The Pixar Story: Dick Shoup, Alex Schure, George Lucas, Steve Jobs, and Disney

Pixar, a company that revolutionized the feature film industry, had an obscure origin. A group of researchers from the most elite research institutions in the US eventually gathered at a former diploma mill and later defected to Lucasfilm. Their division was purchased by Steve Jobs and became Pixar, which created Toy Story and is now […]

The Story Behind the Sony Walkman

The world took a big step towards the iPod generation when Sony introduced the Walkman in 1979. The device was not particularly advanced – portable tape recorders had existed for decades – but it was an advance in marketing. The Walkman was not promoted to professional journalists, like most portable tape recorders were at the […]

Keeping Up with Low End Mac

There are many ways to keep up on Low End Mac (LEM) as we add new content, update price trackers, and continue to migrate old articles from HTML files to the WordPress content management system.

A History of the iPod: 2005 to Present

More than any other product from Apple, the iPod has changed the company and the world. Before its introduction, MP3 players were the realm of small companies with limited budgets that were unable to provide content. After the iPod, the entire industry has evolved and grown to the point where the largest computer companies in […]

Think Different: The Ad Campaign that Restored Apple’s Reputation

In the months following Steve Jobs’ dramatic return to Apple on 1996.12.20, the press lost interest in the end of Apple’s eleven year interregnum. Instead, they were interested in Apple’s brand new build to order online store, a first for a major computer industry player, and (to Apple’s embarrassment) Umax’s updated S900 Mac clone that […]

A History of the iPod: 2000 to 2004

More than any other product from Apple, the iPod has changed the company and the world. Before its introduction, MP3 players were the realm of small companies with limited budgets that were unable to provide content. After the iPod, the entire industry evolved and grew to the point where the largest computer companies in the […]

The Story Behind Apple’s Newton

In the late 1980s, Apple appeared to be in the middle of a resurgence. John Sculley had forced out the volatile Steve Jobs in 1985, and a cadre of older, more experienced executives focused on building the Apple and Macintosh brands. The company was beginning to grow complacent, working to protect Macintosh revenues at the […]

Waze: Free GPS Navigation with a Social Twist

It all started with Mapquest in 1996. Suddenly you could used that new-fangled Internet for something practical, finding the best route from point A to point B – whether across town or across the country. All you had to do was print out the driving directions and keep them handy while you drove.

What Is Chromecast?

The tech world has been abuzz with news of Google’s forthcoming Chromecast device, something Google hopes will change the way you use your TV. What exactly is Chromecast?

Mac Sales Decline

Mac sales have really taken off since Apple switched from PowerPC processors to Intel x86 CPUs in 2006. According to Apple’s data, over 90 million Intel Macs have been sold, with a peak of 5.198 million in the 2011 holiday quarter.

Classic Mac OS Downloads and Updates

Need a copy of System 6.0.8, 7.0.1, or a newer version of the Classic Mac OS for your vintage Mac? You can dig through apple.com and try to find them – or you can download them using the updated links on this page. (Apple does rearrange things, making it more difficult to find things.) All versions […]

Meshing Low End Macs with Sony Gaming Gear, Part 2

I left off in part 1 discussing the necessary steps to get everything put together that will allow you to have total media bliss and harmony on both your PS3 and PSP using a low-end Mac to stream the content. Moving forward, there are just a few more things to consider that will allow you to squeeze […]

Microsoft Word for Mac FAQ

Microsoft Word began life as Multi-Tool Word for Xenix in 1983. It was renamed Microsoft Word and ported to MS-DOS in 1983, the Macintosh in 1985, and Windows in 1989. It has been the dominant word processing program on the Mac since 1988 and on Windows since 1993.

iTunes for Mac FAQ

iTunes has grown from its roots as a program that let Mac users rip their CDs to MP3 format, manage their music libraries, and burn CDs. Today iTunes supports iPods, iPhones, iPads, Apple TV, Apple’s online iTunes Store (which distributes music, podcasts, video, and software), and online video rentals.

Adobe InDesign for Mac FAQ

Adobe InDesign was created as the successor to the aging Adobe PageMaker. InDesign supports features such as XHTML exporting, professional typographical controls, and long-document support. By 1998, much of the professional market had migrated from PageMaker to rival Quark XPress 4.1 due to PageMaker’s comparative lack of features. At that point, Quark announced that it […]

FileMaker for Mac FAQ

FileMaker Pro is a cross-platform (Mac OS and Windows) relational database (RDBMS) application published by Apple subsidiary FileMaker Inc.

Photoshop for Mac FAQ

Photoshop began life as a program called Display that was made to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. Photoshop has grown to support layers, filters, brushes, text, 3D objects, video, and much others.

iOS Safari vs. the Facebook App

Two years ago I made the move from a mobile phone with a keyboard to a smartphone, an iPhone 3GS, and it has served me well since then. I’ve been using Facebook for ages – perhaps sometime in 2008 based on a look at my timeline.