Good-Bye, Rodney

Rodney O. Lain was one of the most erudite, informed, opinionated, and iconoclastic writers on the Mac Web. In other words, he thought for himself, spoke his mind, and did it well.

Good Surveys and Bad Surveys

I get some interesting letters about the Best of the Mac Web survey each time I run it. I suspect I’ll get more about the Rest of the Mac Web survey we’re launching today. Let’s look at some of the common threads:

Class Act, Mac Web

At about 8:45 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, a hijacked airliner smashed into one tower of the World Trade Center. Within two hours both towers had been hit and become piles of rubble. A third airplane caused massive damage to the Pentagon, and a fourth hijacked plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

Not Franchising Apple Stores

McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, and a host of other businesses successfully sell franchises around the country – and sometimes around the world. Last week John Scheeser proposed Apple do the same thing with its retail store in an article published on The Mac Mind.

4 Years of Low End Mac

2001 – Four years ago, there was no Low End Mac. There were good resources for PowerBooks and Power Macs, but support for older models was spotty. You might find a really good Mac Plus page or a site with excellent Mac IIfx info, but I couldn’t find a comprehensive resource covering the oldest Macs.

Shot in the Foot Again: Firmware Upgrade Disables RAM

2001: Before I even knew there was a firmware update for my PowerBook G4, the Mac Web let me know that a lot of users were having problems with it. These updates were posted late Friday, March 23. By Saturday morning, sites like Accelerate Your Mac, Mac Observer, MacCentral, and MacFixIt were reporting big trouble […]

One Faster Brain or Two Slower Ones?

2001 – This article was posted about three weeks before Mac OS X 10.0 first shipped, so it reflects the reality under Mac OS 9.1. OS X has far better multiprocessor support, which Bare Feats demonstrated in an October 2001 comparison of single- and dual-processor G4 Power Macs using OS X 10.1.

Blame the Cube?

2000: There’s no nice way to say it: Apple stock tanked on Friday. AAPL opened at $53.50 on Friday, dropped immediately below the $30 mark, and closed the day at $25.75.

Macintosh vs. Windows 95

I ran across this memo on my hard drive at work. It was written in late 1996, when Windows 95 was making serious inroads by claiming to be “almost as good as the Mac.” This was not a good time for Apple: Between authorized Mac clones dividing the Mac OS market and Win 95 siphoning […]

Should Apple Use the New G3?

There’s been some interesting discussion of IBM’s new PowerPC 750CX and forthcoming 750CXe processors, especially related to IBM Discusses New PowerPC Chips on MacWeek. A lot of Mac users seem to think the 750CX would be a poor choice; I beg to differ.

Low End Mac in 1999

Launched in April 1997 as part of my personal website, The New Low End Mac User has evolved and grown. At this point, we’ve served up somewhere around 6.5 million web pages. Wow! This article looks at some important site developments in 1999.

Apple Replaces Yikes! Power Mac G4

1999 – From the day Steve Jobs announced the Power Mac G4, we’ve all known the Yikes! model was temporary. We pretty much expected it to be discontinued before Macworld Expo at the end of January – and probably before the end of 1999. Well, Apple quietly did it. If you go to the Apple […]

Old AV Mac Saves PC User

1999: As the Mac specialist at a university-affiliated biological research facility in Philadelphia, I do my fair share of resolving computer problems, and therefore I know my way around the Mac quite well. Recently, though, I was faced with what initially seemed to be a PC problem – a request from a woman who wanted […]

Free Web Access, Even for Older Macs

1999: Please note that Freewwweb has not only gone out of business, but their domain has been purchased by a porn site. We are retaining this article written by Rob Myers for historical interest but have removed all links to the domain. Dan Knight, publisher.