Honestly, if they didn’t keep dropping support for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in new versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Flash, I’d have almost no reason to have OS X 10.9 Mavericks on my Late 2008 13″ Aluminum MacBook (that’s a 2013 OS on a 2008 computer). But my Mid 2007 Mac mini is limited […]
Author Archives: Daniel Knight
The scroll wheel came late to Macs. In fact, although every version of Mac OS X includes support for a scroll wheel, no Apple mouse has ever had a scroll wheel. The closest they ever came was the scroll ball in the Apple Mighty Mouse.
I will be the first to admit that I have always considered the iMac G4 to be an odd looking computer. A coworker gave me an old one a few months ago, and I finally got the right power cord to set it up. It’s changed my opinion of the machine.
We’re sounding like a broken record here, but what was Apple thinking by offering a 4 GB Early 2015 MacBook Air that shipped with OS X 10.10 Yosemite – an operating system that limps along with 4 GB of system memory and cries out for 8 GB? I hope most users had the sense to […]
Apple really messed up with the Early 2014 MacBook Air. The base version had just 4 GB of memory, and it shipped with OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the last version of OS X to run comfortably with 4 GB of memory. It’s a good thing Apple also offered an 8 GB option for those planning […]
Apple messed up with the Mid 2013 MacBook Air. It shipped with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and the base version had just 4 GB of memory. That was enough to run Mountain Lion and OS X 10.9 Mavericks, but OS X 10.10 Yosemite and beyond really want more memory. It’s a good thing Apple […]
Apple updated the MacBook Air again in June 2012, moving to faster Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs, making 4 GB of memory standard, and gaining USB 3. For the first time, the MacBook Air had an 8 GB option.
Apple updated the MacBook Air in July 2011, migrating to the far more efficient Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs, adding Thunderbolt connectivity, and going to a 6 GBps SATA Rev. 3 drive bus to further improve SSD performance. Sadly, Apple continued to sell a 2 GB version, which was scarcely adequate for the OS […]
In October 2010, Apple added an 11″ model to the MacBook Air line – and a new low in CPU speeds for the line. On the plus side, the pokey 1.8″ hard drives were history, and the line was now 100% SSD – and it had a 4 GB memory option plus a new graphics […]
The Mid 2009 MacBook Air was essentially a speed-bumped version of the Late 2008 MacBook Air. It runs at up to 2.13 GHz – almost 15% faster by clock speed – but it is still limited to 2 GB of RAM.
Where the original MacBook Air was a certifiable Road Apple due to its slow PATA drive bus, horribly slow 1.8″ hard drive, and fixed 2 GB of memory, the Late 2008 MacBook Air isn’t quite as bad. Yes, it is still limited to 2 GB of RAM, but at least it uses SATA for its […]
When Apple introduced the original MacBook Air in January 2008, 2 GB seemed like plenty of memory. This was the era of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which ran very comfortably with 2 GB – even with graphics eating up 144 MB of system memory. But limited memory was not the MBA’s only problem.
Low End Mac is a community-based resource with a website containing thousands upon thousands of articles, lots of support communities in Google Groups, and a very active, very helpful Facebook group. Our goal is to help you get the most life and value from you aging Macs.
Simon Royal suggested that Apple might make inroads with a non-smartphone, which he labelled the iPod Phone. It’s an interesting idea, but Palm had an even better nearly 10 years ago.
Douglas Adams is best known as the author of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which originated as a radio serial on BBC Radio 4 in 1978. In 1979, the first novelized version was published, followed by The Restaurant at the End of the Universe in 1980 and Life, the Universe and Everything in […]
It was almost two years ago that Apple announced it was acquiring Beats by Dr Dre, and by the end of August 2014, the acquisition was finalized. The most common rumors were that Apple was going to use a digital headphone jack instead of the traditional round analog headphone jack in all future iPhones – […]
Thank you for your ongoing support of Low End Mac, a community-based resource. Last month, Low End Mac entered its 20th year online – and Apple began its 40th year in business. From the start as a hobbyist website, we advocated the use of older Macs. I remember designing a booklet using PageMaker 1.0 on […]
In the past month, I’ve gone from only using an iPhone 4S to setting up an iPhone 5S for my wife and an iPhone 5 for myself. Looking back at iPhone history, there have been some big leaps forward in power – and some small ones.
Like clockwork, Apple introduces a new iPhone model (or set of models) every year. In September 2012, the iPhone 5 was the new one. We’re now three generations beyond that. How viable is the iPhone 5 today?
I just have to say Thank You! to everyone who has contributed to Low End Mac in March and April. Both months you have brought us beyond our goal, and it means the world to us. Yesterday we passed our funding goal for April.
After months of warnings every time I launched Google Chrome on my 2007 Mac mini running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Google has finally abandoned that platform. And OS X 10.7 Lion. And OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. (Not to mention Windows XP, which isn’t a Mac OS but definitely has a lot of users […]
Commodore was the third player in the 68000-based personal computer market, going up against the Apple Macintosh and Atari ST. Commodore had acquired Amiga in 1984.
Frankly, we can only think of one good reason for running OS X 10.5 Leopard on an Intel Mac: You don’t have enough system memory to run OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard decently and you’re not willing to invest in more RAM.*
Macs tend to be pretty trouble-free, but sometimes things happen. Maybe you had to force-quit an application, or a program refuses to launch, or the spinning beachball of death won’t stop, forcing you to manually power down your Mac. All of those could mean it’s time to do some hard drive and system checks.
I can’t believe how affordable SSDs have become. Last year I put a 256 GB Samsung SSD in my 2.0 GHz 2007 Mac mini for $90. This time I put a 480 GB Crucial SSD into my Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook (also 2.0 GHz) for $110!
While reading through The Nehemiah Effect, a book coauthored by a friend, I’ve spent some time musing over things like a vision statement, a mission statement, core values, attitudes, objectives, and goals. It’s really helped me look back over my life to see who I am while I defined these things for Low End Mac.
Last week, I looked at whether partitioning or formatting USB flash drives in other ways made a difference, and I found out that the stock FAT format tends to produce the best results overall. Today I’m testing striped RAID arrays using the same flash drives in 2, 3, and 4 drive configurations.
Thanks to about 90 readers, we surpassed our March fund raising goal by nearly 20%, giving us enough to cover our 2015 taxes, pay our monthly business bills, pick up a nice used 16 GB iPhone 5S, and acquire a new SSD for one of our MacBooks. If we hit our $800 goal this month, I […]
When you buy a USB flash drive, it comes preformatted for use on Window PCs. But will it work more efficiently if its reformatted in a Mac-native format? We just had to find out.
I hadn’t realized how much work it would be to move my wife from her iPhone 4S to an iPhone 5S. The project took many, many more hours than anticipated.
