2012-12-30: General Apple and Mac desktop news is covered in Mac News Review. iPad, iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV news is covered in iNews Review. Older Macs are covered in Vintage Mac News. All prices are in US dollars unless otherwise noted.
News & Opinion Confessions of an Apple Store Employee Want an Apple Hardware Bargain? Go Refurb Upgrading Memory? Save Your Old RAM and Packaging Primate Labs Posts December 2012 Mac Geekbench Scores Configure TextEdit for Basic HTML Coding Services Dolly Drive Offers New Customers a Free 100 GB Account to Give as a Gift Free […]
Google Maps Impact Google Maps Immediately Became the App Store’s #1 App More Than 10 Million Google Maps Downloads in First 48 Hours 5 Ways Google Maps Beats Apple Maps Apple Maps vs. Google Maps iOS 6 User Base Grows 29% as Users Update After Google Maps Arrives News, Reviews, & Opinion Walmart Rolls Back […]
Vintage Mac News is a roundup of news related to vintage Macs* and other older Apple products. For other Mac and Apple news, see Mac News Review. For iBook, PowerBook, and other portable news, see The ‘Book Review. iPad, iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV news is covered in iNews Review. Purchases made through links to […]
* Although Apple defines vintage as models discontinued over five years ago but less than seven years ago (at which point Apple calls them obsolete), we prefer a
definition that has more to do with a lack of functionality and the end of active support by Apple than with how long Apple makes service parts available.
Dictionary definitions of the word vintage start out with wine, but it is also applied to a group of items that share
certain characteristics, originated in a specific time period, and/or
is characterized by excellence, maturity, and enduring appeal – a
classic.
As we use the term here, vintage refers to Macs and related software, operating systems, and peripherals that
Apple has left behind over the years, whether that’s an original
Macintosh or a Power Mac G5 running OS X 10.5 Leopard. At present, we
consider all pre-Intel Macs and all versions of OS X that run on them
vintage (and at some point we’ll extend that definition to include
Intel Macs that can’t run OS X 10.7 Lion, and so on).
Five years on, and the original iPhone is still hanging in there – but not without a little help. That help comes in the shape of the whited00r project.
Commentators are busy suggesting that Android-iOS will follow the Microsoft-Apple path, but what they fail to note is that no organization can sell or license anything but a standard version of Windows authorized by Microsoft.
I have been a writer for over ten years. Before writing for Low End Mac, I was a professional business journalist writing for both UK and international magazines. There is nothing more annoying than putting together an article, writing it up, correcting it until you are blue in the face, dropping it into an amazing […]
I saw an advertisement on television a few days ago for the new Google ChromeBook. Originally launched in 2010, I had shown a small amount of interest in them, but the new price was the clincher that made me sit up and pay attention.
In the last few days, I have become the proud owner of a 12″ PowerBook G4, a replacement for my 12″ iBook G4 that died a few weeks ago. Looking at the two machines, they are virtually identical specification-wise.
2012 – Apple is churning out new Macs and new versions of Mac OS X at an alarming rate – and with that comes the fallout, Macs that are still amazingly fast but won’t run the latest offering from Apple.
Following up on from some articles I wrote about TenFourFox, a port of Firefox 10 for PowerPC Macs, it would appear that Cameron Kaiser and his team are not the only ones still developing browsers for PowerPC (PPC) Macs. A reader pointed out another: SeaMonkey.
As I’ve said before, Apple is a frustrating company that offers both improvements and out-of-date features that confound expectations. This has some tech writers railing on Apple for introducing the $329 iPad mini with lower resolution (1024 x 768) than other similar sized models. It may be a valid complaint if you limit your view […]
Let’s get the gripes out of the way first: The iMac has always involved some compromises and forced some changes on Mac users. Back in 1998, it meant giving up ADB mice and keyboards and SCSI peripherals for something new called USB, and it meant no built-in floppy drive. But until now, every iMac has […]
Apple is a secretive company that keeps information out of the hands of the media, but more importantly away from the competition. Now if two close partners, like Samsung and Google, switch to become competitors, your control of information happens in a leaky bucket. How can Apple design and build the next iPhone using Samsung […]
2012 – When Apple introduced the 13.3″ MacBook Pro with Retina Display last week, we learned that the 13.3″ MacBook Pro (MBP) is Apple’s best selling Mac. That’s quite an accomplishment for an $1,199 laptop, especially since it isn’t Apple least expensive notebook computer. (That honor goes to the $999 11.6″ MacBook Air (MBA), and […]
Much has been said about the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft. I agree with those who said that Microsoft has used its monopoly power to kill off competition. But times change; Apple and Microsoft no longer want or need to defeat the other. They have become dependent in strange ways. The biggest changes are the threat of regulation and […]
The littlest Mac has become a powerhouse. Apple updated the Mac mini last week, and while the entry-level 2.5 GHz dual-core i5 model is only about 5% faster than last year’s “better” Mac mini, the $200 more expensive model has made the leap from a 2.5 GHz dual-core i5 to a 2.3 GHz quad-core i7.
