Last year’s Mac mini Server was just a 2010 Mac mini with two hard drives and no SuperDrive. This year’s Server is actually a much more powerful computer with a quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU, twice the number of cores found in the consumer Mini. The 2011 Server ships with OS X 10.7 Lion Server […]
Category Archives: Low End Mac
- 'Book Value
- 10 Forward
- 75 Mac Advantages
- Adam's Apple
- Apple Archive
- Apple Before the Mac
- Apple Everywhere
- Apple History
- Apple, Tech, and Gaming
- Back & Forth
- Benchmarks
- Best Tools for the Job
- Building Bridges
- Classic Mac Nostalgia
- Classic Mac OS Software
- Classic Restorations
- Collection Spotlight
- Compleat Guides
- Cortland
- CustoMacs
- Developer Transition Kits
- Different Branches
- Digital Fossils
- Down but Not Out
- Early Mac Clones
- Edelweiss
- Embracing Obsolescence
- Empowered
- Hacking Your Mac
- iBasics
- iBasics Classic iBasics articles for the Classic Mac OS
- iMac Channel
- In My Palm
- Interviews
- iOS & iDevices Articles about iOS and iOS devices: iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
- iOS Accessories
- iOS Apps
- iOS Hardware iOS devices and accessories.
- iTed Talks
- Kitchens Sync
- Leo and Mac
- Linux to Mac
- Low End Campfire Discussion Campfire style storytelling of Apple finds, exciting discoveries and more.
- Low End Mac FAQs
- Low End Mac Mailbag
- Low End Mac Round Table Low End Mac round table discussion.
- Low End Mac Tech Journal
- The Serker Files
- Mac Accessories
- Mac CPU Upgrades
- Mac Daniel
- Mac Fallout Shelter
- Mac Gaming
- Mac Happens
- Mac History
- Mac Lab Report
- Astronomy Software
- Mac Life
- Mac Metamorphosis
- LinuxPPC Chronicles
- Mac Musings
- Mac OS X Software
- Mac Resources
- Mac Scope
- Mac to Windows Articles about using Macs and Windows PCs together.
- Mac UK
- Mac USB & FireWire
- MacInSchool
- Macinthoughts
- MacPaint and Its Children
- Matt's Macs
- Maximize Your Mac Jason Schrader's tips on getting the most out of your Mac hardware.
- Bluetooth & Wifi Upgrades
- Memory Upgrade Options
- Menagerie of Macs
- Miscellaneous Ramblings
- Moore's Mailbag
- My First Mac
- My Turn
- Older G4 Macs in the Age of Leopard
- One More Thing
- Online Thrifter
- Orchard
- Overclocking Your Vintage Mac
- Plays Well with Others
- PPC Linux
- Printer Reviews
- Reality Check
- Recycled Computing
- Second Class Macs
- SETI on Mac
- Software FAQs
- Stop the Noiz - Frank Fox tries to cut through the static and get to the facts.
- Taking Back the Market - Tim Nash on how Apple can retake its markets.
- Tangerine Fusion
- Tech Spectrum
- Tech Stuff
- The 'Book Page
- The Efficient Mac User
- The Lite Side
- Bumper Snickers
- The Low End Designer
- The Mac Pack Rat The every day adventures of a Macintosh Pack Rat. Repairing and using lower end machines for productive daily work.
- The Mobile Mac
- The Odyssey
- The Power of Mac
- The Practical Mac
- The Productive Mac
- The Review Vault
- The Road Warrior
- The Rumor Mill
- The Value Equation
- Things Macintosh
- 10 Commandments of the Church of Macintosh
- Triassic Mac
- Unofficial SuperMac Support Site
- Using WordPress - Tips on using WordPress, particularly as deployed at Low End Mac.
- View from the Classroom
- Busman's Holiday
- Teacher Tools
- View From the MacCave
- Vintage Mac Living
- Vintage Mac Workhorses
- Welcome to Macintosh
- In House with Low End Mac
- Working with Vintage Macs
- Zis Mac - Alan Zisman on Macs, iOS, and other tech.
For the first time since the original G4 Mac mini was introduced in January 2005, there’s no optical drive in the Mac mini, which also helped Apple trim $100 from its base price – and $200 from the faster version. The 2011 Mac mini can use the same $79 USB SuperDrive as the MacBook Air. […]
Apple made some significant changes with the Mid 2011 MacBook Air – adding Thunderbolt, moving from Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs to Core i5 (with an i7 option), switching from Nvidia GeForce graphics to Intel HD Graphics 3000, and bringing back the backlit keyboard that disappeared with the 2010 model. The 11.6″ and 13.3″ models […]
Same small size, same small price, same SSD options, but a whole new CPU – and Thunderbolt to round things out. That pretty much summarizes the July 2011 update to the MacBook Air.
I have been running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on my 500 MHz Titanium PowerBook G4 for a few months, and it ran very well, but the last week it has developed serious problems, and I am beginning to wonder if they are related to running Leopard.
I’ve been using Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on an unsupported Mac for a few months now. It is a 500 MHz Titanium PowerBook G4 with 1 GB of RAM. It runs a lot better than you might think, and I am happy using it for my daily machine. But how does Leopard compare to […]
This review has taken a lot longer than planned, but I finally determined that the problem with my Mystic Power Mac G4 was a sporadically bad memory module, as determined by using Rember. Slimmed back from 1.25 GB of RAM to 1.0 GB, it’s been running more reliably, but still not without problems.
