Low End Mac reader David M. was unsuccessful in his attempt to install OS X 10.2.8 Jaguar on his Beige Power Mac G3. The attempt caused the computer to boot into Open Firmware, and he found several similar results on the Web.
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From the headline, Microsoft Won’t Bring Office 2013 to Mac, but It Will Add SkyDrive Integration to Office 2011, you’d think that Microsoft was sticking it to Mac users. And from reading the article by Killian Bell, you’d never know that Mac users currently have a newer version of Office than Windows users – or that Microsoft has […]
Is it really fair to compare a three-year-old operating system to a three-month-old one? Maybe not (for the three-year-old), but it is interesting.
Since the dawn of Mac OS X, there have been major and minor versions. That is, versions that introduced major features and those that focus mainly on speed improvements and streamlining, bringing only small new features or additions.
2012 – The proverbial bell is tolling louder for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and PowerPC Macs.
2012 – According to Horace Dediu in The Evolution of the Computing Value Chain, Microsoft has had the dominant operating system almost since that day in 1981 when the first IBM PC shipped with PC-DOS, Big Blue’s version of MS-DOS. From DOS through Windows, Microsoft has held the top spot – until now.
2012 – When it comes to competing with Apple, Microsoft and Google are between a rock and a hard place.
Here at Low End Mac, we not only use older Macs, but also older iDevices. Released in 2009, the iPhone 3GS is now Apple’s low-end phone.
Yesterday Apple overhauled its entire notebook line, moving everything to Ivy Bridge CPUs with Intel HD Graphics 4000 and USB 3. Ivy Bridge means a bit more processing power and improved energy consumption. HD 4000 graphics has one-third more cores than 3000 (16 vs. 12), and Apple is claiming up to 60% improvement there.
For low-end Mac users, you can pick up older Macs for a lot less than a new one, and if you are looking for something very old, you might even be lucky enough to snag a free Mac.
After the Flashback malware made a mockery of Mac security, Eugene Kaspersky said of Apple and Mac OS X, “I think they are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security.”
Prior to OS X, Apple had a rock solid operating system that was fast and stable, but by the time Mac OS 9 was released in 1999, it was looking very dull and dated, especially compared to what Microsoft was offering in the shape of Windows NT 4 (released July 1996), Windows 98 (released June 1998), and […]
As much as I love getting the most out of older Apple machines and devices and being a low-end user, sometimes I just want to be up there running the latest software and operating systems.
Last Thursday, Nancy Caroll Gravly shared her opinion on The Mac Observer, essentially saying that there is no legitimate reason not to be running the latest version of OS X on your Mac. Here at Low End Mac, that caught our attention. Our thesis is that you often don’t need the latest hardware and/or operating […]
NetMarketShare released its February 2012 online market share data with some interesting data for the month.
2012 – Apple really does Think Different. It always has. It always will.
I spent all day arguing with my fellow local Mac group members about Apple’s decision to release another version of OS X less than twelve months after Lion – and the rapid pace at which Apple is making Macs outdated. Then it suddenly struck me: Why am I bothered? I’m not going to be in the […]
Since first posting this article, we’ve heard from several readers and learned from other websites that our list of the oldest Macs that should work with Mountain Lion is on the optimistic side. It looks like all Late 2006 iMacs, all MacBooks without Nvidia graphics, all Mac Pros released before June 2007 (2006 and 2007 […]
Ever since Apple announced the iPad on January 27, 2010, people have asked, “Is the iPad a PC or not?” There has not been a clear-cut answer.
I had to write this, as I have spent most of this weekend infuriated by Apple and its disgustingly aggressive planned obsolescence strategy.
The iPhone has been around since 2007 and been revised and upgraded a number of times, but with the iPhone 4S being so advanced, is there room for the original iPhone in 2012? The short answer is yes. But it does depend on what you do with it and what you want a smartphone for.
Prediction and rumours have been a part of the Mac world for as long as I have: If it’s not about hardware revisions, then it’s about new devices or what the next version of the Mac operating system will bring. 2012 will be one of the most interesting years in the Mac world for a […]
Charles W Moore raises a good point in Thoughts on Using Older Macs as Work Machines: As much as we may love our old Macs, some of them just don’t have what it takes to be productive in the wired and wireless world of the Internet today.
2011 – Netscape Navigator was the first widely popular Web browser, and when Netscape finally threw in the towel after years of fighting against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, it made Navigator an open source project. That project, Mozilla, has been producing new versions of the Firefox browser for over seven years now.
2011 – Alexander Clauss is the developer of iCab, an alternative web browser from Germany. iCab has been around since 1999 and is available for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Since Alexander still supports low-end Macs with his upcoming version 4.9 of iCab (now in beta), we decided to ask him some questions.
2011 – One of the advantages of using older Macintosh computers is that you can get a lot of great software for just a few bucks – or even for nothing, as abandonware. On the other hand, new software for old Macs is scarce, and the lack of updates for crucial software is the main […]
I have been running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on my 500 MHz Titanium PowerBook G4 for a few months, and it ran very well, but the last week it has developed serious problems, and I am beginning to wonder if they are related to running Leopard.
OS X 10.7 Lion was released on July 20, 2011 and made some huge changes to the Mac. Some of these changes were to make it easier for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users to adapt to the Mac, some to make the two platforms work better together, and some to keep making the Mac […]
This review has been a long time coming. I’ve had some problems with my dual 500 MHz Mystic Power Mac G4, which was going to be the second Mac tested with the 40 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD Legacy Edition. Working with my 350 MHz Blue & White G3 has taught me a few […]
Email has long been the principal online communication method. But do we rely on them as much as we used to? Have recent years seen a massive decline in email use?
The final release of Mac OS 9 occurred ten years ago, in 2001. Mac OS X was launched that same year, and Steve Jobs symbolically buried his old nemesis in 2002. The old Mac OS survived for another few years, running on dual-booting G4s or as Classic Mode under OS X, until the release of the Intel […]
I recently shared my story of migrating from my reliable old (introduced in January 2001) Digital Audio Power Mac G4 with its dual 1.6 GHz upgrade and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to my first Intel Mac, a 2.0 GHz 2007 Core 2 Duo Mac mini running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. But a few days after switching […]
When the Aluminum Unibody MacBook was unveiled in October 2008, its memory support ceiling specified by Apple was 4 GB. That was enough for most users at the time, and it was later discovered that these machines could happily support up to 6 GB of RAM – but while 8 GB could be installed, independent testing found that if an application […]
The Early 2011 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro models moved from dual-core CPUs to quad-core, which makes them a lot more powerful despite lower clock speeds. As with last year’s models, these CPUs support TurboBoost, which lets individual cores run beyond their rated speed, and hyperthreading, which lets the each core appear to the operating […]
The Early 2011 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro models have moved from dual-core CPUs to quad-core, which makes them a lot more powerful despite lower clock speeds. As with last year’s models, these CPUs support TurboBoost, which lets individual cores run beyond their rated speed, and hyperthreading, which lets the each core appear to the […]