macOS 14.0 Sonoma

On September 26th 2023, Apple released macOS Sonoma for both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, after having been announced June 5th the same year. This version of macOS is named after the wine region in California’s Sonoma County, continuing the theme of California named locations. Up close and thematically, this is very much the macOS […]

Mac Abandonware: Photoshop CS4 In A Classroom

Copyright laws protect work from being freely duplicated and redistributed which extend over to the makings of software and hardware wherever the law is unexpired. When the copyright holder no longer distributes the software, no longer enforces the copyright protections over their own depreciated software, or if the software is distributed but unsupported by the […]

Adobe Photoshop: A case for keeping an Intel or PowerPC Mac

Over the years the Photos app and Quick View in Finder have gained a set of photo editing features, allowing users to make basic edits to their picture/photo files without going out of their way to install something that could do such things. While these features are indeed convenient and helpful, they lack the refined […]

macOS 15.0 Sequoia

On September 16th 2024, Apple released macOS Sequoia for both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, after having been announced June 10th the same year. This version of macOS is named after the national park in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, continuing the theme of California locations. Up close and thematically, this is very much the […]

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 […]

Mac Studio M4 Max Benchmarks

Last an article was posted sharing the M3 Ultra benchmarks for the new Early 2025 Mac Studio, showing just how powerful Apple’s new flagship chip really is. Below are benchmarks for the $1999 M4 Max Mac Studio with 14-Core CPU, 32-Core GPU, and 36 GB of RAM, Comparisons are also made against the M3 Ultra […]

New Sky Blue M4 MacBook Air Wallpaper

This wallpaper has been around for a while, and has seen multiple iterations of the same design depending on the color of the machine. This wallpaper is updated to reflect the new color of the new MacBook Air, so it matches. The wallpaper was first reported on and appeared on 9to5Mac, which can be navigated […]

M3 Ultra Benchmarks Leak Online

With the release of the new M3 Ultra Apple Silicon chip there is a new proverbial “king” of Mac performance/specs, as this chip is aimed at the professional market and features the highest specs in the Mac lineup in Early 2025. While new product performance is often touted and contrasted against old products during launch […]

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 […]

M4 MacBook Air (Early 2025)

With the new 13″ and 15″ form factors finally sporting the latest M4 Apple Silicon chip, the new MacBook Air enters slightly more powerful territory – joining the likes of the Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and the M4 iMac. This latest chip features faster clock speeds on both performance and efficiency cores over the base […]

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 […]