I’d like to present to you: The newest 2025 model year Macintosh IIci

Fresh from the Low End Mac tech Mailbag is a CustoMac submission from one of our community members, Dan Schnur. He put together “The newest 2025 model year Macintosh IIci”, and this thing has a completely brand new, purple logic board! Gives it a strong Sonnet upgrade kind of vibe, the way it looks. . […]

macOS Tahoe Beta 4 is out: Build 25A5316i

On July 22nd 2025, Apple released the 4th Developer Beta of macOS 26 Tahoe, which is shaping up to be the potential Public Beta build anytime soon. It looks like the UI received further refinement, and the glimmer of glass-transparency effects has returned a little. Beta 3 before updating After update, before switching dark mode […]

macOS Tahoe Beta 2 is out: A glance at Build 25A5295e

The first Developer Beta of macOS Tahoe dropped on the first day of WWDC, after much internal testing for macOS 26. As with any developer beta before the GM (Golden Master) build, things are subject to change.. including the Finder icon (again). . . macOS Tahoe development timeline Up until June 9th WWDC: Internal Testing […]

Ultimate “Hybrid” 2011/2012 17″ MacBook Pro

An introduction and some history A bit over a decade ago, Apple released the 2011 MacBook Pro with the now infamous Radeon 6000 series discrete Graphics Card. Both the Early and Late 2011 models were prone to spontaneous failure which has been well documented online starting with initial complaints in the Apple Support community. Eventually […]

Back to the Mac: OS X Is Unix

Over the last several months, the home network has fallen into something of a state of disarray. The OpenBSD file server was rooted with an ssh exploit sometime ago resulting in random outbound IRC connections, and the OpenBSD router forwarded its last packet some weeks ago due to a barrage of software and hardware issues.

Gaming on a Mac Revisited

2001: One year and four months ago, I shared my impressions of how the Macintosh stacks up against the PC in regards to gaming. That was around the time when Quake III Test was out, and I was still toying with my Quadra 605.

Introduction to Unix: The Buzz Words

2001: I am sure that people are getting tired of hearing about multithreading, symmetrical multiprocessing, memory management, and preemptive multitasking. How is it really going to affect you, the Macintosh user, under Mac OS X, when you just want to read Low End Mac, check your email, and write a document.

Blame It on Mac OS

2001: A friend and I were having a “Mac OS stinks” discussion one day when, for once, he brought up a valid point on why the Mac OS does, in fact, stink: When you hold down the mouse button, the whole operating system comes to halt. Should anything interactive be running when you do that, […]

AirPort Beats Wires

2000: When wireless networking first starting coming on the scene, I was very against it. All sorts of bizarre ways were coming out to make my PC access my network wirelessly. I remember the idea of using your power outlets as some sort of conductor to carry the signals and achieving about one megabit per […]