iPod Drive Failure: Culprit May Not Be the Drive, Fix May Be Free

Apple’s iPod has been wildly successful; even though it was neither the first handheld MP3 player (models such as the Diamond Rio were first with flash players) nor the first to feature hard drive storage (Creative’s Discman-sized Nomad Jukebox predated it), the iPod’s combination of clean design, easy to use software both on the player […]

2nd Generation iPod shuffle

Where the first iPod shuffle had been the size of a pack of chewing gum, the 2G iPod shuffle was barely large enough for its controls and a headphone jack. It had a built-in clip so you could attach it to your clothing, and you could pick from five different colors. With its aluminum enclosure, […]

Andy Hertzfeld, Software Wizard: From Apple to Google

Andy Hertzfeld was a key member of the original Macintosh team in 1984. He joined Apple in 1979 and was responsible for many parts of the original Macintosh system software. He was such an adept programmer, in fact, that his Apple business card said Software Wizard. Hertzfeld left Apple in 1984 and has since cofounded […]

Core Duo Macs

When Apple made the switch from PowerPC CPUs to Intel in 2006, the state-of-the-art CPU was Intel’s Core Duo processor, which was based on Intel’s 32-bit Pentium M architecture, which was originally designed for mobile use. The Core Duo was Intel’s first dual-core mobile processor, and it was used in all first generation Intel Macs […]

iMac (Late 2006)

Industry watchers had been anticipating Apple moving the iMac to Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor, which is “up to 50% more powerful” (according to Apple) than the Core Duo used in the Early 2006 iMac. As if that wasn’t enough, Apple added the biggest iMac to date to the line, a whopping 24″ model with […]

24″ iMac (Late 2006)

Industry watchers had been anticipating Apple moving the iMac to Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor, which is “up to 50% more powerful” (according to Apple) than the Core Duo used in the Early 2006 iMac. As if that wasn’t enough, Apple added the biggest iMac yet to the line, a whopping 24″ model with a 1920 […]

20″ iMac (Late 2006)

Industry watchers had been anticipating Apple moving the iMac to Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor, which is “up to 50% more powerful” (according to Apple) than the Core Duo used in the Early 2006 iMac. As if that wasn’t enough, Apple added the biggest iMac to date to the line, a whopping 24″ model with […]

17″ 1.83 GHz iMac (Late 2006)

Industry watchers had been anticipating Apple moving the iMac to Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor, which is “up to 50% more powerful” (according to Apple) than the Core Duo used in the Early 2006 iMac. As if that wasn’t enough, Apple added the biggest iMac to date to the line, a whopping 24″ model with […]

Mac mini (Late 2006)

Kudos to Apple for abandoning the Intel Core Solo used in the original entry-level Intel Mac mini. With the September 2006 revision, both models have Core Duo processors. Oddly, these are the only second-generation Intel Macs not to use Core 2 Duo CPUs, something we’ve never understood. The Late 2006 Mini has the same 667 […]

The Good Old Days of Computing

Bong! . . . 🙂 . . . Welcome to Macintosh! For this article, I decided to take a little detour and write about what’s become of computers and computing in the modern age. This was a little rant I wrote up earlier this year in the hopes that one day I’d be able to […]

Xserve Xeon (Late 2006)

Apple didn’t forget the Xserve in its move to Intel. The first Intel-based Xserve has a pair of dual-core Intel Xeon Woodcrest CPUs at speed as high as 3.0 GHz. Geekbench 2 results show the 2.0 GHz model has nearly twice the processing power of the dual 2.3 GHz Xserve G5, while the 3.0 GHz version is nearly […]

Mac Pro (Mid 2006)

Apple introduced the Mac Pro as a fully customizable quad-core computer. The buyer can choose from two dual-core Intel Xeon Woodcrest at 2.0, 2.66, or 3.0 GHz. As little as 1 GB of RAM or as much as 16 GB. 160, 250, or 500 GB in drive bay one, and optionally 500 GB in bays 2-4. […]

17″ iMac (Mid 2006)

Apple surprised a lot of people by introducing a scaled back version of the 17″ iMac Core Duo in July 2006. To shave US$400 from the 17″ Early 2006 iMac’s retail price for the education market, Apple replaced the SuperDrive with a 24x Combo drive, used an 80 GB hard drive instead of 160, and relied […]

TopXNotes: A User-Friendly Solution for Creating, Managing, and Accessing Your Notes

TopXNotes is Tropical Software’s solution for creating, working with, and managing text-based notes – another entry in the increasingly crowded field of Classic Mac OS Note Pad replacements for OS X. The program supports to-do lists, Web account information, software serial numbers, and just about anything else you need to store – another spin on the theme […]

How to Make Your Mac Region Free for DVD Viewing

2006 – There is one laptop upgrade that gives no performance benefit, but it adds a long-desired feature of frequent travelers, which is a swap of the built-in Combo or SuperDrive for a different model, because Apple’s PowerBooks and MacBooks use Matsushita (Panasonic) optical drives, and it’s, impossible to flash firmware on these drives.