Although only $200 separated the purchase price of the base model Mid-2017 1080p iMac versus the 4K Mid-2017 iMac, the differences inside couldn’t be more drastic. On the surface and on the outside they look to be the very same machine.. until you start tearing one apart and realize how much more upgradeable the 4K […]
This iMac is basically a giant 13″ 2017 MacBook Pro but with replaceable RAM and no battery. Kaby Lake was the end of the line for the non-retina iMacs with only a single CPU option, and remained available for purchase all the way through October 29th 2021. The i5-7360U was soldered onto the logic board […]
An introduction and some history A bit over a decade ago, Apple released the 2011 MacBook Pro with the now infamous Radeon 6000 series discrete Graphics Card. Both the Early and Late 2011 models were prone to spontaneous failure which has been well documented online starting with initial complaints in the Apple Support community. Eventually […]
Certain older Macs are able to take advantage of adding an external graphics card through modification. This is article is broken up into 3 parts, as it contains a lot of information and pictures. Please refer to part 1 of the article for hardware/parts prerequisites. Sections 1 through 5 are contained in part 1, Sections […]
Certain older Macs are able to take advantage of adding an external graphics card through modification. This usually requires external power, the corresponding adapters, can be done via the mini-PCIe slot or MXM slot, and come with case-by-case caveats as most of this was never intended to be a thing. Once installed and properly connected, […]
While this has been covered elsewhere online, it will be posted here for our LEM readers! A few years back, a LEM Facebook group user found a neat trick on getting a cost-effective, more modernized Bluetooth/Wifi solution for his Power Mac G5. Though his was a PCIe model, there is an easy way to get […]
Although this topic has been documented elsewhere, it will also be covered on Low End Mac for our readers. While bluetooth and wifi technology have since moved onto newer standards – Bluetooth 5.3 and Wifi 6 respectively, this adapter offers a pop-in replacement where the old AirPort card was. Rather than shoehorning a full-on PCIe […]
The butterfly keyboard is no more – the 2020 retina MacBook Air has a new-to-it scissor style keyboard. This model also makes the leap over to 10th-gen Intel Ice Lake CPUs, which are also found in the 2020 13″ MacBook Pro with 4 Thunderbolt ports. The 2020 ‘Air and 4-TBP ‘Pro are the only Macs […]
Between the Late 2018 model and this one, there are almost no discernible differences – one could be forgiven for thinking it’s just a new model in name. In fact, the differences are so minuscule, it may as well be a late 2018 MacBook Air. You get a 49.9 watt-hour battery versus the 50.3 watt-hour […]
This was the first major design overhaul of the MacBook Air since the original. While there were some iterative changes after the 2008 and 2011 MacBook Air, they largely looked the same, especially to anyone in the market for one. The Late 2018 MacBook Air was the last ‘Book to gain a Retina display, as […]
We’re all familiar with silver, space gray and now space black.. but what about all the other colors? This wasn’t enough, as colorful Macs started trickling back in. We had gold and rose gold with the late intel MacBook Airs and MacBooks, and finally had colorful iMacs again with the M1 iMac. Ryan Anderson made […]
The following is an article about a story of what happened to a LEM group member’s peculiar Power Mac G5, as well as the experiences I had troubleshooting my own. I was browsing our Low End Mac FaceBook group a few nights ago, when someone posted about having issues with their Power Mac G5 potentially […]
Fresh to the Low End Mac mailbag from FaceBook User Michael Vega: “Possibly known knowledge, but I wanted to show a proof of concept and I’m glad it works. I have a thunderbolt 3 dock, but it works with Thunderbolt 2/1 Macs. My work laptops are a current generation of Lenovo PCs with Thunderbolt 4, […]
