The Late 2013 Retina MacBooks have embraced Intel’s latest energy efficient Haswell technology, which provides more processing power per GHz with reduced power consumption. Additionally, the Late 2013 13″ Retina MacBook Pro is a bit thinner and lighter than the Early 2013 model.
Author Archives: LEM Staff
Eight months after first upgrading the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Apple moved to the Intel Haswell chipset in October 2013.
Apple previewed OS X 10.9 Mavericks at the June 2013 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), and it appears to be a big step forward for OS X – perhaps the biggest since Apple made the transition from the “classic” Mac OS 9 to OS X 10.0 way back in March 2001.
On October 22, 2013, Apple introduced the first 64-bit iPads, including a thinner, lighter version of the 9.7″ model. The iPad Air runs a 1.3 GHz 64-bit Apple A7 processor nearly twice as powerful as the A6X used in the 4G iPad.
In early 1983, Steve Jobs and several other Apple employees visited Brown University for a tour of its computing lab, where they showed off brand new Apollo workstations. Andy van Dam was shown the Apple Macintosh before its introduction. He told Jobs that they were waiting for a “3M” machine (a term used in the […]
The Late 2013 iMac takes last year’s slimmer than ever design and powers it with Intel’s energy efficient Haswell Core i5 CPU (with i7 build-to-order options).
The iPhone 5S marked the beginning of 64-bit power. While the Android world was going with 4-core 32-bit processors, Apple raised the bar with its dual-core 64-bit A7, which has about twice the power of the A6.
Although the iPhone 5 had been a runaway success, there were some problems with the case bending, as well as battery issues with units built through January 2013 (see the iPhone 5 page for more details). The iPhone 5C was designed to address bending with its thicker plastic polycarbonate enclosure.
The big breakthrough for the Mid 2013 MacBook Air (MBA) is improved battery life. The 11″ model is now rated at 9 hours in the field, a huge jump from the 2012 model. And if you don’t use your MBA regularly, it has 30 days of standby power.
The big breakthrough for the 2013 MacBook Air (MBA) is improved battery life. The 13″ model is now rated at 12 hours in the field, a huge jump from the 2012 model. And if you don’t use your MBA regularly, it has 30 days of standby power.
Four months after introducing the first 13″ MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Apple introduced a slightly faster version with 2.5 and 2.6 GHz dual-core i5 CPUs.
Nine months after introducing the first MacBook Pro with a Retina Display, Apple has speed bumped its top-end notebook.
In January 2013, Apple introduced a revised version of the 3rd generation Apple TV, this time with an updated A5 chip that also included an improved graphics processor.
Apple promoted the 4G iPad as having twice the performance, faster WiFi, and a new FaceTime HD camera. It was the first iPad with a Lightning connector, introduced with the iPhone 5 earlier in the year, and had improved 4G LTE support compared to the 3G iPad.
A lot smaller and just half the weight of a full-sized iPad, the iPad mini squeezed the features of the iPad 2 into much more portable package with a 7.9″ screen.
Four months after introducing the 15″ MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Apple introduced the 13.3″ Retina Display MacBook Pro, making Retina technology available in a smaller, lighter, less expensive package.
The 2011 Mac mini Server was a normal Mac mini with two hard drives, a quad-core i7 CPU (vs. dual-core CPUs in regular Minis), and OS X Server installed. The 2012 Server is essentially the same as the top-end consumer model, but with OS X Server installed and two hard drives instead of one. You […]
“Way more power” is Apple’s claim for the Late 2012 Mac mini, and that’s certainly true for the top-end quad-core i7-based model. It has the highest Geekbench score yet for a Mini at 10642 (vs. 6741 for last year’s 2.7 GHz dual-core i7 model), which is an impressive 58% better. However, at the entry level, […]
Slimmer than ever, the Late 2012 iMac is the first iMac ever not to include a built-in optical drive. Apple has also managed to make the iMac’s glossy screen 75% less reflective than before.
