In July 2009, after reading Low End Mac for a number of years
(dating back to around 2001), I had spent about 15 years in a retail
career that had not left me the kind of fulfillment I got from my true
passions in life - writing, gaming, and Apple products. At this point,
I had also been fairly new to social networking and expressed interest
in writing for Low End Mac and a Sony PlayStation-related gaming site,
projectgamers.com.
Although my time at Project Gamers has been limited, mainly due to
my life commitments with my wife and two children, Low End Mac has
remained a priority - and so has my quest to become an Apple Certified
Support Specialist. With that said, I can see why I wanted to write for
Low End Mac and why I continue to do so. Although gaming is still a big
hobby of mine, my interest in Macs and getting the most out of your
life using Apple products has become my primary interest. I find
enjoyment in showing others how to maximize legacy products while
reporting the finer points of newer products.
Low End Mac has always been about getting great value out of your
Apple products, and someday the newer products I own will one day
become low-end. Apple has usually provided great value with its
products, and even when support seems to be abruptly dropped for
products that are not that old, it doesn't make those products
obsolete. As long as the device is high functioning for what you need
it to do, the term low-end may not be relevant.
My Best Macs
17" MacBook Pro
An interesting point on getting high functioning products personally
has included the last three months where I have gone through a
technology renaissance of sorts. I have acquired both the ultimate
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
portable (in my opinion) and the ultimate OS 9 desktop. The Snow
Leopard machine is a 17" February 2011 Core i7
(quad-core) MacBook Pro that has every connection imaginable and
ability to use the latest technologies Apple offers while retaining
full backwards compatibility to all my legacy OS X applications
courtesy of Rosetta. It was the very last of a series of MacBook Pros
that shipped with Snow Leopard (although mine happened to ship with
OS X 10.7 Lion, but that's
another story).
MDD Power Mac G4
The OS 9 machine is on its way courtesy of a friend. It is a
dual 1.25 GHz Mirror Door
Drive (FireWire 400) Power Mac G4.* This was the fastest G4 capable
of booting into both OS 9 and OS X, and it should allow me to
do almost anything imaginable with all the legacy files and
applications I have. I look at it as a "time machine" of sorts that
will allow me to have tons of storage and go back in time to anything I
want from the Macs of yesteryear. (I also have a "New" iPad on the way, but more on that in a
bit.)
With that said, and with these Macs I have acquired, I can literally
test out anything I want from an IT standpoint, while also
experimenting with various applications to report back to Low End Mac
to show others the best path to getting the most value out of their
hardware, applications, and peripherals. This brings me great
satisfaction now that I have these capabilities. Low End Mac has
inspired me to do that and has inspired me to continue to seek out
knowledge to get the most I can out of my Macs and other devices that I
can connect to the Mac - even gaming devices such as the PSP and PS3
through various applications including media servers and media managers
that the Mac can facilitate.
Macintosh LC II
I've come a long way from the humble days when the only Mac I owned
was a Summer 2001 iMac
G3. I had the pleasure of using Macs for more than a decade prior
to that, thanks to my late father George Bashur being a graphic design
artist owning various systems since the LC II (we also had an Apple IIc+ before
that). Those experiences have given me the background I have today and
allowed me to see how the Mac has changed bit by bit.
Adding iOS
The biggest transformation as of late has been iOS devices and how
they bridge your experience on the Mac. I felt threatened for a long
time, believing that Apple wanted to replace my beloved Mac with an iOS
device, and I balked at the idea of ever owning one. That's another
change that has happened for me recently. I have a "New" iPad 16 GB
(Retina Display) on the way, and I'm very excited to use it. I have
come to a realization after using Lion on and off that Apple doesn't
really want to replace the Mac OS; it wants to make new adopters of iOS
devices feel at home while letting longtime users feel just as
comfortable by allowing you to tweak those features to make your Mac
feel the same as it did before. I use Snow Leopard most of the time due
to compatibility of my legacy applications, but with iCloud and the
iPad on the way, I'm sure that I will be switching back and forth more
often.
Losing Rosetta was a bitter pill to swallow, and no iCloud in Snow
Leopard is a bit of a pain, but so was losing the ability to boot into
Mac OS 9. Times change, and you have to adapt, but that doesn't
stop you from purchasing a used Mac or late model that had the same
capabilities and compatibilities that are lost with the newest
generation. My advice: Get the Mac that does the job for you. Instead
of being upset at the changes Apple makes - as frustrating as they may
be (losing OS 9 booting, losing Rosetta, or now the impending shutdown
of MobileMe) - find a way around by getting the Mac that can take
advantage of a good mix of both old and new features, as I have, and
look to third-party support for devices and applications that Apple no
longer supports. TenFourFox and
iCab have been shining examples of
browser support for old Macs.
When the cost to upgrade seems prohibitive when you want the best
system with the greatest range of compatibility, there are still ways
around that by choosing a slightly lower-end configuration that can
still meet your needs with legacy support and new application support.
Looking back and looking ahead, at Low End Mac my inspiration has
remained the same - sharing stories with others on how to maximize the
experience with your Mac and other Apple devices. I now have a fuller
arsenal of equipment to experiment with and share those stories with
everyone and the future looks bright.
It's been almost three years since my first article (The Last PowerBooks Have Plenty
of Life Left), and although that isn't a very long time in the
grand scheme of things, I feel like I have provided quite a bit to the
Apple community, and I would like to continue doing so writing for Low
End Mac as long as the site shall live. A big thanks goes out to Dan
Knight and the rest of the Low End Mac staff for helping inspire me
over the years, and a bigger thanks goes out to all of the fans here at
Low End Mac that read our articles and support our site. I look forward
to many great years ahead! 
Dan Bashur lives in central Ohio with his wife and children. He uses various PowerPC G3 and G4 Macs running Tiger and Leopard. Besides finding new uses for Macs and other tech, Dan enjoys writing (fantasy novel series in the works), is an avid gamer, and a member of Sony's Gamer Advisor Panel. You can read more of Dan Bashur's work on ProjectGamers.com, where he contributes regular articles about the PSP, classic gaming, and ways you can use Sony gaming hardware with your Mac.
