Mac OS X Public Beta
I first discovered Low End Mac LEM) in late 2000 when I was trying
to figure out how to get the Mac OS X Public
Beta installed on a stock PowerPC (PPC) 604e Power Mac 8500 at work and a
G3-upgraded Power Mac 7500
at home. I somehow managed to get the Public Beta installed on my 8500
at work (although I have long since forgotten how) without benefit of
any on-point references, and I wrote a "how to" article about it. I
submitted the article to Low End Mac but did not hear back, due to the
fact I had messed up typing the email address. So I sent it to another
website who published it and had it highlighted on their home page for
weeks.
After discovering the mistake I had made in the email address, I did
get in contact with Dan Knight, Low End Mac's publisher, and we decided
I would start writing a regular weekly column. My first column,
The Mac as a Business Solution,
ran on September 4, 2001 and the second, Some Mindless Entertainment, went live
the fateful morning of September 11, 2001.
I continued the regular weekly columns until the Spring of 2003,
when the events of Sept. 11 finally resulted in me being called up to
active duty in my capacity as an Army Reserve lawyer. I was sent to
Kosovo for 8 months. Since that time, I have continued to write for
LEM, though at a reduced pace, averaging a column every 6-8 weeks or
so.
WallStreet PowerBook G3
Like Dan Bashur, I am also in a
sort of technology renaissance right now. When OS X 10.7 Lion left PPC apps
behind because of its inexplicable omission of Rosetta, I realized I
had no interest in purchasing expensive upgrades of several PPC apps
just so they would run on my MacBook Pro under Lion. Instead I
purchased a few older G3 PowerBooks (one each - WallStreet II, Lombard, and Pismo - at a total cost below
$100) to try out. I will be keeping one of them as my permanent
OS X 10.4
Tiger/PPC/Classic machine and will run these apps on it.
LEM is essential reading for anyone concerned with getting the most
value out of their Macs. A Mac's useful life far exceeds the arbitrary
support cutoff points established by Apple. For instance, Apple
prevented installation of OS X on the WallStreet II/PDQ PowerBooks
after 10.2 Jaguar, so
installation of neither 10.3
Panther nor 10.4 Tiger was supported by Apple, despite that
PowerBook's technical ability to run either OS. However, I recently got
10.4 installed on my WallStreet, and it runs just fine. In fact, that
will be the subject of another column very shortly. 10.3 Panther also
installs and runs just as well.
This is the perfect case in point of the value that LEM stands for:
Through the helpful articles and tutorials on Low End Mac, the useful
life of this PowerBook was extended almost four years beyond the point
where Apple decreed it obsolete. With the prices of PowerBooks in those
days, that is easily $2,000+ that would have been saved by delaying the
purchase of a new PowerBook. 
