The long-awaited replacement for the 12″ PowerBook has finally been delivered. The 13″ MacBook Pro takes the successful Unibody Aluminum MacBook, ups the speed a bit, and adds an SD Card slot and FireWire, a feature the Unibody MacBook lost (in this case, it’s FireWire 800).
The June 2009 update of the MacBook Air (MBA) gets faster CPUs (1.86 GHz and 2.13 GHz) and lower prices ($1,499 and $1,799). It used the same Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics processor, which uses 256 MB of system memory, as its predecessor.
Completely unheralded, Apple quietly updated the MacBook White in late May. The updated model has a 6.5% faster CPU at 2.13 GHz, uses faster RAM (800 MHz vs. 667 MHz), and has a larger hard drive (160 GB) – and for the first time on a MacBook, a 500 GB build-to-order hard drive option.
2009 – My First Mac’s Chris Kerins says he’s been trying to get every last month out of his 6-year-old 17″ PowerBook G4, but it’s been not starting lately. He’s had power issues in the past, after he cracked the big PowerBook open to do a repair and broke a connector. Since then the power […]
A long time ago, in a time that seems like forever ago, computers were over-engineered to a high standard – especially in regards to computer keyboards. With a tactile feedback and a loud clicking sound, these were the well-oiled peripherals of yesteryear.
In 2005, I decided I needed a laptop computer. After using a Mac for a number of years, my first choice would have been an Apple laptop, but funds were tight, so I opted for a Windows machine. However, using Windows on a daily basis got the better of me, and I decided I had […]
Is it important to used matched memory? This question has intrigued me for a while. When cramming as much memory in a Mac as you can, should you use the same size and speed and brand to ensure maximum compatibility and stability?
I first started looking into alternatives to the Apple AirPort Card when a friend of mine had a slot-load iMac G3 and the original 802.11b AirPort Card was the only option to go wireless – other than USB dongles. Original AirPort Cards are expensive nowadays. Ever since Apple stopped selling them, there are less and less of them around […]
2009 – I have had so many arguments with people stating that Apple deliberately geared Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to perform much better on Intel machines so as to pull people away from the PowerPC platform. I thought it was about time this myth was laid to rest.
Is it worth maxing the RAM in older computers? This has been a long-asked question, one I see on mailing groups regularly.
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 […]
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, […]
2009-04-07: Dan Knight, Low End Mac’s publisher, informs us that today marks 12 years since he first posted some old Mac profiles on his personal website and started building Low End Mac.
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 […]
2009 – I finally switched to using my new Unibody Aluminum MacBook for production – just over five weeks after it touched down here. That isn’t how I had expected things to unfold, but I ran into some unanticipated snags in the transition from my long-established and highly evolved workflow on my previous Macs to […]
With the latest model announcement from Apple, it seems that people are thinking more about building a “Hackintosh” than ever before. I can’t say that I blame them.
This page covers CardBus WiFi hardware that is compatible with Mac OS X. CardBus uses a 32-bit data bus that’s faster than the 16-bit bus used by PCMCIA/PC Card devices, which are covered in WiFi PC Cards Compatible with PowerBooks Running Mac OS X.
This page covers PCMCIA/PC Card WiFi hardware that is compatible with Mac OS X. Some of these devices are also compatible with the Classic Mac OS; all of them are reported to work with OS X.
Older Macs may not have a slot for Apple’s AirPort Card – and even if they do, you may want higher throughput than 802.11b WiFi offers. 802.11g will give you nearly five times as much bandwidth.
This page covers PCMCIA/PC Card WiFi hardware that is compatible with the Classic Mac OS. A few of these devices are compatible with Mac OS 8.6; all of them are reported to work with Mac OS 9, and most also have drivers available for some versions of Mac OS X.
Older Macs may not have a slot for Apple’s AirPort Card, and even if yours does, you may want higher throughput than 802.11b WiFi offers – 802.11g will give you nearly five times as much bandwidth.
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.
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) […]
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 […]
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 […]
Apple updated the iMac with Nvidia graphics as a standard feature (Late 2008 iMacs used Radeon graphics). The low-end Early 2009 iMacs use the same Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU found in Early 2009 MacBooks and the Early 2009 Mac mini.
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 […]
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 […]
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.
2009 – Two weeks after it arrived, progress with my new Aluminum Unibody MacBook is proceeding slowly. I had imagined that I would have switched over to it for production by now, but things have not gone as smoothly as I had hoped – not, I hasten to add, due to any problems with the […]