OS X 10.7 Lion was released on July 20, 2011 and made some huge changes to the Mac. Some of these changes were to make it easier for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users to adapt to the Mac, some to make the two platforms work better together, and some to keep making the Mac […]
Thought I was done after Part 4? Well, so did I, but there are a few discoveries I made I felt I had to report.
This review has been a long time coming. I’ve had some problems with my dual 500 MHz Mystic Power Mac G4, which was going to be the second Mac tested with the 40 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD Legacy Edition. Working with my 350 MHz Blue & White G3 has taught me a few […]
For a long time, most Mac users have gotten along fine without installing the sort of security programs Windows users take for granted. Perhaps the Mac, built on an industrial-strength Unix core, is more secure. Or perhaps malware authors have simply ignored the Mac platform, aiming instead at the much larger numbers of Windows users.
Back in 2007, my 300 MHz 1999 Clamshell iBook’s usefulness was questionable, but that’s definitely not the case now, thanks to the CompactFlash-IDE drive I installed. Almost every application in OS X 10.3 Panther loads within 20 seconds (most within five or ten seconds), and in Mac OS 9, everything loads even faster.
2011 – Could Intel Macs soon become low-end too? “Low-end” Mac usually refers to G3s and G4s – or, if you are very retro, then the likes of PowerBook 1400 and the Macintosh LC.
Email has long been the principal online communication method. But do we rely on them as much as we used to? Have recent years seen a massive decline in email use?
I am still enjoying the announcements from this year’s WWDC. The details about iOS 5 sound great, pushing Apple further forward in the portable world. iOS 5 got me thinking about the PowerPC platform.
On one fateful December day in 2007, my original 300 MHz Clamshell iBook suddenly stopped running on battery power. For four years, I spent hundreds of dollars on my iBook, replacing several internal components, including the logic board and the charger board. Why I didn’t think to replace the battery is beyond me, but I eventually […]
This is somewhat old news, but Adobe announced the end of PowerPC (PPC) Mac support with the latest release of Flash Player (v10.2) in February 2011. (Read the system requirements page for Flash Player 10.2 for further details.) Although content created for Flash 10.1 and earlier will continue to work, anything that requires version 10.2 […]
Greetings. Mac gamers and 2011 iMac owners. Welcome to the present day – a time when you can no longer utilize Target Display Mode with your shiny new iMac the way those stale and outdated 2009 and 2010 models used to.
In Part 1, I reported that my Clamshell iBook was running Mac OS 9.2.2 on its old 6 GB IBM hard drive. Well, now I have my Addonics CF-IDE adapter (see Silence Is Golden: Running Your Existing Notebook Using Flash Memory), and I just have one thing to say: Meep meep!
I have just become the proud owner of an iPhone 3G, an utterly brilliant device. However, I own a 500 MHz G4 Titanium PowerBook, and an iPhone requires USB 2.0. Can I get round this?
Custom firmware is everywhere in the Android world, and thanks to the whited00r team, we now have optimised firmware for older iPhones.
There’s nothing like the original iBook, even twelve years after it was first made. The unique styling, the tough case, and the optional built-in AirPort 802.11b WiFi all make it a very functional notebook computer. Add to that the incredible battery life for its day, and you’ve got the makings of a great road warrior […]
Extreme Tech’s Sebastian Anthony says that Thunderbolt, which Apple introduced earlier this year, is already dead in the water. I beg to differ. Sometimes Apple has a better idea that the rest of the industry ignores, and it’s usually a simpler solution than the PC world embraces.
Last December, I started a series on SSD (Solid State Drive) options for older Macs – see SATA and SSD Options for G3 and G4 Power Macs. At about the same time, Other World Computing (OWC) was preparing to address exactly that issue with a new line of “legacy” SSDs that would be plug-and-play compatible […]
The final release of Mac OS 9 occurred ten years ago, in 2001. Mac OS X was launched that same year, and Steve Jobs symbolically buried his old nemesis in 2002. The old Mac OS survived for another few years, running on dual-booting G4s or as Classic Mode under OS X, until the release of the Intel […]
This mailbag looks at the Office 2008 installer, Adobe CS upgrades, OS X 10.7 Lion not supporting Rosetta, and other topics.
“What happened to my Excel?” my panicked wife asked. Tools were missing, and things just didn’t look like they had before. Had some gremlin messed up her Excel settings?
For 2011, the entire iMac line goes quad-core with Core i5 CPUs (and even faster i7 build-to-order options), moves to Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset, gets Turbo Boost 2.0 technology, adopts the next generation of AMD Radeon HD graphics processors, and gains the Thunderbolt technology introduced with the Early 2011 MacBook Pro models. The 27″ iMac […]
For 2011, the entire iMac line goes quad-core with Core i5 CPUs (and even faster i7 build-to-order options), moves to Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset, gets Turbo Boost 2.0 technology, adopts the next generation of AMD Radeon HD graphics processors, and gains the Thunderbolt technology introduced with the Early 2011 MacBook Pro models.
For 2011, the entire iMac line goes quad-core with Core i5 CPUs (and even faster i7 build-to-order options), moves to Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset, gets Turbo Boost 2.0 technology, adopts the next generation of AMD Radeon HD graphics processors, and gains the Thunderbolt technology introduced with the Early 2011 MacBook Pro models. The 27″ iMac […]