Native Virtualization vs Emulation: A case for keeping an Intel Mac

Hardware virtualization uses a hypervisor to create virtual machines that run directly on physical hardware, allowing near-native performance. Emulation, on the other hand, imitates hardware entirely in software, enabling the execution of programs designed for different architectures but with significant performance overhead. With this in mind, we can imagine how certain operating systems should or […]

Swapping out a PowerBook G4 DVD drive for a 1 TB Sata Hard Drive

Swapping out an optical drive for a hard disk drive to gain extra storage is a sensible way to upgrade your ‘Book if you’re not at all using optical media anymore. Especially if the benefits of storing a ton of stuff on local storage far outweighs the benefits of keeping a SuperDrive or Combo Drive […]

Mac Studio (Early 2025)

To the surprise of the Mac community, Apple announced the third generation Mac Studio on 2025.03.05 and started shipping it the following week on 2025.03.12. The $1999 MS ships with a 14-core 4.5 GHz M4 Max chip and a 32-core GPU, and the $2499 has the 16-core CPU with a 40-core GPU. For those clamoring […]

M4 MacBook Air (Early 2025) Photo and Icon Gallery

Here are some of the pictures of the M4 MacBook Air featured on Apple’s website in the product gallery. The new color is Sky Blue, and in some images the background has been removed. These even may be used as computer icons! (Click to enlarge above) 13″ M4 MacBook Air (Click to enlarge above) (Click […]

Adding SATA to your PowerPC Mac

Who could’ve predicted that certain technical iterations would stick around for much longer than expected? Back in the 80s and 90s, external and internal ports would seemingly iterate more frequently as years go by, with the computer industry being less developed then. It’s been two decades since the first Mac shipped with a SATA drive, […]

The Madman’s Dream v2 (A 9600 CustoMac)

Xodium from BlueSky has a beige Beige Power Macintosh 9600, which he once took to VCF West 2023. The name of this machine is “A Madman’s Dream v2”, and it comes with many upgrades as well as some internal lighting! “I unfortunately don’t have fresh pictures, but it has been shown off at VCF a […]

Low End Mac Mailbag: Upgrading a 2011 27″ iMac with a Quadro K4100M

Certain iMacs from the early 2010s and late 2000s have an MXM GPU slot inside them, allowing for the graphics card to be replaced or upgraded. All 27″ and 21.5″ 2009 – 2011 iMacs have an MXM 3.0 slot, with the exception of the late 2009 21.5″ iMac with the base GeForce 9400m GPU. MXM […]

2011 17″ MacBook Pro Resurrection

Happy 2025 Low End Mac friends and welcome as always! I’m back after a long hiatus and plan to be writing more frequently again. That said – for this article, I’m going to keep it short and sweet as I swing back into things and will be highlighting a particular Low End Mac that was […]

iPad mini 6 value equation

Why the iPad mini 6? Here is one in Purple, 64 GB Cellular, and it looks fantastic! Goes right along with the purple of the iPhone 14 Pro. The way I look at it, it’s like a smaller and more powerful (and better colored) 2018 iPad Pro 11″, although I’ll admit the battery could be […]

One Last Push: Supercharging the Early 2008 MacBook Pro through 2026 (and maybe beyond)

The Early 2008 15″/17″ MacBook Pro sits in a unique position among the pre-unibody MacBook Pros having SSE 4 in its Core 2 Duo CPUs, standing heads and shoulders above the 2006/2007 models. As a result, it was able to piggyback off the same “wave” the Mac Pro 3,1 – 5,1 did with patchers such […]