Apple did a very nice thing when it introduced the Power Mac G5 in June 2003 – it introduced a line that would use the same upgrade options across the board. Well, until the dual-core models shipped in October 2005, which we will mostly ignore in this article.
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I love being able to plug in some headphones and listen for hours, but is the ageing 3.5mm (1/8″) socket disappearing or is it here to stay?
The earliest Macs with their all-in-one design used a simple coiled keyboard cable similar to what telephones used to use – and the perfect length for use on the desktop. But in 1987, we got the Mac II, a powerhouse computer that could sit on your desk or be set vertically on the floor beneath […]
Last year I made the switch from AT&T Mobile to Consumer Cellular. I was paying for more service than I needed, and I recently went through my data usage records to see if it is still enough for me.
Not everyone uses modern Macs. I spent a day with a friend who still runs 1997 and 1999 Macs 20 years on.
The Mac mini has been one of the most affordable desktop Macs ever made since the original G4 model was introduced in January 2005 at US$499 and $599. The entry-level price has varied over the years, jumping $100 with the first Intel Mac minis in 2006. The 2014 model started at $499 with a 1.4 […]
The Mac mini seems to be the Mac that Apple forgets about for years between updates. The 2014 model came out two years after the 2012, and the 2018 a whole four years after the 2014. It may have been a long wait, but the new model is a huge step forward from the Late […]
In addition to lowendmac.com and our communities on Google Groups, Low End Mac has had a presence on Facebook since December 2008 – and we’ve had requests to create new Facebook groups for similarly low-end interests.
I was not aware that Apple had ever produced a RAID card for the Mac Pro until today. And at the same time I learned how relatively useless this once-costly card is.
I was going to write an article about what a great value a used 4G iPod touch was for grandma or someone else who wants to video chat with family members without paying for an iPhone and mobile service. But Apple killed that idea.
Palms were designed to be a digital replacement for a paper planner. There were simple built-in programs with the business customer in mind. And there were people that happily used those built-in programs to keep track of appointments, lists, bits of information, and expenses.
SuperMac was once a major player in the Macintosh video market, building graphics cards, monitors, and the legendary Video Spigot. SuperMac was acquired by Radius, it’s primary competitor in this market, in 1994.
I bought my Palm Zire 71 new. I’d been using an M130, and the 71 seemed like a great step up. I used it for several years, then in 2008, I had a bad experience where I was unable to charge it and couldn’t access the information on it. I went analog as a result […]
We are helping to launch localized geographically based Apple/Mac groups to facilitate local support, local pickup of used gear, and perhaps – at the discretion of each group – the opportunity to get together for a swap meet.
This past Friday was one of those summer days here in western Michigan that you’d just as soon forget. Bright, sunny, pretty humid, and 93° in the shade. I had to drive somewhere that I had never been before that afternoon, and Waze had me mostly heading into the sun (the destination was southwest of […]
Processors keep getting faster and faster. Hard drives and SSDs are getting faster and faster. System memory gets faster and faster. Graphics processors get faster and faster. Network speeds get faster too. So why does so much feel slow?
2008: For the second time in a year, Apple is being sued for Macs that display “millions” of colors but using displays that can only display 262,144 colors per pixel.
With every story there are two sides. While there was certainly some negative sentiment in my previous article – Original Apple TV: Apple’s Improper Abandonment and What to Do – you have to also take the good with the bad. Change forces us to move forward sometimes and get creative.
Apple left the 1st Generation Apple TV behind as of May 25, 2018. You can no longer connect it directly to iTunes. Even if you attempt to sync authorized content to it through an authorized Mac, it’s over.
Life is too short to argue over operating systems. Does it really matter what you use as long as you are happy with it?
After a brief tinker with Linux again, I am back using macOS – and I couldn’t be happier.
Most of my computers were older when I got them – and much older when I moved on to something newer. I got my first Mac, a Mac Plus, in early 1990, over 4 years after Apple had introduced it. I earned enough Apple points during the holiday sales promotion to get it and a […]
It was 2011, the year after Steve Jobs had unveiled the 9.6″ iPad to the world. Apple’s new tablet was exactly the right size, according to Jobs, with its 9.56″ by 7.47″ footprint. However, at 1.5 lb., it was no lightweight. It’s 1024 x 768 pixel display was that same resolution that had been used […]
Iomega, founded in 1980, was a big name in removable media drives starting with its original 5 and 10 MB Bernoulli Box in 1982. Instead of using hard platters, as SyQuest did, the high capacity Bernoulli system was essentially a big floppy disk that used the Bernoulli Principle to keep drive heads from actually touching […]
This is a cautionary tale about listening to your gut feeling. I have always preferred the look of a blackbook (black MacBook) and had come across one on a local selling website. It was advertised as a 2008 MacBook in working order, except that the trackpad button didn’t click so it required an external mouse. […]
SATA standards are all backwards compatible, right? Well, not necessarily. Researching upgrade options for the 2010 iMac on my desk has been a real learning experience. Some SATA III hard drives are auto-sensing and thus compatible with SATA II and SATA I ports, but some SATA III hard drives are fixed speed only and thus […]
Mac sales have been growing ever since Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel processors, in no small part because that made it possible to run Windows on Macs at full speed. No more Intel emulation. No more DOS cards. Boot Camp and then virtualization apps made it easy to run other operating systems on Intel-based […]
If you’ve got the passion, patience, and money, you too can be an online thrifter. For this week’s article, I thought I would share some of the tricks I have used to amass my collection at a fraction of the price.
When I started adding some profiles of Macs to my personal web space in April 1997, who would have thought that it would grow into something enduring? We used Macs at work, I had a Mac at home, and I was teaching myself how to make web pages using Claris Home Page. So I put […]
The PC Card was originally called the PCMCIA card when it was launched in November 1990. It is compatible with the Japanese JEIDA memory card 4.0 standard and supports a 16-bit ISA-compatible data bus. PC Cards may be 5V, 3.3V, or both, and 3.3V cards have a key that prevents them from being plugged into […]
After years of barely growing the number of Macs sold, in 2006 Apple moved to Intel CPUs – and sales took off immediately. Prior to 2005, Macs had peaked at 4.5 million units in 1995, dropped to 2.7 million in 1998, and hit a new high of 4.7 million in 2005.
As of April 1st, 2018, Low End Mac is changing its funding model. While we will still accept donations from people who find the site helpful, we will begin the process of taking each and every article apart, updating it for our new format, and waiting for the money to come to us.
I was shocked to learn that Apple has introduced an update to its full-sized 9.7″ iPad line, giving it an A10 processor running at 2.34 GHz (vs. an A9 clocked at 1.84 GHz in the 2017 model) – and offering it at a retail price of just $329!
The Macintosh Quadra 700. This was always a Mac that interested me; essentially the same old beige tower, but with a twist. Sitting on molded plastic legs, the tower has a vertically placed 3 1/2” floppy drive at the top center of the computer. This Macintosh has a 25 MHz Motorola 68040 processor, can take […]
Most of the visitors to Low End Mac work comfortably in English, whether they grew up speaking it or learned it along the way. We think Low End Mac is a wonderful resource, one of many on the Mac Web, which has a wealth of wonderful English-language resources.
