Nine months after introducing the first MacBook Pro with a Retina Display, Apple has speed bumped its top-end notebook.
Author Archives: LEM Staff
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 […]
Last Thursday, Nancy Caroll Gravly shared her opinion on The Mac Observer, essentially saying that there is no legitimate reason not to be running the latest version of OS X on your Mac. Here at Low End Mac, that caught our attention. Our thesis is that you often don’t need the latest hardware and/or operating […]
In 2012, The New iPad – as Apple called it – got its first Retina Display with a 2048 x 1535 pixel screen. It also received a quad-core graphics processor as part of its dual-core A5X CPU. It is commonly known as the 3G iPad.
After 1-1/2 years on the market, the second generation Apple TV was replaced by the third generation, which looks exactly the same.
In terms of expandability, the G3 PowerBooks introduced in 1998, 1999, and 2000 set the high water mark. Each had two device bays, used standard IDE hard drives, supported lots of additional memory, and had a processor on a card that could be replaced by something faster – a G4 in some cases. The most […]
The Late 2011 MacBook Pros represented a small step forward from the Early 2011 models introduced just 8 months earlier. The 17″ model goes from 2.3 GHz to 2.4 GHz, a 9% improvement. This was also the last 17″ MacBook Pro; it was discontinued in June 2012.
The Late 2011 MacBook Pros represent a small step forward from the Early 2011 models introduced 8 months earlier. The 15″ model advances from 2.0 GHz to 2.2 GHz, a 10% speed bump. The top-end version goes from 2.2 GHz to 2.4 GHz, a 9% improvement.
