It’s been almost two years since the Mac mini was last updated, and while a 1.4 GHz Core i5 CPU may not sound very powerful, the new US$499 price tag is sure to get your attention. Also, iFixit has a confirmed that the Late 2014 Mac mini ships with memory soldered to the logic board, so RAM […]
Author Archives: LEM Staff
Motorola StarMax computers were only on the market for a few years, and their five-year warrantees have long since expired. Motorola no longer offers any support for this hardware.
It’s been a perennial topic of discussion on our StarMax email list: Which optical drives are bootable in the Motorola StarMax computer and which ones are not. This is important, since Motorola used CD-ROM drives of different makes in StarMax computers – and many users are interested in faster drives or CD-RW capability.
Some of the first generation Power Macs can be significantly boosted by overclocking their CPUs.
The DayStar PowerPro and Sonnet PrestoPPC upgrades made it possible to run a 68040-based Mac with a PowerPC 601 CPU, taking it to the next generation of CPU technology. The 80 MHz version can be overclocked to further improve performance, and it may be possible with the 100 MHz card as well.
Apple’s PowerBook Duo notebooks were very lightweight and very portable, but they are very limited in connectivity unless you can acquire a Duo Dock. The Duo 201, 230, and 280c can all be overclocked. If other Duos can be overclocked, we have not found reports.
The Sonnet QuadDoubler replaces the CPU in a Centris or Quadra Mac with one that runs twice as fast as the original ‘040 processor, and by overclocking the logic board, you may be able to achieve even better performance.
The Centris series of Macs only included three models: the 20 MHz Centris 610, the 25 MHz Centris 650, and the Centris 660av, which is identical to the Quadra 660av. The 660av is covered on Overclocking the Quadra AV Models.
Every Mac Quadra can be overclocked, although the method varies among models. The Centris/Quadra 660av and Quadra 840av are covered on a separate page.
Only two Mac LC models can be overclocked to improve performance. The LC II and LC III can be chipped; the original LC and LC III+ cannot be overclocked. You can also upgrade LC models using third-party accelerators the plug into the LC processor direct slot (PDS), which will bring more performance at a higher […]
Some of the old 68030 and 68040 PowerBooks can be overclocked to achieve improved performance. This page has information on the PowerBook 140, 145, 150, 160, 170, 180, and 520 and 520c.
Not all Macs can be over clocked, but three models in the Mac II lines can – the IIsi, Iivx, and “wicked fast” IIfx. These pages provide information on the maximum reliable speed, which may vary from one machine to the next.
Many Mac models can be “chipped” to run at a higher speed, but none of the compact Macs can. That said, some can be upgraded with third-party accelerators, so you’re not necessarily stuck with the original CPU speed – although finding those upgrades nowadays may be difficult.
With its 5.5″ display, the iPhone 6 Plus was very competitive with the largest Android smartphones and phablets, which had helped Android cut into into iPhone sales.
The iPhone 6 broke with Apple’s traditionally small displays to keep the iPhone competitive with the larger Android smartphones that dominated the market and were cutting into iPhone sales. The iPhone 6 moved to a 4.7″ display from the 4.0″ of the iPhone 5 family, while the 6 Plus was a substantial 5.5″.
The Mid 2014 Retina MacBooks is essentially a speed bumped version of the Late 2013 model with the base model also boosted from 4 GB of system memory to 8 GB.
Nine months after the Late 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Apple moved forward with more power and twice-as-fast Thunderbolt 2 technology in July 2014.
In what appears to be a step backward, Apple has added a new, lower cost, entry-level 21″ iMac as the least expensive model added to the Late 2013 line.
Apple previewed OS X 10.10 Yosemite on June 2, 2014, at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). In addition to a lot of new features and a whole new level of integration with iOS devices, Yosemite looks like the most beautiful version of the Mac OS to date.
MECC was for many years one of the major producers of educational content including courseware, videos, and educational computer games for the Apple II, Radio Shack, IBM PC, and later the Macintosh and Windows. MECC was instrumental in ensuring the US was ahead and invested sufficiently in educational computing.
HyperCard changed the way people on the Macintosh platform created programs. Furthermore, it changed the way they worked -and, for some, the way they learned.
The inventor of the compact disc (CD), the most popular medium in the world for playing back and storing music, is often disputed, as one individual did not invent every part of the compact disc.
We all know about the early IBM PC clones, such as Compaqs and Dells. And some of us know about the Macintosh clones. But there were clones before the IBM PC existed – Apple II clones!
eWorld was Apple’s short-lived group of online services. Launched in June 1994, eWorld was an intuitive, easy-to-use, and heavily GUI-dependent new way to take advantage of the Internet. It included its own email service, bulletin board system (BBS), and more.
The Early 2014 MacBook Air (MBA) gets a speed bump and is rated at 12 hours in the field – and if you don’t use your MBA regularly, it has 30 days of standby power.
Once again the MacBook Air (MBA) takes a step forward with more processing power and improved battery life. The 11″ model is rated at 9 hours in the field, and if you don’t use your MBA regularly, it has 30 days of standby power.
Based on the headline on Cult of Mac (WTF? Ex-Apple Executive Apologize For The Original iPhone, Says It “Wasn’t Great”), you’d think Bob Borchers, Apple’s former Senior Director of Product Marketing, had really knocked the original iPhone, saying, “If you had the original iPhone I apologise; it was not a great phone, it was an OK […]
Apple moved the popular iBook to the G4 processor in October 2003, eliminating the last Macs with G3 processors. Although the G4 iBooks used a G4 CPU, it wasn’t initially the same one used in the PowerBook G4; instead, it was version with a smaller level 2 (L2) cache, which meant the first generation iBooks […]
Can it really be just 10 years since Facebook launched? It feels like it’s been around forever, and many of us use it daily – often several times on a day thanks to apps on our smartphones and tablets. Today Low End Mac’s staff takes a look at Facebook, what it does right, where the […]
Introduced on January 24, 1984, the Macintosh forever changed the way we work with our computers. Instead of memorizing and typing arcane commands, we could point the cursor using a mouse and click to do things – all for well under the $10,000 price of Apple’s Lisa.
On January 19, 1989 – 25 years ago – Apple released the first all-in-one Mac to run faster than 8 MHz. The 16 MHz SE/30 was built around a 68030 CPU and supports up to 128 MB of RAM in a small footprint computer – far more than any other black-and-white compact Mac.
Although it received some relatively minor updates in 2012, the previous Mac Pro received its last real update in 2010, and by the time the 2013 Mac Pro shipped in December 2013, that model was well over three years old. The 2010/2012 Mac Pro was the last Mac to run OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, […]
The Dock was a new Mac feature when OS X was first introduced. It had been part of the NeXTstep and OpenStep environments, where it was just an application launcher. In OS X, it would also show running programs and could hold documents. As you use OS X, you quickly determine which apps deserve an […]
Once you begin adding apps to your iOS device – whether an iPhone, an iPad, or an iPod touch – you’re faced with the question, Which apps belong on my home screen? In this Low End Mac Round Table discussion, our writers share what’s on their home screens.
At first glance, you’d think this was the original iPad mini, but the 2G iPad mini (unofficially iPad mini 2) runs Apple’s A7 processor and has a Retina Display. The 64-bit A7 takes performance far beyond that of the earlier A5-based iPad mini.
