Swapping out an optical drive for a hard disk drive to gain extra storage is a sensible way to upgrade your ‘Book if you’re not at all using optical media anymore. Especially if the benefits of storing a ton of stuff on local storage far outweighs the benefits of keeping a SuperDrive or Combo Drive […]
It was a relatively warm spring day as I was taking a long walk outside, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a 20″ 2004 iMac G5 sitting by the curb. It looked worn, the dirt on the bottom made me wonder if it was rained on. I asked for permission to […]
Last an article was posted sharing the M3 Ultra benchmarks for the new Early 2025 Mac Studio, showing just how powerful Apple’s new flagship chip really is. Below are benchmarks for the $1999 M4 Max Mac Studio with 14-Core CPU, 32-Core GPU, and 36 GB of RAM, Comparisons are also made against the M3 Ultra […]
Today the M4 MacBook Air, 2025 Mac Studio, M3 iPad Air, and 11th-Gen iPad were made available to customers around the world along with their respective device accessories. Apple also released some Apple Watch accessories and the new USB-C to MagSafe 3 charging cable in Sky Blue, too. Today, a brand new 15″ M4 MacBook […]
Does anyone else remember that old classic macOS app which had a set of googly eyes just sitting in the menu bar following the direction of the mouse cursor? Well as it turns out, there’s a modern version of this app which does practically the exact same thing. This app sits in your menu bar […]
You might be thinking the Sky Blue color, right? While this new color changes the entire aura of the MacBook Air and gives it a very desirable appearance, the design change is actually a lot more nuanced and can be hard to spot unless pointed out. First pointed out by iCulture.nl, “Apple finally fixes the […]
This wallpaper has been around for a while, and has seen multiple iterations of the same design depending on the color of the machine. This wallpaper is updated to reflect the new color of the new MacBook Air, so it matches. The wallpaper was first reported on and appeared on 9to5Mac, which can be navigated […]
Earlier this week on March 4th, Apple came out with public betas across a variety of their OSes, including: iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and macOS. Covered earlier this week by 9to5mac, Public Beta 3 is now available for those OSes. You may sign up for the beta software on Apple’s Beta Software Program site. By consenting […]
With the release of the new M3 Ultra Apple Silicon chip there is a new proverbial “king” of Mac performance/specs, as this chip is aimed at the professional market and features the highest specs in the Mac lineup in Early 2025. While new product performance is often touted and contrasted against old products during launch […]
The ARM transition as well as new devices are not off topic at Low End Mac. It impacts the future of Apple, as the platform moves through its fourth hardware architecture with Macs. It will make Intel Macs and old iPhones low end sooner than you might like, but sooner or later the ARM Macs […]
Here are some of the pictures of the Mac Studio featured on Apple’s website in the product gallery. The design hasn’t changed between the first three generations, remaining unchanged through Early 2025 in its latest iteration. The renderings have their backgrounds removed and can be used as computer icons. Return to tech spec page M1 […]
To the surprise of the Mac community, Apple announced the third generation Mac Studio on 2025.03.05 and started shipping it the following week on 2025.03.12. The $1999 MS ships with a 14-core 4.5 GHz M4 Max chip and a 32-core GPU, and the $2499 has the 16-core CPU with a 40-core GPU. For those clamoring […]
Here are some of the pictures of the M4 MacBook Air featured on Apple’s website in the product gallery. The new color is Sky Blue, and in some images the background has been removed. These even may be used as computer icons! (Click to enlarge above) 13″ M4 MacBook Air (Click to enlarge above) (Click […]
With the new 13″ and 15″ form factors finally sporting the latest M4 Apple Silicon chip, the new MacBook Air enters slightly more powerful territory – joining the likes of the Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and the M4 iMac. This latest chip features faster clock speeds on both performance and efficiency cores over the base […]
Who could’ve predicted that certain technical iterations would stick around for much longer than expected? Back in the 80s and 90s, external and internal ports would seemingly iterate more frequently as years go by, with the computer industry being less developed then. It’s been two decades since the first Mac shipped with a SATA drive, […]
As was said in the 2021 article by Dan: “Using your TV as a display for your Mac (or any computer really) has taken a lot of twists and turns over the years. Each era as display technology has evolved has seen significant progression, but not until recently has TV technology had the right mix […]
Xodium from BlueSky has a beige Beige Power Macintosh 9600, which he once took to VCF West 2023. The name of this machine is “A Madman’s Dream v2”, and it comes with many upgrades as well as some internal lighting! “I unfortunately don’t have fresh pictures, but it has been shown off at VCF a […]
