This review has taken a lot longer than planned, but I finally determined that the problem with my Mystic Power Mac G4 was a sporadically bad memory module, as determined by using Rember. Slimmed back from 1.25 GB of RAM to 1.0 GB, it’s been running more reliably, but still not without problems.
OS X 10.7 Lion was released on July 20, 2011 and made some huge changes to the Mac. Some of these changes were to make it easier for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users to adapt to the Mac, some to make the two platforms work better together, and some to keep making the Mac […]
Thought I was done after Part 4? Well, so did I, but there are a few discoveries I made I felt I had to report.
This review has been a long time coming. I’ve had some problems with my dual 500 MHz Mystic Power Mac G4, which was going to be the second Mac tested with the 40 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD Legacy Edition. Working with my 350 MHz Blue & White G3 has taught me a few […]
For a long time, most Mac users have gotten along fine without installing the sort of security programs Windows users take for granted. Perhaps the Mac, built on an industrial-strength Unix core, is more secure. Or perhaps malware authors have simply ignored the Mac platform, aiming instead at the much larger numbers of Windows users.
Back in 2007, my 300 MHz 1999 Clamshell iBook’s usefulness was questionable, but that’s definitely not the case now, thanks to the CompactFlash-IDE drive I installed. Almost every application in OS X 10.3 Panther loads within 20 seconds (most within five or ten seconds), and in Mac OS 9, everything loads even faster.
2011 – Could Intel Macs soon become low-end too? “Low-end” Mac usually refers to G3s and G4s – or, if you are very retro, then the likes of PowerBook 1400 and the Macintosh LC.
Email has long been the principal online communication method. But do we rely on them as much as we used to? Have recent years seen a massive decline in email use?
I am still enjoying the announcements from this year’s WWDC. The details about iOS 5 sound great, pushing Apple further forward in the portable world. iOS 5 got me thinking about the PowerPC platform.
On one fateful December day in 2007, my original 300 MHz Clamshell iBook suddenly stopped running on battery power. For four years, I spent hundreds of dollars on my iBook, replacing several internal components, including the logic board and the charger board. Why I didn’t think to replace the battery is beyond me, but I eventually […]
This is somewhat old news, but Adobe announced the end of PowerPC (PPC) Mac support with the latest release of Flash Player (v10.2) in February 2011. (Read the system requirements page for Flash Player 10.2 for further details.) Although content created for Flash 10.1 and earlier will continue to work, anything that requires version 10.2 […]
Greetings. Mac gamers and 2011 iMac owners. Welcome to the present day – a time when you can no longer utilize Target Display Mode with your shiny new iMac the way those stale and outdated 2009 and 2010 models used to.
In Part 1, I reported that my Clamshell iBook was running Mac OS 9.2.2 on its old 6 GB IBM hard drive. Well, now I have my Addonics CF-IDE adapter (see Silence Is Golden: Running Your Existing Notebook Using Flash Memory), and I just have one thing to say: Meep meep!
I have just become the proud owner of an iPhone 3G, an utterly brilliant device. However, I own a 500 MHz G4 Titanium PowerBook, and an iPhone requires USB 2.0. Can I get round this?
Custom firmware is everywhere in the Android world, and thanks to the whited00r team, we now have optimised firmware for older iPhones.
There’s nothing like the original iBook, even twelve years after it was first made. The unique styling, the tough case, and the optional built-in AirPort 802.11b WiFi all make it a very functional notebook computer. Add to that the incredible battery life for its day, and you’ve got the makings of a great road warrior […]
Extreme Tech’s Sebastian Anthony says that Thunderbolt, which Apple introduced earlier this year, is already dead in the water. I beg to differ. Sometimes Apple has a better idea that the rest of the industry ignores, and it’s usually a simpler solution than the PC world embraces.
Last December, I started a series on SSD (Solid State Drive) options for older Macs – see SATA and SSD Options for G3 and G4 Power Macs. At about the same time, Other World Computing (OWC) was preparing to address exactly that issue with a new line of “legacy” SSDs that would be plug-and-play compatible […]
The final release of Mac OS 9 occurred ten years ago, in 2001. Mac OS X was launched that same year, and Steve Jobs symbolically buried his old nemesis in 2002. The old Mac OS survived for another few years, running on dual-booting G4s or as Classic Mode under OS X, until the release of the Intel […]
This mailbag looks at the Office 2008 installer, Adobe CS upgrades, OS X 10.7 Lion not supporting Rosetta, and other topics.
“What happened to my Excel?” my panicked wife asked. Tools were missing, and things just didn’t look like they had before. Had some gremlin messed up her Excel settings?
For 2011, the entire iMac line goes quad-core with Core i5 CPUs (and even faster i7 build-to-order options), moves to Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset, gets Turbo Boost 2.0 technology, adopts the next generation of AMD Radeon HD graphics processors, and gains the Thunderbolt technology introduced with the Early 2011 MacBook Pro models. The 27″ iMac […]
For 2011, the entire iMac line goes quad-core with Core i5 CPUs (and even faster i7 build-to-order options), moves to Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset, gets Turbo Boost 2.0 technology, adopts the next generation of AMD Radeon HD graphics processors, and gains the Thunderbolt technology introduced with the Early 2011 MacBook Pro models.
For 2011, the entire iMac line goes quad-core with Core i5 CPUs (and even faster i7 build-to-order options), moves to Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset, gets Turbo Boost 2.0 technology, adopts the next generation of AMD Radeon HD graphics processors, and gains the Thunderbolt technology introduced with the Early 2011 MacBook Pro models. The 27″ iMac […]
2011 – Apple released Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger six years ago. It would become the longest lasting version of OS X ever, not replaced by a newer version until 10.5 Leopard shipped in October 2007 – 30 months later.
We take the Low End part of our name seriously at Low End Mac. Until six weeks ago, my newest Mac was a refurbished 2004 1.25 GHz eMac – and that’s not even a production machine. I picked up a secondhand dual 1 GHz Power Mac G4 to replace the eMac as my production machine […]
I recently shared my story of migrating from my reliable old (introduced in January 2001) Digital Audio Power Mac G4 with its dual 1.6 GHz upgrade and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to my first Intel Mac, a 2.0 GHz 2007 Core 2 Duo Mac mini running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. But a few days after switching […]
I leapfrog from browser to browser, checking out latest releases and trying to find the fastest and most stable version on my older PowerPC Macs (my current workhorse is a 500 MHz TiBook). But what about Safari, Apples offering to the browser market?
2011 – Several weeks ago, I bought a used 500 MHz TiBook and installed Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on it. How well does it run, given that it is way under the minimum requirements (867 MHz) set out by Apple for Leopard? Surprisingly well.
The 13.3″ widescreen MacBook was intended as a replacement for both the 12″ iBook G4 and the 12″ PowerBook G4, although those who appreciated the compact size of the 12″ ‘Books continued to hope for MacBook with a smaller footprint.