Surprise! Apple didn’t introduce a $249 or $299 iPad mini last week. Instead, the 7.9″ Mini starts at $329, a bit higher than anyone predicted.
A little over seven years ago, on October 19, 2005, Apple introduced the Hi-Res PowerBook G4. These 15″ and 17″ notebooks were the last Macs that would don the PowerBook moniker. 15″ and 17″ hi-res PowerBook G4 The biggest thing I remember about them is how they flew in a bit under the radar, since […]
In the wake of iOS 6, it is easy to forget those older devices running older version of iOS (or iPhone OS, as it was previously named). Apple certainly likes to forget them quickly and move on with its shiny new beast. A big gripe of mine is the fact that the App Store is […]
After the somewhat shocking announcement that the iPhone 3GS, introduced in 2009, would be getting the latest iOS offering from Apple – that is iOS 6 in 2012 – I have been eagerly awaiting that day.
2012 – One of my Facebook friends recently posted, “Getting a phone at the end of the month. Droid? iPhone 5? Are you happy with your decision? Which one should I choose?”
As evidenced in my review of the Matshita UJ-267, Blu-ray is clearly the way to go in terms of video playback and internal storage.
Apple had done a marvelous job marketing OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, resulting in over 3 million downloads over its first four days on the market. That’s an impressive number, but what does it mean?
The original idea behind PowerPC processors was to create a Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) and focus on making those instructions as efficient as possible. This was in direct contrast to Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC), which kept adding more and more instructions, which meant more decoding and processing had to be done by the […]
Could Apple TV save you money over Dish Network?
I haven’t always been a Mac user. I started my computing days out on a Commodore 64 and an Acorn 3010. I bought my first PC from my employer in 1997 – a massive, heavy beige tower containing a 486DX2-66 processor, 64 MB RAM, 500 MB hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, and a 15″ SVGA […]
In my previous two articles, we looked at how to get Apache Web Sharing and PHP up and running in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion via some quick trips to the Terminal. While Apache and PHP are a powerful duo indeed, with their ability to serve up web pages and dynamically script the creation of web […]
Last time, we looked at how to use the Terminal to start and stop the Apache web server that comes bundled with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion now that Apple has removed its checkbox from the Sharing pane in System Preferences. This is fine and dandy for all your static HTML files, but if you are going […]
The Mac OS has had a web server bundled with it since Mac OS 8 debuted in 1997. Traditionally, Apple has referred to the included server software as Personal Web Sharing or just Web Sharing. While little is known about the web server that shipped with OS 8 and OS 9, OS X has included Apache, the most […]
Fifteen years ago, Steve Jobs announced at the Boston Macworld Expo that Microsoft was making a $150 million investment in Apple Computer, cash Apple desperately needed to remain afloat – along with a promise that Microsoft would continue to develop Office and Internet Explorer for Mac for at least five years, an assurance that helped […]
It’s not easy running a successful small business. As the owner, you have to wear many hats – and some don’t fit as well as others.
As I noted in my crisis article, Low End Mac Needs Your Help, I wear a lot of hats here at Low End Mac. From the earliest days, I was a writer, a researcher, a proofreader and editor, and a designer.
2012 – Much has been written about Linux on PowerPC Macs. To some, it is a reliable alternative; to others, just a crippled port of the x86 original. What if there was another competitor in the game? There is one – MorphOS.
The Apple world rarely rests, and talks are already beginning about the next release of Mac OS X. I am typing this on my 2009 MacBook with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion installed (see last week’s First Impressions of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion). It has only been a few days. The initial dust has […]
