Nearly a quarter-century ago, the second generation Quicksilver Power Mac G4 was announced alongside an updated, brighter 20-Inch Apple Cinema Display. The 2002 Quicksilver Power Mac G4 started at 800 MHz for the base model at $1,599 USD, with a single processor. (Pictured: A community member’s Quicksilver used as a Pro Tools rig in […]
Category Archives: Mac History
In order for computers and devices alike to be able to communicate wirelessly, a set of technical standards were drafted known as IEEE 802.11. Using radio waves, our devices talk back and forth to Wi-Fi routers, repeaters, extenders, etc; . . IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) is the group responsible for the IEEE […]
The Low End Mac Mailbag is a collection of articles, pictures, submissions, etc; from LEM community members and individuals alike. Sometimes if something is particularly rare, interesting, or unique, I like to reach out and see if they would like to have it featured on the website as well. It’s always fascinating what people come […]
When the Apple Macintosh debuted in January 1984, it revolutionized personal computing with its intuitive graphical user interface and accessible creative tools. Among these, MacPaint stood out as a groundbreaking raster graphics editor. It empowered users to create digital art with unprecedented ease. Its journey from LisaGraf to QuickDraw to MacSketch, culminating in the iconic […]
Precisely as the headline sounds, the Apple Silicon iMac almost ended up having this same design cue as the intel iMacs. First shared by Kosutami on X and first reported by 9to5Mac (as well as MacWorld), are some pictures from before the EVT stage of the M1 iMac. “Fun fact: before the EVT Stage development […]
Elefont was the initial name for the bitmap typeface designed by Susan Kare in 1983 for the Apple Macintosh’s operating system. It was later renamed Chicago after Steve Jobs suggested naming fonts after “world-class cities” rather than suburban Philadelphia train stops, which Kare and her colleague Andy Hertzfeld had initially used. The name “Elefont” was […]
This is an Apple-IBM DCTA-24090, a 4 GB internal hard drive that shipped with the PowerBook G3 WallStreet. I pulled it out of the ‘Book last week to test it with the 64 GB KingSpec SSD – the HDD was noisy and slow. See: SSD in a PowerBook: KingSpec PATA PA25-64 SSD.. yay or nay […]
Four years ago today, the world saw the first Apple Silicon Mac to come out after the initial set of three shipped alongside the transition to Apple Silicon. While the M1 Mac mini gets your foot in the door and lets you “BYOB”, some were looking for that familiar all-in-one which also provides a great […]
Camino is a port of Netscape specifically to Mac OS X. It began in late 2001 when Mike Pinkerton and Vidur Apparao launched a proof-of-concept project to embed Netscape’s Gecko rendering engine in a Cocoa application. Cocoa is Apple’s native object-oriented application programming interface (API) for Mac OS X and is rooted in NeXTstep, which […]
The Growing Windows Threat: Jean Louis Gassée, now the head of product development at Apple, predicted that Apple would maintain its lead in the personal computing world indefinitely. He oversaw the introduction of the critically acclaimed Mac IIci and System 7 (and also several flops) and felt that no company would be able to wrest […]
1986 marked the replacement of Mike Murray as head of marketing with Jean-Louis Gassée. Gassée started Apple’s French division and drove it in a few years to become one of the most successful divisions in Apple. Unlike Steve Jobs’ vision of an information appliance, Gassée hoped that the Macintosh would turn into an open platform […]
Even with the fabulous press reception given to the Macintosh upon its release (see my previous article), it did not sell well. There were a number of reasons for that.
There are three different business models in the PC, smartphone, and tablet industries. The most widely used model is for one company to make the operating system and license it to a host of hardware manufacturers. This has given us the Windows market where no matter how badly PC makers do, Microsoft remains profitable.
The Color Classic has been lauded by many Mac faithful as what the original Macintosh should have been. The computer was made available to the general public on February 10, 1993, and was received well by reviewers.
Prior to 2006, PowerBook was consistently one of the most respected and lusted after brands in the portable computing market.
While most early Mac clones depended on Macintosh ROMs to function, NuTek spent four years reverse engineering the ROMs in a clean room in its quest to produce a legal Mac clone. It didn’t exactly succeed.
One of the less well known Mac clone lines, MaxxBoxx was released in Germany in July 1997 to fill the needs of users with very demanding applications.