I don’t know when I first discovered Clean-Install Assistant (C-IA), but it’s been an invaluable tool ever since.
2001: I’ve put in a lot more hours and run a few more tests on Quicksilver, my 400 MHz PowerBook G4.
2001: Yes, it is a bit odd to own the newest PowerBook at Low End Mac. It doesn’t seem very low-end, does it? I could try to justify it: Apple has announced a 733 MHz Power Mac G4 and also has a 500 MHz PowerBook G4, after all.
I got my PowerBook G4 on Wednesday afternoon, spent a couple hours getting it ready, and shared my initial impressions Wednesday evening. Then I got to work moving all my files from my aging SuperMac S900 (a 1996 Macintosh clone with many upgrades) to the new TiBook – it took hours.
2001: For the past couple days, we’ve been hearing rumors that TiBooks (the Titanium PowerBook G4) are shipping. My dealer told me yesterday that mine had shipped from Taiwan via FedEx. They promised to let me know as soon as they had an ETA.
2001: A friend and I were having a “Mac OS stinks” discussion one day when, for once, he brought up a valid point on why the Mac OS does, in fact, stink: When you hold down the mouse button, the whole operating system comes to halt. Should anything interactive be running when you do that, […]
2001: Melonsoft’s Cabrio is a new and innovative Mac-only MP3 audio player.
2001: About two months ago, I received a DayStar Digital Genesis MP 600 with a 200 MHz quad 604 CPU module and a 132 MHz quad 604 CPU module as a gift from some friends of mine. If you have never seen one in person, this is big, heavy, and loud. Its metal case could […]
Here are two books that warrant the attention of serious Low End Mac readers: The Second Coming of Steve Jobs and Free For All.
ProTools v3.4 Digital Audio Workstation software was released on CD-ROM free of charge by Digidesign as a promotional effort in 1997. It is an older but fully-functional 16-track version of the program. Pro Tools v3.4 was only approved for use with some PCI-based Power Macs, but it is possible to run the program on many […]
This is our third and final look at Henry Bortman’s “Macintosh 2000” predictions in the March 1992 issue of MacUser.
This is rather unusual for us – two different Low End Mac staffers reviewing the same software. But what Battery Amnesia does can be so incredible that you might not believe just one of us. (Note that Lithium-ion batteries, which Apple has used since the PowerBook 3400c in 1997, are not susceptible to the memory […]
2000: Since I have been banging away at LinuxPPC like a madman day and night for the last few weeks, I thought it would be nice to share how to actually get a LinuxPPC system up and running. It is unclear how many articles I am going to do in this series, but there are […]
It’s a good time to be reading about (and writing about) Macs. After the slow years of 1996 and 1997, we’ve seen a trickle of Mac books turn into a respectable stream. Part of the stream is two books that got their start in the early 90s and have just been updated. Enough has changed in […]
Extensions Strip 1.9.3, a $15 ($8 educational) piece of shareware written by Ammon Skidmore, is the best Control Strip replacement there is. Apple would do well to follow Ammon’s example.
Our Fair Computer Company has released some quirky yet useful features in its computer systems and OS, and then advertised them very little – if at all. Apple’s SCSI Disk Mode and it’s modernized offspring, FireWire Target Disk Mode, are excellent examples.
“Which is the better server for my home network, the Quadra 650 I’ve been using or the smaller Quadra 605?”
The Mac Classic uses an 8 MHz 68000 CPU. The installed hard drive is a 170 MB Quantum ELS170S formatted with LaCie Silverlining software. This was not the original hard drive, which was a slower 40 MB mechanism.
2000 – America Online’s Instant Messenger (AIM) is one of a host of chat applications that has become part of an Internet user’s standard suite of tools in the past two years.
The Mac SE/30 uses a 16 MHz 68030 CPU and 16 MHz 68882 FPU, just like the Mac IIx and IIcx. The hard drive in this SE/30 is an Apple-branded Quantum LP80S formatted with Apple HD SC Setup 7.3.5.
2000 – I’ve been using MenuChoice 2.1 for ages, probably going back to the System 7.1 era (1992-94). It’s one of those remarkable pieces of shareware that I’ve come to depend on – and it’s so well written that, despite the fact that is hasn’t been updated since April 18, 1994, it works flawlessly with […]
I think we have enough time now with Mac OS X Public Beta to reach a painful conclusion: The transition will not work, at least not well enough to sustain the Apple we know.
2000: Author’s Note: This article is purely speculative – no John Does or rumor sites were involved its writing. This is solely based on what the author hopes Apple could have in the works.
2000 – So you want a G3. You may have noticed that there are a number of G3 upgrades on the market. You may have also noticed that the prices on real G3 computers are falling fast.
2000: When wireless networking first starting coming on the scene, I was very against it. All sorts of bizarre ways were coming out to make my PC access my network wirelessly. I remember the idea of using your power outlets as some sort of conductor to carry the signals and achieving about one megabit per […]
Your friend told you of a great deal on a 17″ monitor in the local computer centre. Naturally it is a PC monitor, not compatible with your Macintosh – or is it?
My occupation requires that I work in many parts of the world for extended periods of time. Due to this, I meet and associate with a very diverse cross-section of society. The one interest that transcends language, social status, and background is the vibrant desire to learn about computers and the Internet.
2000 – I was sold on the Mac a few months earlier, after having taken introductory classes on both the PC and Mac at a local university. The PC class was interesting but very code driven. It was DOS 3.3 on those big old IBM 8088s with the green or amber screens.
2000 – We covered quite a range of topics last week. This article follows up on some of them.
2000: I seem to be experiencing a bit of déjà vu lately in regards to Mac OS X Beta and everything that surrounds it. It reminds me of when Windows NT came out – everyone was trying to figure out what to make of it. While technically superior to Windows 95, there were many trade-offs […]
Ten years ago this month I started graduate school, and I was determined not to wait in line at the computer center or rely on the kindness of friends who had their own computers. I needed my own machine. I had used PCs at work, but a friend let me use his Mac Plus to […]
The Mac Plus came with an 8 MHz 68000 CPU; the Brainstorm upgrade replaces that with a low power 16 MHz 68000. Brainstorm had the guts to claim it could more than double performance. Some claims just beg to be tested.
The Mac Classic II uses the same 16 MHz 68030 CPU and 16 MHz 68882 FPU as the SE/30, the model it replaced. The computer was tested with the same external drive used for Speedometer 3 on the SE/30; the internal hard drive was also benchmarked.
The Mac Plus uses the same 8 MHz 68000 CPU found in the original Macintosh and the 512K Fat Mac. The attached hard drive is a 160 MB Quantum, and the computer has 4 MB of memory. Because it is an older design, the Plus is generally considered to be about 15% slower than the 8 […]
In 1985, I bought a Macintosh 128K from a friend who couldn’t grasp the potential of this little miracle (let alone a tenuous brush with reality). It came with an ImageWriter I printer, no hard drive, just the internal 400K floppy, and a mouse! The keyboard had no numeric keypad, function keys, or anything, but […]
