One of the things that sets Macs apart from other computers is their longevity. People don’t just throw them away. Macs tend to soldier on long after their spec sheets say that they’re “obsolete”. This may explain another phenomenon almost unique to the Macintosh subset of the computing world: Mac collectors. It’s understandable when you […]
Early in 2006, I wrote an article for Low End Mac entitled VNC, Basilisk II, and SheepShaver: 3 Ways to Run Classic on an Intel Mac. In it, I noted that the then-new Intel-powered Macs were unable to run older Mac software in called Classic Mode, but that there were at least a couple of […]
Apple updated the iMac with Intel’s more efficient Penryn processor in April 2008, which has a larger Level 2 cache and includes the SSE4.1 instruction set. The Early 2008 iMac also moved from the 800 MHz system bus in the Mid 2007 iMac to 1066 MHz, and clock speeds now range from 2.4 GHz to […]
Apple updated the iMac with Intel’s more efficient Penryn processor in April 2008, which has a larger Level 2 cache and includes the SSE4.1 instruction set. The Early 2008 iMac has also moved from the 800 MHz system bus in the Mid 2007 iMac to 1066 MHz, and clock speeds on the 20″ model range […]
Apple updated the iMac with Intel’s more efficient Penryn processor in April 2008, which has a larger Level 2 cache and includes the SSE4.1 instruction set. The Early 2008 iMac also moved from the 800 MHz system bus in the Early 2008 iMac to 1066 MHz, and clock speeds now range from 2.4 GHz to […]
2008: It’s called the KPC. It sells for $99 bare bones (no CPU, RAM, or hard drive), and as low as $229 configured. And it makes me wonder, “Can it run OS X?”
Is Microsoft a monopoly? Has Microsoft been guilty of monopolistic behavior? These are questions we’ve been asking for well over a decade, and the subject surfaced again this week [mid March 2008] after the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Novell to file an antitrust case against the Redmond behemoth over the way WordPerfect […]
I’ve had this Blue and White Power Mac G3 in my office on and off for a few months. I spent several weeks working on it and a Mystic Power Mac G4/450 trying to get them both working reliably. Long story short, the problems turned out to be bad RAM.
2008: It’s been the hallmark of serious photographers – professionals and advanced amateurs alike – for nearly 50 years now. It’s the single lens reflex (SLR) camera, and it’s seen a lot of changes, especially in the digital era.
2008: I’ve been into photography since the mid-1970s, and I’ve worked in camera stores several times over the intervening years. For me, one of the banes of good enlargements is dates in photos. I’ve seen more nice candids, animal shots, sunsets, etc. that would make excellent large prints – but they have a big, ugly […]
With the introduction of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple upped the ante on Mac remote control. All of the methods covered in previous articles still work, but new options now exist in the operating system and via associated services.
Multitouch. Introduced with the iPhone and brought to the Mac with the MacBook Air, it now made its debut on the MacBook Pro with the Early 2008 models. Apple is doing it using the same trackpad, not a larger one like the MBA has.
Multitouch. Introduced with the iPhone, brought to the Mac with the MacBook Air, it now makes its debut on the MacBook Pro. Surprisingly, Apple is doing it using the same trackpad, not a larger one like the MBA has.
Multitouch. Introduced with the iPhone, brought to the Mac with the MacBook Air, it now makes its debut on the MacBook Pro. Surprisingly, Apple is doing it using the same trackpad, not a larger one like the MBA has.
Just four months after moving the MacBook to Intel’s Santa Rosa chipset, Apple has refreshed the line. The entry-level MacBook now runs at 2.1 GHz (yeah, it’s only 5% faster), while the faster models now clock at 2.4 GHz (almost 10% faster). The updated Core 2 CPU (known as Penryn) has an enhanced SSE4 vector […]
2008: Last month we looked at the megapixel myth. As we noted then, “in the rush to market megapixels, images can actually be worse with a high megapixel camera than from a lower megapixel one.” The sad truth is that it’s worse than we thought.
2008 – When you’re reviving an old laptop, you face one issue that you don’t when you rehab a desktop computer – power. Hence the need to have a least a power brick in order to use a laptop as a desktop. Of course, almost (but not quite) every different laptop has a different AC […]
Part 1 of this series covers general considerations and Apple-supported methods available for remote system control that will generally work on any version of Mac OS X (Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and Leopard) – and even OS 9. This article addresses some commercial solutions that also support multiple OS versions, along with how to force-reboot a remote Mac. Part […]
We’ve already suggested reducing your screen resolution, switching from millions of colors to thousands, and using Mac OS X 10.3.x Panther as ways to get better playback of YouTube videos. Several readers have written in with other suggestions, including adjusting video quality and using other programs to view the videos rather than using a web browser.
There’s an urban legend that Mac’s don’t crash. That’s not entirely accurate. Mac hard drives, for instance, are identical to those in Windows systems and suffer the same sorts of physical failures with the same frequency. And the Mac operating system, while based on a solid industrial-strength Unix core, can suffer from problems from time […]
The most important part of this mailbag is the analysis of how to get the best performance from YouTube an an older Mac. YouTube Videos Run Poorly on Older Macs How Many Dead Pixels Are Too Many? Which iBook G4 Is the Better Deal? Increasing Safari Problems in Panther Quartz Extreme Support for PCI Video […]
Remote control of your Macintosh allows you to access a remote (host) computer across a network or the Internet from a local (client) system. The screen of the shared host computer appears locally, and you use your mouse and keyboard to control the other system from afar. Historically there have been fewer options to accomplish […]
My first Mac was an old PowerBook Duo 2300 I got as a birthday gift about four years ago. That’s all it took to get me hooked.
2008: The prayers of many for an ultralight MacBook have been answered, but in an unexpected way. And that’s pure Apple.
Apple took a completely different approach to ultralight notebook computers with the MacBook Air (MBA). Where netbooks used small screens, shrunken keyboards, and underpowered CPUs, Apple has gone very, very thin so the MacBook Air can have a 13.3″ LED backlit display, a full-sized keyboard, and a 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU – along […]
2008: In the world of computers, you can never have too many megabytes or megahertz. That sounds dated in this day of gigahertz and gigabytes, but the principle remains the same: More is better, whether you’re looking at CPU speed, system memory, hard drive space, or graphics processor speed and VRAM. Where it’s not necessarily […]
I recently (nearly) completed a novel that I started over the summer. If you check my publication history, you can see that the rate at which I have published columns on Low End Mac has dwindled to nearly zero. That’s because nearly all my free time for writing has been dedicated to writing a novel.
It’s been 17 months since Apple introduced the original Mac Pro, which shipped with two dual-core processors (an 8-core model with two quad-core CPUs was introduced in April 2007), and the new Mac Pro is a big step forward: every configuration uses quad-core Intel Xeon CPUs for even more power.
Apple finally upgraded the Xserve from a base 2.0 GHz dual-core configuration to a base 2.8 GHz quad-core machine – with dual 2.8 GHz and 3.0 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon CPUs optional. It matches the power of the Mac Pro, whereas the previous model had lagged behind.
2008: There’s been a huge buzz in the past week about an Apple patent application for “Run-Time Code Injection To Perform Checks”, which many liken to Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage program and speculate could result in Mac OS X and Apple apps including the kind of serialization and headaches that Windows users are familiar with.
