Low End Mac users are always looking for ways to get better performance out of their aging machines. Most of these machines are used for web browsing, and this is one of the areas that lower spec’d machines suffer in.
From the Aluminium PowerBook G4s upwards, USB 2.0 was built in, but the Titanium PowerBook G4s came with USB 1.1. While this is great for small files and occasional use, it is really slow for copying large amount of data.
Greetings Low Enders! Sorry for the hiatus, but the holidays were busy for yours truly. Presents, getting ill, getting better, and MacBook Pro trouble, all while gaining some new tech and crazy upgrades galore kept me bogged down this holiday season. Now that the insanity is over, it’s time to get back to Low End […]
2011 – I finally did it. I bought my first Intel-based Mac two weeks ago, and I’ve been making the transition from being PowerPC only.
2011 – I got lots of positive and encouraging feedback on my article about going back to OS 9, Back to Mac OS 9, Because It’s All I Need. The main point of my article was that I could go back to OS 9, because it provides me with everything I want to do with a […]
Leopard runs vey well even on the minimum requirements of an 867Mhz G4, but what if your G4 is lower than that? Can it cope with running Leopard? How about as low as 500Mhz?
The traditional way of moving files to the iPad is to use the syncing function of iTunes. Music, videos, apps, notes, and bookmarks can all be moved from your Mac OS X desktop or laptop to the iPad. But what if you just want to move one file? You probably don’t want to fire up your […]
The Power Mac G4 MDD (Mirrored Drive Doors) was the last Mac capable of dual-booting into both Mac OS 9 and OS X. The last of the G4 towers, this model was originally introduced in 2002, briefly evolved into an OS X-only configuration with FireWire 800 in 2003, then returned to the original design for another year.
A bit smaller, one-third thinner, and a little lighter than the original iPad, the iPad 2 also moved the iPad line to Apple’s dual-core A5 processor. It was also the first iPad available in white or black.
When Apple introduced the Early 2011 MacBook Pro models with Thunderbolt, something clicked in the back of my mind. With Thunderbolt, Apple has delivered on a promise made when the original Macintosh was introduced in 1984 – and then some.
When the Aluminum Unibody MacBook was unveiled in October 2008, its memory support ceiling specified by Apple was 4 GB. That was enough for most users at the time, and it was later discovered that these machines could happily support up to 6 GB of RAM – but while 8 GB could be installed, independent testing found that if an application […]
The Geneva Automobile Show tends to often be the most interesting of the major annual auto shows, and this year’s, held last week, was no exception. While there were all sorts of exotic and “green technology” (sometimes both combined) production models and concepts on display at Geneva, many of them integrating Apple iPads and iPhones […]
The first benchmark results are in for the 2011 MacBook Pro line. Primate Labs posted the first Geekbench results last Thursday, and Macworld followed with its Speedmark 6.5 benchmark suite on Friday.
The Early 2011 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro models moved from dual-core CPUs to quad-core, which makes them a lot more powerful despite lower clock speeds. As with last year’s models, these CPUs support TurboBoost, which lets individual cores run beyond their rated speed, and hyperthreading, which lets the each core appear to the operating […]
The Early 2011 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro models have moved from dual-core CPUs to quad-core, which makes them a lot more powerful despite lower clock speeds. As with last year’s models, these CPUs support TurboBoost, which lets individual cores run beyond their rated speed, and hyperthreading, which lets the each core appear to the […]
Apple took some big steps forward with the refreshed 13.3″ MacBook Pro. The Early 2011 model migrates from the dated Intel Core 2 Duo to Intel’s newer Core i5 and i7 CPUs. These dual-core mobile CPUs have a 3-4 MB Level 3 cache shared by both cores and, thanks to Turbo Boost architecture, should be […]
2010: The Year PowerPC Macs Became Total Paperweights – That’s just one line from OSS Waves PPC Goodbye as Old Macs Turn Paperweights, a column by Fernando Cassia published on TechEye last September. His advice: “If you have an old PowerPC based Mac, the time to move is now, as software developers are dropping support of the platform left […]
2011 – The first MacBook Pro shipped five years ago, the first “pro” Mac to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel. (The 17″ 1.83 GHz and 20″ 2.0 GHz Core Duo iMacs were the first Macs to make the switch to Intel, and the Mac mini migrated to Intel at the end of February 2006.)
On January 11, 2011, Verizon announced that it had reached an agreement with Apple and would soon be offering the iPhone 4 to its customers. Prior to this, the iPhone had been an AT&T Wireless exclusive in the United States.
2011 – I’ve done it. I’ve sold both my Intel iMac and my MacBook Pro (Late 2008). I took the money and spent it on a very nice trip with my girlfriend. Wonderful memories. That left me with my old configuration, a dual 1 GHz Power Mac G4 MDD maxed out with 2 GB of RAM. It […]
2011 – I ran across an article I wrote in January 2003 explaining why, after over a dozen years using the Classic Mac OS, I finally made the switch to Mac OS X as my primary operating system.
2011 – I have been very excited about the idea of a Mac App Store since it was first floated, and I’m very happy to see that Apple has finally started to make it every bit as easy for Mac users to find, buy, and install apps as iOS users.
In my quest for an up-to-date browser to use in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger on my two old Pismo PowerBooks, one that I had consistently passed over was OmniWeb, which was the very first OS X web browser out of the blocks a decade ago. OmniWeb was originally developed for the NextStep platform in 1995, then […]
There are a lot of companies offering upgrades for new and recent Macs, but not so many that focus on bringing new products to PowerPC Macs.
One of the best ways to speed up your Mac is with a bigger, faster hard drive (adding more system memory is the other), but there are less hard drives for PowerPC ‘Books than before, and they tend to be lower in capacity than today’s SATA drives.
One of the best ways to speed up your Mac is with a bigger, faster hard drive (adding more system memory is the other), but there are less hard drives for PowerPC ‘Books than before, and they tend to be lower in capacity than today’s Serial ATA (SATA) drives.
Greetings and happy holidays, low-enders. It’s the most wonderful time of the year again!
It has been a roller coaster of computing in my life recently. About 18 months ago, after 10 years of being a hard-core dedicated Mac user, I decided that I wanted to try something else. Linux.
How do you run three operating systems on a PowerPC Mac, especially when one of those is Linux? This tutorial will show you how.
2010 – As an OS X 10.4 Tiger holdout on my two beloved 10-year-old Pismo PowerBooks, I’ve been tracking the accelerating rate of attrition in Tiger-compatible Web browser support, but there are a few encouraging signs of life for those of us whose Macs don’t support more recent versions of the OS.
