iMac for Education (Mid 2009)

Apple has finally replaced the last 17″ iMac, a holdover white model that has only been available to the education market at the same US$899 price as this new model. At 2.0 GHz, the new education iMac is 25% slower than the low-end consumer model and comes with half the RAM (1 GB) and half […]

Xserve Nehalem (Mid 2009)

Apple upgraded the Xserve to the same Nehalem CPUs found in the Mac Pro. Even though the clock speed of these chips is lower than on the 2008 Xserve, the efficiencies of the Nehalem architecture power it well past last year’s models. The Nehalem chips also support Hyperthreading, so each core can emulate two cores, […]

My Apple Laptops: Past, Present, and Future

2009 – I had an email Monday from my daughter, who is the current custom users of our old WallStreet PowerBook, telling me that she had succeeded in getting OS X 10.4 .11 Tiger installed on the venerable ‘Book. This was particularly interesting, because I had myself failed in several attempts over the years that I […]

Automating FTP on the Mac

There is no shortage of GUI FTP programs, but kicking it old school on the command line allows you to easily automate uploads and downloads. The best part is, there is nothing to install. Everything you need waits patiently behind the warm glow of a Terminal session.

Mac Pro (Early 2009)

It’s been 14 months since Apple introduced the 2008 Mac Pro, and the 2009 Mac Pro is a big step forward: every configuration uses quad-core Intel Xeon Nehalem CPUs for even more power. Each core has its own 256 KB Level 2 (L2) cache, and each quad-core CPU shares an 8 GB Level 3 (L3) […]

iMac (Early 2009)

Apple has updated the iMac with Nvidia graphics as a standard feature (the Early 2008 iMac used Radeon graphics, although there was an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS build-to-order option for the 24″ model). The low-end iMacs use the same Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU found in current MacBooks and the new Mac mini, while the high-end […]

24″ iMac (Early 2009)

Apple  updated the iMac with Nvidia graphics as a standard feature (Early 2008 iMacs used Radeon graphics, although there was an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS build-to-order option). The low-end iMacs use the same Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU found in the Early 2009 MacBook and the Early 2009 Mac mini, while the high-end iMacs use GeForce GT graphics. (ATI […]

Mac mini (Early 2009)

After over a year and a half without a change, Apple finally updated the Mac mini in March 2009. As widely anticipated, the new Mac mini adopts Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics, the same GPU found in the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro – and it finally gets 802.11n WiFi as well (and 802.11a for […]

Safari 4 Beta Is Lightning Fast

I’m a keen follower of Mac web browsers, so when Apple released a new version of Safari – even a beta – I had to try it. Most owners of low-end Macs know they are for basic uses and browsing the Web, so finding a good browser that performs at a reasonable speed is vital […]

I Still Use My LC

In the previous Welcome to Macintosh article, I started a series called Classic Macintosh Veterans. It’s where we interview you, the Classic Macintosh user. Our first interview was with John Meshelany Jr. Today, I interview Scott Baret, who is also a member of the 68k Macintosh Liberation Army, where he’s also known as Scott Baret.

The 25 Most Important Macs

2009 – Others have published their thoughts on the Best Mac Ever, the 10 Best Macs, and the 25 Best Macs, but I’m taking a different approach. I want to identify the 25 most important Macs ever, clones included. (In some cases, I’ll lump together two or more models that were introduced simultaneously.)

PowerPC Architecture Was Not a Failure

2009 – Brooke Crothers of CNET News states that the “PowerPC platform never lived up to the hype” and “the PowerPC platform had really failed long before 2005.” The evidence: the fact that Apple switched to Intel in 2006 and that some of the first-generation dual-processor G4 Power Macs ran hot. I beg to differ.

First Impressions of My Unibody MacBook

2009 – My Apple Certified Refurbished (ACR) 13″ 2.0 GHz Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook arrived last Thursday afternoon, just a couple of hours short of a week after I ordered it, having been air-shuttled by FedEx back and forth across the continent twice, from Rancho Cordova, CA, to Memphis, TN, to Calgary, Alberta, to Halifax, […]

Charles W Moore Going Intel with a Unibody MacBook

2009 – After equivocating for nearly three years about what hardware would become my vehicle for transitioning to the Macintel experience, I’ve finally made a decision. Last Thursday afternoon I ordered a 2.0 GHz Late 2008 Unibody Aluminum MacBook from Apple Canada – an Apple Certified Refurbished unit for Can$200 (14%) off the price of […]

25 Years of Macintosh

The Macintosh officially turned 25 on January 24, 2009, the anniversary of the day Apple announced the original Macintosh to its Board of Directors and to the world – and the world of personal computing has never been the same.

MacBook White (Early 2009)

In an unexpected development, Apple quietly changed the specs of the MacBook White in mid-January. The updated model has the same 2.0 GHz CPU as the entry-level Aluminum Unibody MacBook – and also the same Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics processor.