2010 – I had some interesting discussions last week with a new Mac user. He raised some interesting issues regarding value that got me to rethink things.
It’s getting late, but it’s not too late for some last-minute gift shopping.
There are those clever Mac vs. PC advertisements that Apple runs, but let’s talk about the big differences between computers.
2009 – My first Pismo PowerBook, acquired in October 2001 in an even trade for a six-month-old Power Mac G4 Cube, has gone through many transformations during the eight years and a bit that I’ve owned it.
Clinky-plink! That’s the sound of the precursor to the ever-popular, ever-clicky IBM Model M keyboard – the Model F. All that plinky-sounding goodness is being heard letter by letter as I write this article.
Those of you who wanted to spend good money on the Late 2009 27″ iMac should note that you can use Mini DisplayPort input to display a video signal on the iMac’s screen – a first for Apple. What you may or may not be aware of is the fact that the video signal must […]
These days many people have some or most of their music libraries on their computers, and that is often managed with Apple’s free iTunes software. It’s very nice to have such quick and easy access to your music library, but by default this plays back only in the room where the computer is located. Wouldn’t […]
The original polycarbonate Mac notebook got a design overhaul, the first since the original MacBookwas introduced in May 2006. Although it’s still white and appears to be made of plastic, the lower case uses a unibody design carved from aluminum – but covered with a rubbery white material. The Late 2009 MacBook has a 2.26 […]
The big news: Apple has introduced new screen sizes and a new display aspect ratio. The Late 2009 iMac comes in 21.5″ and 27″ sizes, and the displays have the same 16:9 aspect ratio as HDTV (the Early 2009 iMac had 20″ and 24″ 16:10 aspect ratio displays). The smaller iMac has the same 1920 […]
Mac OS X is a brilliant operating system. But what about the “Classic” Mac OS in the Age of Snow Leopard?
Just seven months after overhauling the Mac mini, Apple made some small improvements: The base speed is now 2.26 GHz, 2 GB of RAM is the norm, and the 160 GB hard drive holds more data than the 120 GB drive found in the previous version. And for power users, there’s now a server version […]
Blu-ray has clearly emerged as the winner in the high definition optical disc war, but why is there still no support for commercial Blu-ray playback in Mac OS X? Is this something we can ever expect to see?
Monday, September 28, 2009 marked my migration to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Yes, you read that right. Leopard, not Snow Leopard – since none of my Macs are Intel-based, Mac OS X 10.6 isn’t even an option.
Mac OS X comes with built-in integration to work seamlessly on a Mac Open Directory network or Microsoft Active Directory network. It is a fairly easy task to set it up to authenticate to a Unix/Linux OpenLDAP server. However, it is another matter to get it to read the home directory from OpenLDAP and mount […]
It was great to see Steve Jobs up and running around about as well as a man with a new liver can be expected to. But the big question for me was how would all the new changes to iTunes and the iPod touch affect me with my G3 Pismo PowerBook.
The 3G iPod touch is even more powerful than the 2G iPod touch, with a faster, more efficient processor, twice as much system memory, and improved graphics. In most respects, the 3G iPod touch hardware matches the iPhone 3GS. It was the last iPod touch with a 480 x 320 display. Hardware Overview Models Announced: 2009.09.09 at $299 […]
I got around to installing the Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard update on my MacBook over the long weekend. I figured that with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard now on the prowl, I should at least bring Leopard up to spec on my production workhorse.
The gradual marginalization of PowerPC Macs is bound to accelerate sharply with the release of Intel-only Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and one can anticipate that it may not be too long before PowerPC Mac owners begin to be confronted with the frustrating up-to-date browser issue that is one of the biggest problems for Classic […]
2009 – Despite my 867 MHz Titanium PowerBook G4 (TiBook) being introduced in November 2002, making it nearly seven years old, it is still an excellent machine. Being an 867 MHz model, it is the earliest Titanium model to officially support Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and it copes with it very well.
2009 – Apple is billing Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard as its first fully 64-bit operating system, but this isn’t the first time the Mac OS has changed it bitness.
Apple has been promoting three key advantages of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that are hardware dependent: Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) OpenCL 64-bit operation
Since the early days of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, Apple has provided a wonderful utility – initially part of Setup Assistant and later (in OS X 10.4 Tiger) renamed Migration Assistant – to help move data between your old and new Macs. With this utility and a Mac booted into FireWire Target Disk Mode, or […]
2009 – Low End Mac colleague Simon Royal says he didn’t believe the rumors last year that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard would be Intel only. I have to say that at the early point when it was reported that alpha builds of Snow Leopard were being seeded to developers as Intel-only software, the proverbial […]
In late 2008, I wrote an article about the future of PowerPC Macs, The Future of PowerPC Macs and Software as Snow Leopard Approaches. Well, all the rumours have been put to bed: Apple have announced the next version of Mac OS X, and it isn’t looking good for PowerPC users.
Today I am going to look at a unique item in my collection. While it is not technically a computer, it does have an Apple logo – and all that Apple charm. Back in the early 1990s, Apple decided to branch out into peripherals and unique consumer electronic devices. Some of them, such as the W.A.L.T. […]
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was billed as primarily under-the-hood changes to OS X 10.5 Leopard, but it was much more significant than that. Snow Leopard was announced at the June 2008 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) and released on August 28, 2009. For the first time since Mac OS 8.5 was released in October 1998, […]
Do you have Bluetooth devices and an older Mac with USB but without Bluetooth support? Want to add Bluetooth support for a song?
Classilla, a new browser for Mac OS 9 based on Mozilla/Firefox introduced to replace long-discontinued WaMCom project. Also using Safari with OS X 10.4 Tiger requires version 10.4.11.
Autofs is often used in enterprise environments to set up network-based home directories and other network mounts for users at login. It can also dynamically mount network shares on access. Mac OS X uses an autofs code stack based on Sun’s Solaris version of Unix. Many of the advanced features are not documented very well, […]
Anyone can easily find Universal Binary builds of Firefox and Camino that will simply install and run on their Mac, so why would you want to scrounge around for an optimized build?
Apple’s Time Capsule, building the equivalents of an AirPort Extreme router and either a 500 GB or 1 TB hard drive into a single unit, is a space-saving and easy-to-use way for users to combine a wireless base station and storage accessible over a home or small business network – and even across the Internet.
The iPhone 3G had been a step forward in some areas – especially in adding 3G data support – but in other areas it was no better than the original iPhone. With the iPhone 3GS, Apple took a few more steps forward with a faster processor, a better camera, video capability, and a 32 GB option. […]
Long before they invented personal computers, I was a math geek. My favorite book on the subject was the Mathematics volume in the Time-Life Science Library. I’d spend hours reading about magic squares, the Pythagorean theorem, different number systems, and more.
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger uses less memory than Leopard, supports Classic Mode on PowerPC Macs, and, unlike Leopard, is supported on G3 Macs, so there are good reasons to install or reinstall it on your old Macs.
The June 2009 update of the MacBook Air (MBA) gets faster CPUs (1.86 GHz and 2.13 GHz) and lower prices ($1,499 and $1,799). It used the same Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics processor, which uses 256 MB of system memory, as its predecessor. The MacBook Air supports wireless NetBoot, and the Remote Disc software that comes […]
