This Old Newton is Low End Mac’s user-to-user Facebook support group for Apple Newton users, including MessagePads, eMates, and licensed devices. The group was begun on 2016.08.09 and is meant to replace the defunct Apple Newton group on Facebook.
Category Archives: Low End Mac
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In an update to my article, Low End Wireless Hard Drive Review: The EMTEC P600, I have been able to discover some of the more intricate features of the wireless hard drive and how it can fit into a variety of “real world” usage cases. Here are some of the things of note after learning more about […]
Apple released the first Mac mini with a 64-bit CPU in August 2007, although the Mac OS that shipped with it was a 32-bit operating system, whether OS X 10.4 Tiger or 10.5 Leopard. It wasn’t until OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard arrived two years later – in August 2009 – that we had the […]
Pokemon Go officially requires iOS 8 and an iPhone 5/5c – but it does run on an iPhone 4s. I check it out.
Life was so much easier in the olden days of the Classic Mac OS. Every PostScript printer worked with Apple’s standard LaserWriter driver. That’s not true in the world of Mac OS X, where you need the correct CUPS printer definition to take advantage of all your printer’s features.
I think I’ve wanted to have a fisheye lens since I was in high school. A fisheye lens usually covers a 180° angle, although some are 150-170° and a couple very expensive Nikkors managed to cover 220°! To cover such a wide angle, these lenses introduced a curved distortion that is instantly recognizable.
We love old technology, especially old tech that worked well. That’s why we’re passionate about Mac – and big fans of Palm OS PDAs and smartphones. This page lists all of our content about the Palm OS and the hardware that ran it.
Palm had started as a software company that decided to make its own PDA because nobody else saw what Palm’s founders did. Palm dominated the PDA world and was one of the strongest players in the smartphone realm as well. So what went wrong?
Apple introduced the Mac mini in January 2005 as the smallest consumer computer on the planet. The original version ran a 1.25 GHz or 1.42 GHz G4 CPU on a 167 MHz bus and accepts a maximum 1 GB of system memory. It shipped with OS X 10.3 Panther and also supports 10.4 Tiger and […]
Downgrading from iOS 10 beta is easier than you think. I take you through how to complete the process and return to the latest official version.
Handspring had been founded by several members of Palm Computing in June 1998 and was the second Palm OS licensee to ship product – and probably the most successful (see Part 3). In 2003, Palm Inc. merged with Handspring in a mutual agreement by both companies. This marks a new chapter in the story of […]
Apple took a nice step forward when it introduced the first Aluminum iMacs (iMac7,1) in August 1997. The logic board uses the Santa Rosa chipset, and it has an 800 MHz data bus, up from 667 MHz on earlier Intel-based iMacs. The CPU sits in a socket (Socket P), so you can upgrade it!
The first three generations of Intel-based iMacs use the same Socket M to mount the CPU and have a 667 MHz system bus. The CPU is not soldered in place, allowing the Early 2006, Mid 2006, and Late 2006 iMacs to take the same CPU upgrades, bringing speeds as high as 2.33 GHz.
The first three generations of Intel-based Mac minis used the same Socket M to mount the CPU on a 667 MHz system bus. The CPU is not soldered in place, allowing the Early 2006, Late 2006, and Mid 2007 models to take the same CPU upgrades, bringing speeds as high as 2.33 GHz.
The Treo revolutionized the PDA market. Earlier attempts at wireless PDAs failed to make an impression on the market – the Motorola Marco and the Qualcomm pdQ were notable examples. They were much larger than their non-wireless counterparts, were expensive, and had only limited wireless functionality.
With the release of the first PalmPilots on March 10, 1996, Palm finally addressed issues it had been dealing with by making software for other people’s hardware since 1992 (see Part 1). For the first time, Palm had its own hardware and software, and the Palm brand became synonymous with PDA (Personal Digital Assistant).
This page lists some of the best software for the Classic Mac OS – System 6 through Mac OS 9.2.2 – in my admittedly biased opinion. Listings are alphabetical, and some programs have OS X versions as well as classic ones. Many links are to archived files in my Dropbox.
