Low End Mac Mailbag: Add Wifi 4-Draft and Bluetooth 2.1 to your PowerPC Mac

While this has been covered elsewhere online, it will be posted here for our LEM readers! A few years back, a LEM Facebook group user found a neat trick on getting a cost-effective, more modernized Bluetooth/Wifi solution for his Power Mac G5. Though his was a PCIe model, there is an easy way to get […]

Upgrade your Mac to Bluetooth 4 & Wifi 5 with a Broadcom BCM94360CD

Although this topic has been documented elsewhere, it will also be covered on Low End Mac for our readers. While bluetooth and wifi technology have since moved onto newer standards – Bluetooth 5.3 and Wifi 6 respectively, this adapter offers a pop-in replacement where the old AirPort card was. Rather than shoehorning a full-on PCIe […]

How to Enable PHP in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

Last time, we looked at how to use the Terminal to start and stop the Apache web server that comes bundled with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion now that Apple has removed its checkbox from the Sharing pane in System Preferences. This is fine and dandy for all your static HTML files, but if you are going […]

Restore Web Sharing in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

The Mac OS has had a web server bundled with it since Mac OS 8 debuted in 1997. Traditionally, Apple has referred to the included server software as Personal Web Sharing or just Web Sharing. While little is known about the web server that shipped with OS 8 and OS 9, OS X has included Apache, the most […]

Steve Jobs in His Own Words

When I first heard the news that Steve Jobs had died, it hurt. It hurt really bad, causing the kind of heartache that is usually reserved for the passing of close family members. Of course, I didn’t know Steve Jobs on a personal level. The closest I ever got to him was being in the […]

X11: Your Window for Using Unix Apps on the Mac

Everyone already knows that Mac OS X is a Unix variant and that it can run Unix software. Many just leave it at that, assuming that Unix software means things that run in the Terminal – but there’s also a whole wide world of graphical apps in the Unix world that run in what’s known […]

6 Extensions to Make Firefox Even Better

A while back, I wrote about Camino, a Mozilla project that brings Gecko rendering goodness to a truly native Mac OS X interface. Since then, Camino has been my primary browser, and I know I’m not alone. I started reading a lot of articles around the Mac web singing Camino’s praises shortly after my piece ran.

Getting Ubuntu Linux Up and Running on a PowerPC Mac

In last week’s column, I outlined the requirements for setting up a useful and fast PowerPC (PPC) Linux desktop, and I’m going to start with what I consider the best of the bunch. Ubuntu Linux has done some of the best work in the open source community at making Linux palatable for the average end […]

Use Linux to Give an Aging Mac More Zip

Got an elderly Power Mac that’s feeling a little suffocated by the ever-increasing demands of Mac OS X? The beautiful Aqua interface, with its rolling sheets and minimizing and zooming effects has always taxed lower-end G3s and G4s. Provided your needs include no Mac-specific apps, Linux can provide a snappy user experience, along with modern stability, […]

Use Regular Mac OS X to Set Up a Low-end Server

Apple offers Mac OS X Server in both a $499 10-client edition and a $999 unlimited client version. While the unlimited version offers one of the best values in enterprise server software, it’s cheaper sibling is mighty expensive for an organization that only needs to serve ten users.