With the iPhone 5, Apple left behind the 3.5″ display every previous iPhone had used, replacing it with a taller (or wider – in landscape mode) 4″ screen displaying 1136 x 640 pixels, the same 16:9 aspect ratio of HD TV. That’s 18.3% more pixels.
The 5G iPod touch uses the same 4″ widescreen display as the iPhone 5 and the same dual-core Apple A5 CPU as the iPhone 4S. It was also the first iPod touch available in colors other than black and white and the first to use the Lightning port.
Apple had introduced the G5 processor with the Power Mac G5 in June 2003, and the amount of heat the G5 processor generated required a case designed to keep air flowing so the computer wouldn’t overheat. The G5 also used much faster memory than the G4, running at one-half or one-third of CPU speed rather […]
The original idea behind PowerPC processors was to create a Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) and focus on making those instructions as efficient as possible. This was in direct contrast to Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC), which kept adding more and more instructions, which meant more decoding and processing had to be done by the […]
Dan Knight (Mac Musings): It’s hard to believe that it was just three years ago that Mac OS X went Intel only. Macs had uses PowerPC processors from the System 7.1 era up until 2006, when the first Intel-based Macs arrived running a special Intel-only version of OS X 10.4 Tiger. With OS X 10.5 […]
Until 1995, Microsoft Windows took a back seat to the Macintosh. Although Windows 3.x supported 256 color 320 x 200 VGA mode, by default is used a higher resolution (and thus sharper) 16 color mode. There wasn’t the least thing pretty about it. By contrast, Macintosh System 7 was very impressive, with its support for […]
Apple announced a developer preview of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (Mac App Store link) in mid-February 2012, and it became available on July 25, 2012. As expected, it makes Macs even more iOS-like, continuing the trend begun with OS X 10.7 Lion in July 2011.
Computers die. Laptops get dropped or stolen. Hard drives fail. You deleted a file or folder and now realize that you need it back. You need to use an app that’s not compatible with your current version of Mac OS X. Your system just crashes and now refuses to boot from your hard drive.
On June 23, 2003, Apple introduced the first Power Mac G5, which represented some big changes from the G4. The Power Mac G5 was the first Power Mac with built-in USB 2.0, the first to use PCI-X expansion slots, and the first with onboard support for SATA drives. It was also the first Mac to […]
For the first time, Apple has Macs with built-in USB 3.0 support. The improved USB specification is over 10x as fast as USB 2.0 and has half the bandwidth of Thunderbolt. There are already a lot of USB 3.0 drives on the market, and they are far more affordable than Thunderbolt drives. Best of all, […]
For the first time, Apple has Macs with built-in USB 3.0 support. The improved USB specification is over 10x as fast as USB 2.0 and has half the bandwidth of Thunderbolt. There are already a lot of USB 3.0 drives on the market, and they are far more affordable than Thunderbolt drives. Best of all, […]
For the first time, Macs have built-in USB 3.0 support. The improved USB specification is over 10x as fast as USB 2.0 and has half the bandwidth of Thunderbolt. There are a lot of USB 3.0 drives on the market, and they are far more affordable than Thunderbolt drives. Best of all, Apple uses the […]
This was the last of the 13″ MacBook Pro models with a 1280 x 800 pixel display. After this, Apple only made 13″ models with Retina Displays. This model was on the market from June 2012 until it was discontinued in October 2016, by which time its base price had dropped to $1,099. That is […]
Apple surprised everyone by not introducing a 15″ MacBook Air, as the rumor mill widely expected, and instead added a premium version of the 15″ MacBook Pro – one with a super-high resolution 2880 x 1800 pixel 220 ppi Retina Display.
For the first time, Apple has Macs with built-in USB 3.0 support. The improved USB specification is over 10x as fast as USB 2.0 and has half the bandwidth of Thunderbolt. There are already a lot of USB 3.0 drives on the market, and they are far more affordable than Thunderbolt drives. Best of all, […]
The Classic Mac OS had well under 100 viruses through its history, and Mac OS X has even less after 11 years. (Can you name even one?) That’s no reason to be complacent, because while OS X viruses are virtually nonexistent in the wild, there are other types of malware designed to infect Macs. Most […]
