Friends, it’s been quite a year so far, and I’m ready to make some big changes. My divorce will be finalized soon, and I’m looking for a position as a technical writer or editor in either the US or Canada. I am willing to relocate.
Author Archives: Daniel Knight
Low End Mac began 20 years ago as a way to share my knowledge of the earliest useful Macs with other Mac users. At that point I considered the Mac Plus – the first Mac with SCSI for adding a hard drive and expandable memory – to be the oldest practical Mac. Interesting thing is, […]
The current Mac Pro was introduced in December 2013 to mixed reactions. Yes, it’s beautifully miminalistic and it was very powerful by 2013 standards, but it lacked hard drive bays and expansion slots, two features that generally define a professional level computer.
I’ve been living on my own for three months – and doing my own laundry a lot longer than that. I’ve made several changes in recent months after getting feedback from others on Facebook. Today I’m going to look at the world’s cheapest fabric softener, an inexpensive pretreat for stains that you can make yourself, […]
The world certainly has changed since the late 1990s, when there were only two significant personal computing platforms – Windows with about 95% of the market, Mac at about 5%, and a tiny sliver of Linux users. Today we have mobile operating systems and another personal computing choice, Chrome OS. But what if you want […]
In October 2001, Apple introduced the original 5 GB iPod with FireWire as its only data and charging port. Steve Jobs previewed the original iPhone in January 2007 – ten years ago and just over five years after iPod introduction. The iPhone shipped at the end of June 2007, and released the first iPod touch […]
I love the huge 5.5″ 1920 x 1080 pixel display on the iPhone 6 Plus, but it’s such a large device that I wouldn’t want to stick one in my pocket and use it as my phone. The thing is huge – but there are other uses for it.
Due to some changes in the household, Low End Mac needs to get rid of one big debt fast. The business, such as it is, owes the IRS just under $7,000, and our monthly payment is $250. In recent months, donations have been short of our budget, and I’ve made some adjustments. The biggest thing […]
Selfie sticks are nothing new. Would you believe a photo was taken with a selfie stick in 1925, back in the era of box cameras? And would you believe that the modern selfie stick era began in 1983?
Working at the local Meijer store earlier this week, I noticed that they now have a pack of 8 store branded LED light bulbs for $11.99 – just $1.50 each. (Black Friday pricing: $8.00!) I’d say we have now hit the tipping point where it makes little sense to buy CFL or traditional incandescent bulbs […]
Intel’s next generation CPU architecture, replacing the Skylake chips in most current Macs, is known as Kaby Lake. This 7th generation Intel Core i design provides up to 8 MB of Level 3 cache and is already being used in some PCs. We should see it in Macs in 2017.
A funny thing happened to Mac performance: It stopped making those big strides forward that it used to. Like 1987, when the 16 MHz Mac II blew the doors off the 8 MHz Mac SE with 2.4x its performance, or when the 25 MHz Quadra 700 arrived with over twice the raw power of the […]
There has been a lot of hand wringing over the new MacBook Pro with its Touch Bar – and complete lack of legacy ports. I understand. We’ve been here before.
Some of you may remember seeing one of the first personal computers at a Radio Shack store in the latter part of 1977. Although there were three competing “home computer” systems on the market, only the TRS-80 was widely available – it was on display at 3,500 Radio Shack stores throughout the United States!
I love a good burger, a good pizza, a good beer, a good computer, a good TV show, and writing. One thing I find almost irresistible is a good bargain – which raises the question, What is a good bargain?
Last week, Apple unveiled three new MacBook Pro models – an entry-level 13″ model with traditional function keys, a more powerful 13″ model with the new Touch Bar, and a 15″ MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. What kind of performance can we expect from the new models?
October 2016 – Yes, in moderation, beer is good for you. It can help you sleep better, increase bone density, help prevent kidney stones, and help you avoid diabetes and dementia, among other health benefits.
October 21, 2016 will go down as one of the biggest cyber-attacks in the history of the Internet – perhaps the biggest ever. We’re going to learn a lot from this one, and we need to be sure to take steps to avoid it happening again.
If you’ve been following the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 nightmare, you know it’s given Samsung a serious black eye. Kudos to Samsung for doing the right thing and recalling the entire production just weeks after its introduction.
Apple and Samsung have had an interesting relationship over the years. On the one hand, Apple buys a lot of components from Samsung Electronics. On the other, Samsung is a leading competitor in the mobile market. Some might call them frenemies, others see it as a symbiotic relationship.
The personal computing revolution started in 1974 with the 2 MHz Intel 8080, Intel’s first 8-bit CPU capable of addressing 64 KB of memory. (The earlier 8008 from 1972 could only address 16 KB.) But there was a parallel path, a new CPU family that Motorola launched in 1974.
Believe it or not, word processing predated the personal computer revolution by over a decade. In 1964, IBM combined its Selectric typewriter (1961) with a magnetic tape drive in the IBM MT/ST, making it possible for the first time to edit text without having to retype everything.
The personal computing revolution began with the Intel 8080 CPU. This 8-bit CPU was introduced in 1974 at 2 MHz and was the heart of the first kit computer, the MITS Altair 8800. But it was the far less costly 6502 CPU that drove the home computing market.
Mac users have had networking since 1984 using Apple’s 230.4 Kbps LocalTalk hardware and AppleTalk protocol. However, there was an older networking standard with roots at Xerox PARC (which also inspired the Mac’s look and feel) known as ethernet that was destined to become the networking standard.
With the October 2005 introduction of the 2.5 GHz Power Mac G5 Quad, Apple had introduced the most powerful PowerPC Mac ever. Whatever was to replace it had to be a real powerhouse – and the first Mac Pro certainly was.
With macOS Sierra, Apple has once again raised the bar on which Macs can install and run the newest version of the Mac OS. But as sometimes has happened in the past, there are workarounds that make it possible to install Sierra on some unsupported Macs.
Until 2001, September 11 was just another day on the calendar. The unexpected terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center shocked us and had us glued to the news throughout the day. Except for the heroes and newscasters, almost all of us stopped what we were doing, watching in shock and horror and […]
There are three different business models in the PC, smartphone, and tablet industries. The most widely used model is for one company to make the operating system and license it to a host of hardware manufacturers. This has given us the Windows market where no matter how badly PC makers do, Microsoft remains profitable.
The big stuff first: The iPhone 7 is waterproof, no longer comes with a built-in headphone jack, and adds Jet Black to its color lineup. It’s the same size as the iPhone 6 and 6S, and there is no longer a 16 GB model – choices are 32 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB, but […]
The Apple Power Mac Processor Upgrade (APMPU) is a PowerPC 601 upgrade for 68040-based Macs that have a 32-bit LC processor direct slot (PDS) – the Quadra 605/LC 475/Performa 475-476, LC 575/Performa 575-578, LC 580/Performa 580-588, and Quadra 630/LC 630/Performa 630 series.
