Your Mac’s Text to Speech Is Great for Proofreading

I have been a writer for over ten years. Before writing for Low End Mac, I was a professional business journalist writing for both UK and international magazines. There is nothing more annoying than putting together an article, writing it up, correcting it until you are blue in the face, dropping it into an amazing […]

4th Generation iPad

Apple promoted the 4G iPad as having twice the performance, faster WiFi, and a new FaceTime HD camera. It was the first iPad with a Lightning connector, introduced with the iPhone 5 earlier in the year, and had improved 4G LTE support compared to the 3G iPad.

The Late 2012 iMac Value Equation

Let’s get the gripes out of the way first: The iMac has always involved some compromises and forced some changes on Mac users. Back in 1998, it meant giving up ADB mice and keyboards and SCSI peripherals for something new called USB, and it meant no built-in floppy drive. But until now, every iMac has […]

Apple’s Real Problem with Samsung

Apple is a secretive company that keeps information out of the hands of the media, but more importantly away from the competition. Now if two close partners, like Samsung and Google, switch to become competitors, your control of information happens in a leaky bucket. How can Apple design and build the next iPhone using Samsung […]

The 13″ Retina MacBook Pro Value Equation

2012 – When Apple introduced the 13.3″ MacBook Pro with Retina Display last week, we learned that the 13.3″ MacBook Pro (MBP) is Apple’s best selling Mac. That’s quite an accomplishment for an $1,199 laptop, especially since it isn’t Apple least expensive notebook computer. (That honor goes to the $999 11.6″ MacBook Air (MBA), and […]

Which Is Apple’s Biggest Threat, Microsoft or Google?

Much has been said about the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft. I agree with those who said that Microsoft has used its monopoly power to kill off competition. But times change; Apple and Microsoft no longer want or need to defeat the other. They have become dependent in strange ways. The biggest changes are the threat of regulation and […]

The Late 2012 Mac mini Value Equation

The littlest Mac has become a powerhouse. Apple updated the Mac mini last week, and while the entry-level 2.5 GHz dual-core i5 model is only about 5% faster than last year’s “better” Mac mini, the $200 more expensive model has made the leap from a 2.5 GHz dual-core i5 to a 2.3 GHz quad-core i7.

Remembering the Hi-Res PowerBook G4

A little over seven years ago, on October 19, 2005, Apple introduced the Hi-Res PowerBook G4. These 15″ and 17″ notebooks were the last Macs that would don the PowerBook moniker. 15″ and 17″ hi-res PowerBook G4 The biggest thing I remember about them is how they flew in a bit under the radar, since […]

Mac mini Server (Late 2012)

The 2011 Mac mini Server was a normal Mac mini with two hard drives, a quad-core i7 CPU (vs. dual-core CPUs in regular Minis), and OS X Server installed. The 2012 Server is essentially the same as the top-end consumer model, but with OS X Server installed and two hard drives instead of one. You […]

Mac mini (Late 2012)

“Way more power” is Apple’s claim for the Late 2012 Mac mini, and that’s certainly true for the top-end quad-core i7-based model. It has the highest Geekbench score yet for a Mini at 10642 (vs. 6741 for last year’s 2.7 GHz dual-core i7 model), which is an impressive 58% better. However, at the entry level, […]

iMac (Late 2012)

Slimmer than ever, the Late 2012 iMac is the first iMac ever not to include a built-in optical drive. Apple has also managed to make the iMac’s glossy screen 75% less reflective than before.

iPhone OS 3: Let’s Build an App List

In the wake of iOS 6, it is easy to forget those older devices running older version of iOS (or iPhone OS, as it was previously named). Apple certainly likes to forget them quickly and move on with its shiny new beast. A big gripe of mine is the fact that the App Store is […]

iPhone 5

With the iPhone 5, Apple left behind the 3.5″ display every previous iPhone had used, replacing it with a taller (or wider – in landscape mode) 4″ screen displaying 1136 x 640 pixels, the same 16:9 aspect ratio of HD TV. That’s 18.3% more pixels.

The Rapid Rise of OS X Mountain Lion

Apple had done a marvelous job marketing OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, resulting in over 3 million downloads over its first four days on the market. That’s an impressive number, but what does it mean?

The First G5 iMacs

Apple had introduced the G5 processor with the Power Mac G5 in June 2003, and the amount of heat the G5 processor generated required a case designed to keep air flowing so the computer wouldn’t overheat. The G5 also used much faster memory than the G4, running at one-half or one-third of CPU speed rather […]

The First G4 Power Macs

The original idea behind PowerPC processors was to create a Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) and focus on making those instructions as efficient as possible. This was in direct contrast to Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC), which kept adding more and more instructions, which meant more decoding and processing had to be done by the […]