A lot of features in the Early 2009 17″ MacBook Pro were anticipated based on the Early 2008 17″ model and the Late 2008 15″ Unibody MacBook Pro: Unibody construction, dual GPUs, glass trackpad, glossy display standard, and 1920 x 1200 resolution – and losing the FireWire 400 port wasn’t unexpected.
The Macintosh officially turns 25 on January 24, 2009, the anniversary of Apple’s announcement of the original Macintosh.
When Apple’s Macintosh computers migrated from using PowerPC CPUs to using Intel chips, the hacker community took it as a challenge to find to a way to run standard PC operating systems – primarily Windows and Linux – on the new Macs. The ways they came up with worked – but as with so-called Hackintoshes […]
One of my interesting jobs at Low End Mac is compiling our price trackers, which have evolved quite a bit over the years. We do price trackers for all Macs that are supported by some version of Mac OS X, from Beige G3 Power Macs and WallStreet PowerBooks through today’s Intel-based Macs. We also track the […]
One of my interesting jobs at Low End Mac is compiling our price trackers, which have evolved quite a bit over the years. We do price trackers for all Macs that are supported by some version of Mac OS X, from beige G3 Power Macs and WallStreet PowerBooks through today’s Intel-based Macs. We also track the […]
2008 – You might think this is a rather old topic to examine, but with recent movements in both the Mac and PC worlds, it is more relevant than ever. OS X 10.5 Leopard is the Mac equivalent of Windows Vista. How do they compare?
Once upon a time, CPU upgrade vendor PowerLogix offered a 1 GHz G3 CPU upgrade for the Pismo PowerBook based on the IBM PowerPC 750GX CPU, doubling the clock speed of the fastest stock Pismo – and with a full megabyte of Level 2 (L2) cache also running at 1 GHz.
It’s not the way most Mac users work, but I’ve been partitioning my hard drives since my Mac Plus days. Back then, it allowed me to boot into System 6 or System 7 from my 40 MB Microtech hard drive. (That was a good size drive back then.)
2008 – I’ve written on this topic a few times before, and those articles continue to draw extremely high hit-counts despite the constant advance of technology. As it’s been well over a year since my last look at the subject and the tools available to Mac users have changed a bit, I thought it was time for […]
2008 – I just acquired an 867 MHz PowerBook G4. This is the slowest Mac officially supported by Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. For anyone wondering whether running a such a high spec modern OS on an older Mac works well, I say go for it. You will be surprised. I was.
Apple announced the next version of Mac OS X, code named “Snow Leopard”, about six months ago. Information regarding it has been vague – even the official 10.6 Snow Leopard site doesn’t really tell you much.
I’m not a conformist. Being a Mac user puts me in the minority of computer users. But I could go one step further. With my foot firmly in the door of Open Source software, would an Open Source operating system be the next step forward – or would it be a step back?
If you thought buying videos through the iTunes Store was the online equivalent of buying them on DVD or Blu-ray, think again. In a completely unexpected development, owners of the October 2008 MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air have discovered that the new Mini DisplayPort includes High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) – and this makes it […]
2008 – There has been lots of talk on various Apple discussion websites and Mac mailing lists that I subscribe to about how Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is not geared towards PowerPC Macs and was developed with Intel Macs in mind. I disagree with this.
As with operating systems, Microsoft also has the market cornered for office suites. Microsoft Office has long been the de facto standard in offices across the world – and in homes too – probably because it follows having Windows. There are good alternatives for Mac users – and for Windows users too.
The future of PowerPC Macs has been in question since Apple moved to Intel processors in 2006.
2008: I recently decided that it was finally time for me to purchase my first digital SLR. I’d been looking at various cameras, features, and megapixels, and I decided that the Nikon D40 fit my needs (and wallet). Uncle Sam’s recent generosity of the economic stimulus check made the purchase even easier.
My latest main Mac (since my Intel iMac died) is a Power Mac G4 Sawtooth that is way under Apple’s minimum requirements for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but I set out on a mission to get it installed. At Low End Mac, we pride ourselves in getting the most out of our Macs. I use G3s running […]
I have a lot of Macs similarly spec’d, and I began noticing a lot of difference between them, so I set about benchmarking them and comparing the results. I thought I would share my findings with you.
The era of formed aluminum Apple notebooks has come to an end. The new 15″ MacBook Pro (MBP) is carved from a 2.5 lb. block of solid aluminum. The result is a quarter-pound enclosure – and 2.25 lb. of aluminum that’s recycled to make more enclosures. It’s even thinner, the first time Apple has built […]
The Late 2008 MacBook Air (MBA) has the same Mini DisplayPort introduced with the 15″ MacBook Pro. Drive options are a 120 GB hard drive or a 128 GB solid state drive (SSD), but now on a SATA bus for much better speed.
It looked like the end of the line for the plastic bodied MacBook design introduced in May 2006. The October 2008 MacBook White was the first to dip below the $1,000 mark, but that was because there was not much new about it. Apple had pretty much taken the 2.1 GHz Penryn MacBook, replaced the […]
The Aluminum MacBook uses the same unibody construction as the 15″ MacBook Pro and now has an LED-backlit display. The top-end 2.4 GHz MacBook also has a backlit keyboard. The Unibody MacBooks use new, more energy efficient versions of the Core 2 CPU: P7350 in the 2.0 GHz model and P8600 in the 2.4 GHz […]
A mate of mine who has only been using Macs for a few weeks has been using a PowerBook G3. We installed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger on it, and then he got a larger hard drive. He was about to reinstall OS X when I suggested cloning.
I recently joined the ranks of the iPhone enabled and am having a generally marvelous time with my new iToy. One of the best features is how seamlessly the iPhone works with my Mac’s Address Book and Calendar data via Apple’s Sync Services. No third party data conduit is needed – unlike Treo or BlackBerry […]
I love G3 Macs, but I’m no fool. A G3 machine in its original Apple-shipped state won’t cut it in today’s computing world – but with a few upgrades and additions you can easily get a little extra usage out of older Macs.
Last week fellow Low End Mac columnist Simon Royal posted a feature comparing nine Web browsers in the context of use on G3 and older G4 Macs. That’s a space I inhabit.
I’ve been an avid reader of Low End Mac for a number of years and have recently shown my appreciation and become a writer. But what exactly is a low-end Mac? Different people have different ideas.
As a user of older Macs, especially G3s, lightweight apps make your day-to-day usage a lot easier, and this extends to web browsers.
I have been in several discussion with people who claim that all operating systems are rubbish these days, whether Windows, Mac, or Linux. In this day and age of cross-platform computing and the Internet, does it really matter what OS you are running?
We have had time to get used to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. How does it compare to the legendary Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger?
Everyone seems to want portable computing, but are laptops now considered too big? Could a smartphone be a suitable replacement for a laptop?
2008: This one boggles the mind: The iPod and iTunes Music Store were essentially invented in 1979. That’s more than 20 years before the first iPod shipped – and three years before the first CD players came to market!
Kudos to Apple for some real changes in the iPod line. It’s been a year since Apple overhauled the entire iPod range with the 3G iPod nano, the iPod touch, and the new name for the “classic” iPod – the iPod classic. Yesterday saw the introduction of a new form factor for the iPod nano, […]
The 2G iPod touch is about 30% more powerful than the original iPod touch and was the first one with Bluetooth. It was also the first iPod touch with volume buttons and a built-in speaker.