Certain iMacs from the early 2010s and late 2000s have an MXM GPU slot inside them, allowing for the graphics card to be replaced or upgraded. All 27″ and 21.5″ 2009 – 2011 iMacs have an MXM 3.0 slot, with the exception of the late 2009 21.5″ iMac with the base GeForce 9400m GPU. MXM […]
Ever since the Touch Bar MacBook Pro came out, I wanted it to be brilliant – many others included. However when Apple came out with the 2018 model year not only the problems for the 2016-2017 MacBook Pros were becoming more widespread, the specs were also a massive improvement over the 2017. Namely, the 2018 […]
Happy 2025 Low End Mac friends and welcome as always! I’m back after a long hiatus and plan to be writing more frequently again. That said – for this article, I’m going to keep it short and sweet as I swing back into things and will be highlighting a particular Low End Mac that was […]
Why the iPad mini 6? Here is one in Purple, 64 GB Cellular, and it looks fantastic! Goes right along with the purple of the iPhone 14 Pro. The way I look at it, it’s like a smaller and more powerful (and better colored) 2018 iPad Pro 11″, although I’ll admit the battery could be […]
I was really looking for a 2006-7 Mac mini for an eGPU project when I had stumbled upon an eBay listing for a 2009 mini. Needed some RAM, an SSD, and I already had a power supply laying around along with a spare DVD drive. I opted to get an Optical bay SATA to 2.5″ […]
The Early 2008 15″/17″ MacBook Pro sits in a unique position among the pre-unibody MacBook Pros having SSE 4 in its Core 2 Duo CPUs, standing heads and shoulders above the 2006/2007 models. As a result, it was able to piggyback off the same “wave” the Mac Pro 3,1 – 5,1 did with patchers such […]
This may be old news to some, but I totally forgot about it until I found out about it (again)! If you have a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad in Leopard on a PowerPC Mac, you can enable momentum scrolling just like an Intel Mac in two easy steps. . To enable natural scrolling on […]
It’s been a little over 6 years since the 2018 Mac mini was released on October 30th 2018, at the time of writing this article. Intel Macs are in their twilight era, as macOS Sequoia provides seemingly the last gasp of official OS support for the outgoing processor architecture. While “Macintels” miss out on certain […]
So you wanna have multitouch on your old ‘Book without necessarily buying a Magic Trackpad? The way it was theorized to be possible: Taking the multitouch trackpad out of an A1260 MacBook Pro and plugging it into an older A1181 2007 MacBook. Many have said this wasn’t possible or doable, claiming there was possibly a […]
Ah, the elusive method of booting on a PowerPC Mac: USB. For far too long it’s been said it’s not doable, or the results have been hit-or-miss, or the answer hasn’t been straightforward at all. Well today, there’s a surefire way to boot USB on PowerPC Macs – all thanks to DistroHopper39B from MacRumors. While […]
The very first Mac minis came with ether a Core Solo T1200, or one of two Core Duo 32-Bit CPUs. These CPUs hold back the 2006 Mac mini from being able to take advantage of a newer OS, increased RAM capacity, and overall better performance. Now in 2025 these first-gen Intel minis are cheap to […]
Longtime users of Windows will note that window tiling has been available since windows 7, a feature that recently made its way over to macOS Sequoia. But what if I told you this is something you could actually have done on Mac OS X Leopard, way back in 2010 even on a PowerPC Mac? Introducing […]
The 2020 5K Intel iMac was the very end of the line for any and all Intel iMacs, and was the third-to-last Intel Mac to be discontinued – selling until March 8th, 2022. This final model iMac receives some upgrades over the 5K 2019 model, as well as the notorious addition of the T2 security […]
As we are nearing completion of the “tech spec” index on Low End Mac with the release of the final remaining Intel iMac articles, we are looking into revamping existing articles overall. A lot of things have changed over time, much new software has released, community projects developed, etc; and it’s worth reflecting such things […]
The SuperMac Spectrum/8 LC video card is an accelerated 8-bit video card for the LC PDS (Processor Direct Slot). It originally retailed at US$799 and was MacUser’s third choice video card/19″ display option in the February 1992 roundup of LC PDS solutions.
This was nearing the end of the line for the Intel iMacs altogether, and perhaps you’re thinking: doesn’t this have a T2 security chip since it’s from 2019? Rest assured, it doesn’t. The appeal of the 2019 model 5K iMac is precisely about the jump-up to Intel Coffee lake, combined with the lack of a […]
A quarter of a century ago today, Apple introduced a brand new operating system to the world as a successor to Mac OS 9, the press release for this is still up on Apple’s website to this day. It replaced the base code and entire underlying system which all Mac OS versions were previously based […]
I was always the type of person who upgraded my phone every year through my carrier, until I wasn’t. I was always the type of person who looked at phone specs and conjured in my own imagination what the experience could be like. I’d get so hyped over the new stuff that my own excitement […]
