated the MacBook Pro (MBP) line with faster processors (CPUs) across the board, along with higher capacity hard drives and better graphics processors (GPUs) on some models with no change in pricing.
PowerBook 100 with floppy drive. Twenty years ago, Apple introduced its first laptop computer – the 16 lb. Macintosh Portable was portable, but definitely not a laptop – and forever changed the face of notebook computing. Although we take it for granted that laptops have a trackpad mounted in front of the keyboard, that was […]
This review has taken a lot longer than planned, but I finally determined that the problem with my Mystic Power Mac G4 was a sporadically bad memory module, as determined by using Rember. Slimmed back from 1.25 GB of RAM to 1.0 GB, it’s been running more reliably, but still not without problems.
This review has been a long time coming. I’ve had some problems with my dual 500 MHz Mystic Power Mac G4, which was going to be the second Mac tested with the 40 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD Legacy Edition. Working with my 350 MHz Blue & White G3 has taught me a few […]
Extreme Tech’s Sebastian Anthony says that Thunderbolt, which Apple introduced earlier this year, is already dead in the water. I beg to differ. Sometimes Apple has a better idea that the rest of the industry ignores, and it’s usually a simpler solution than the PC world embraces.
Last December, I started a series on SSD (Solid State Drive) options for older Macs – see SATA and SSD Options for G3 and G4 Power Macs. At about the same time, Other World Computing (OWC) was preparing to address exactly that issue with a new line of “legacy” SSDs that would be plug-and-play compatible […]
“What happened to my Excel?” my panicked wife asked. Tools were missing, and things just didn’t look like they had before. Had some gremlin messed up her Excel settings?
2011 – Apple released Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger six years ago. It would become the longest lasting version of OS X ever, not replaced by a newer version until 10.5 Leopard shipped in October 2007 – 30 months later.
We take the Low End part of our name seriously at Low End Mac. Until six weeks ago, my newest Mac was a refurbished 2004 1.25 GHz eMac – and that’s not even a production machine. I picked up a secondhand dual 1 GHz Power Mac G4 to replace the eMac as my production machine […]
I recently shared my story of migrating from my reliable old (introduced in January 2001) Digital Audio Power Mac G4 with its dual 1.6 GHz upgrade and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to my first Intel Mac, a 2.0 GHz 2007 Core 2 Duo Mac mini running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. But a few days after switching […]
2011 – I finally did it. I bought my first Intel-based Mac two weeks ago, and I’ve been making the transition from being PowerPC only.
When Apple introduced the Early 2011 MacBook Pro models with Thunderbolt, something clicked in the back of my mind. With Thunderbolt, Apple has delivered on a promise made when the original Macintosh was introduced in 1984 – and then some.
The first benchmark results are in for the 2011 MacBook Pro line. Primate Labs posted the first Geekbench results last Thursday, and Macworld followed with its Speedmark 6.5 benchmark suite on Friday.
2010: The Year PowerPC Macs Became Total Paperweights – That’s just one line from OSS Waves PPC Goodbye as Old Macs Turn Paperweights, a column by Fernando Cassia published on TechEye last September. His advice: “If you have an old PowerPC based Mac, the time to move is now, as software developers are dropping support of the platform left […]
2011 – The first MacBook Pro shipped five years ago, the first “pro” Mac to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel. (The 17″ 1.83 GHz and 20″ 2.0 GHz Core Duo iMacs were the first Macs to make the switch to Intel, and the Mac mini migrated to Intel at the end of February 2006.)
2011 – I ran across an article I wrote in January 2003 explaining why, after over a dozen years using the Classic Mac OS, I finally made the switch to Mac OS X as my primary operating system.