Palm Computing was largely the creation and vision of one man, Jeff Hawkins. Palm first brought tablet computing to consumers in the form of PDAs (but was beaten by Apple and its scions). The later – and more momentous – goal was to bring consumers to PDAs through simple and very fast user interfaces. This […]
I’ve just finished wading through 6+ years worth of press releases from Gartner Group, digging out quarterly PC sales results from Holiday Quarter 2008 through 2nd Quarter 2016. Why? Because the global PC market is in decline, and I wanted to see how Mac sales compared to Windows sales.
For nearly as long as I’ve published Low End Mac, we’ve had the “Road Apples” category for Macs that we felt didn’t live up to their potential (here’s an archive link to the 1998 Road Apples index). Sometimes it was because of hardware architecture. Sometimes it was because of unnecessary memory ceilings. And much of […]
I’ve been using a standup desk in my home office, and my recent job manufacturing high pressure air hoses required me to stand most of the day. A standing desk makes it easier to move around than sitting in a chair, but it can be hard on your body in other ways.
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.
Most early Mac clones were built around 8-16 MHz 68000 CPUs or 16-40 MHz 68030 chips, but the 68000 Dash 30fx ran its 68030 at a blazing 50 MHz – 25% faster than the “wicked fast” Mac IIfx, which was the fastest computer on the market when it went on sale in March 1990. The Dash […]
In addition to building the first commercial portable Mac, the WalkMac, Chuck Colby also developed the first Mac tablet, which he called the Colby Classmate™ Portable Computer. It was introduced at the August 1991 Macworld Expo in Boston. The Classmate is built around a Mac Classic logic board. It has a built-in trackball and membrane […]
You may not remember the Atari ST family, a series of computers based on the same 8 MHz Motorola 680×0 CPUs as the early Macs. They never really carved out a niche in the US, although they were moderately popular in Europe. The STs offered PC compatible floppy drives, a DOS-compatible filing system, and GEM, […]
Perhaps the best known early portable Mac clone came from Outbound systems. It was announced in August 1989, just weeks before Apple unveiled the Macintosh Portable. The Outbound Portable Plus uses the same 68000 CPU as the Plusand SE, but runs it nearly twice as fast at 15 MHz. It has a unique built-in pointing […]
Thanks to Richard Savary for sending information about the Dynamac. Mentioned in Byte (May 1988), the jet black Dynamac EL weighs 18 pounds, uses an 8 MHz 68000 CPU, has an 800K floppy, and shipped with 1 MB RAM (expandable to 2.5 MB or 4 MB). It was essentially a portable Mac Plus. The electroluminescent (EL) screen supports […]
In the era of the Sony Walkman™, it was inevitable someone would create a WalkMac. That’s what Chuck Colby called his portable when it was introduced in 1987. The Colby WalkMac was the first portable, battery-powered Mac. It was available in two configurations: SE ($4,498) and SE/30 ($6,798). Battery life was about three hours. For […]
This could be the rarest Mac compatible ever made. Outside of a few prototypes, only about 100 McMobiles were ever made. The first prototype (pictured here) used Mac Plus parts in a Plexiglas case to produce a 15 pound laptop with 15-30 minutes of battery power – that’s a bit lighter than the Mac Portable […]
Since Brazil didn’t allow the import of microcomputers until 1993, anything users wanted had to be made in and for the local market. For those who wanted a Macintosh, Unitron created the Mac 512, essentially a clone of the 512 KB “Fat Mac”. Unitron Mac 512, the first Macintosh clone. Rainer Brockerhoff from Brazil writes, […]
Honestly, if they didn’t keep dropping support for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in new versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Flash, I’d have almost no reason to have OS X 10.9 Mavericks on my Late 2008 13″ Aluminum MacBook (that’s a 2013 OS on a 2008 computer). But my Mid 2007 Mac mini is limited […]
The scroll wheel came late to Macs. In fact, although every version of Mac OS X includes support for a scroll wheel, no Apple mouse has ever had a scroll wheel. The closest they ever came was the scroll ball in the Apple Mighty Mouse.
I will be the first to admit that I have always considered the iMac G4 to be an odd looking computer. A coworker gave me an old one a few months ago, and I finally got the right power cord to set it up. It’s changed my opinion of the machine.