iMac (Late 2009)

The big news: Apple has introduced new screen sizes and a new display aspect ratio. The Late 2009 iMac comes in 21.5″ and 27″ sizes, and the displays have the same 16:9 aspect ratio as HDTV (the Early 2009 iMac had 20″ and 24″ 16:10 aspect ratio displays). The smaller iMac has the same 1920 […]

27″ iMac (Late 2009)

The big news: Apple has introduced new screen sizes and a new display aspect ratio. The Late 2009 iMac comes in 21.5″ and 27″ sizes, and the displays have the same 16:9 aspect ratio as HDTV (the Early 2009 iMac had 20″ and 24″ 16:10 aspect ratio displays). The 27″ beastie provides an incredible 2560 […]

21″ iMac (Late 2009)

The big news: Apple has introduced new screen sizes and a new display aspect ratio. The Late 2009 iMac comes in 21.5″ and 27″ sizes, and the displays have the same 16:9 aspect ratio as HDTV (the Early 2009 iMac had 20″ and 24″ 16:10 aspect ratio displays). The smaller iMac has the same 1920 […]

Unibody MacBook (Late 2009)

The original polycarbonate Mac notebook got a design overhaul, the first since the original MacBook was introduced in May 2006. Although it’s still white and appears to be made of plastic, the lower case uses a unibody design carved from aluminum – but covered with a rubbery white material.

Mac mini (Late 2009)

Just seven months after overhauling the Mac mini, Apple made some small improvements: The base speed is now 2.26 GHz, 2 GB of RAM is the norm, and the 160 GB hard drive holds more data than the 120 GB drive found in the previous version. And for power users, there’s now a server version […]

Automount OS X Home Directories Using OpenLDAP and Linux

Mac OS X comes with built-in integration to work seamlessly on a Mac Open Directory network or Microsoft Active Directory network. It is a fairly easy task to set it up to authenticate to a Unix/Linux OpenLDAP server. However, it is another matter to get it to read the home directory from OpenLDAP and mount […]

iTunes 9 Mostly Runs on G3 Macs

It was great to see Steve Jobs up and running around about as well as a man with a new liver can be expected to. But the big question for me was how would all the new changes to iTunes and the iPod touch affect me with my G3 Pismo PowerBook.

The Future of Up-to-Date Browsers for PowerPC Macs

The gradual marginalization of PowerPC Macs is bound to accelerate sharply with the release of Intel-only Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and one can anticipate that it may not be too long before PowerPC Mac owners begin to be confronted with the frustrating up-to-date browser issue that is one of the biggest problems for Classic […]

Adding USB 2.0 to a Titanium PowerBook G4

2009 – Despite my 867 MHz Titanium PowerBook G4 (TiBook) being introduced in November 2002, making it nearly seven years old, it is still an excellent machine. Being an 867 MHz model, it is the earliest Titanium model to officially support Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and it copes with it very well.

Step-by-Step Guide to Manual Mac System Migration

Since the early days of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, Apple has provided a wonderful utility – initially part of Setup Assistant and later (in OS X 10.4 Tiger) renamed Migration Assistant – to help move data between your old and new Macs. With this utility and a Mac booted into FireWire Target Disk Mode, or […]

Snow Leopard Doesn’t Mean the End of the Road for PowerPC Macs

2009 – Low End Mac colleague Simon Royal says he didn’t believe the rumors last year that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard would be Intel only. I have to say that at the early point when it was reported that alpha builds of Snow Leopard were being seeded to developers as Intel-only software, the proverbial […]

Snow Leopard and the End of PowerPC Macs

In late 2008, I wrote an article about the future of PowerPC Macs, The Future of PowerPC Macs and Software as Snow Leopard Approaches. Well, all the rumours have been put to bed: Apple have announced the next version of Mac OS X, and it isn’t looking good for PowerPC users.

Apple’s Largely Forgotten QuickTake 150 Digital Camera

Today I am going to look at a unique item in my collection. While it is not technically a computer, it does have an Apple logo – and all that Apple charm. Back in the early 1990s, Apple decided to branch out into peripherals and unique consumer electronic devices. Some of them, such as the W.A.L.T. […]

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was billed as primarily under-the-hood changes to OS X 10.5 Leopard, but it was much more significant than that.

Introduction to Autofs in Mac OS X

Autofs is often used in enterprise environments to set up network-based home directories and other network mounts for users at login. It can also dynamically mount network shares on access. Mac OS X uses an autofs code stack based on Sun’s Solaris version of Unix. Many of the advanced features are not documented very well, […]

iPhone 3GS

The iPhone 3G had been a step forward in some areas – especially in adding 3G data support – but in other areas it was no better than the original iPhone. With the iPhone 3GS, Apple took a few more steps forward with a faster processor, a better camera, video capability, and a 32 GB option.