Just like the 2019 model year, the 2020 intel model year is differentiated in name by its amount of thunderbolt ports. The awkward naming scheme caused confusion to some, when in reality it was separating the low/higher end 13″ models, like the non-TouchBar models that came before it. The 2020 model year 13″ MacBook Pro […]
The 2019 13″ MacBook Pro saw a slight bifurcation in the way the product was sold. They added a TouchBar to the 2x Thunderbolt Port Model, and started differentiating them in name by their amount of… thunderbolt ports. The 13″ model stuck around with 8th gen CPUs whilst the 15″/16″ made the leap to 9th […]
This was the very last and final A1466 ‘Book, a design dating back to Mid-2012 with the release of the Ivy Bridge Intel CPUs. The base’s i5 was bumped from 1.6 to 1.8 Ghz, and the i7 option remains the same as what was available in 2015. The ’17 ‘Air comes with 8 GB of […]
Did somebody say Quad-Core? That’s right – with the release of 8th-Gen Intel CPUs, the 2018 MacBook Pro was leaps and bounds faster than any generation before it. You now have an entire 2 extra cores with 4 extra threads, but you have to cough up some extra money and grab a TouchBar model ($1799). […]
Let’s take a step into the wayback machine.. back to 2017 – whatever happened to the TouchBar? In hindsight, it’s easy to tell from a future when this model has just been phased out – the implementation felt offbeat. This model also suffered from keyboard and LCD flex cable issues, as well as the one […]
Out with the A1990, in with the A2141. The scissor keyboard marks a return on this reimagined and upsized MacBook Pro, after several years of controversy with the Butterfly Keyboard. It’s now called the Magic Keyboard, in line with the naming of other keyboard devices being sold. Screen real estate and resolution sees a bump-up, […]
On June 5th 2017, Apple released the third and final iteration of the 12″ MacBook, marking the end of the line for this model, as with using the name “MacBook” by itself to refer to an Apple notebook. The A1534 is produced for another 2 years through July 9th 2019, and the “MacBook” name is […]
On March 9th 2015, Apple reintroduced the MacBook after a 4-year hiatus, becoming the #1 thinnest Mac at the time. Most simply referred to this as “the new MacBook” during its production, before settling into calling it “the 12-inch MacBook”. It wasn’t cheap, starting at a hefty $1299, matching the cost of an entry-level 13″ […]
Nearly 20 years ago, this was a white Late 2006 20″ iMac. Today, it’s fastened to two wooden shelf pieces, supported by a… shelf bracket. Modifications done: Ripped out the Radeon x1600 chip, Bluetooth and wifi antenna is out of a 17″ 2006 MacBook Pro, Thermaltake smart 700W external PSU, A T7600 2.33 GHz Core […]
The 11″ Early 2015 MacBook Air ships with a 2.2 Ghz i7-5650u as a BTO/CTO option, making it the absolute fastest 11″ ‘Book ever. This hasn’t at all stopped users online from shoehorning an even better CPU in there, which inadvertently or intentionally upgrades the GPU also. Out with the old Intel HD 6000, in […]
The official “De Jure” Mac OS X Snow Leopard was announced at WWDC 2008, released August 28th 2009, and ultimately was never intended to run on PowerPC in the end. For a long time, it was known there were PowerPC-compatible beta builds of OS X Snow Leopard, however, these builds remained seemingly elusive until 2020. […]
Below are some of the key features of Mac OS 9. This information is adapted from Technote 1176 and other online resources. More details in the Technote and elsewhere. (Note: This article is a copy/paste of an existing LEM article, however, due to the errors presented on that page, it has been instead migrated here. […]
Over the years, Apple has used various different types of processors for their Macs: Motorola, PowerPC, Intel, and Apple Silicon. This page is dedicated to all the different types of processors used in Macs over the years, their specifications, and performance level. Due to the varying numbers, performance metrics, and various different benchmarking apps done.. […]
Back in the days of late PowerPC, Apple released a DTK which looked like a Power Mac G5 on the outside, but was actually a modified Intel Pentium 4 machine. Fast forward to the Apple Silicon transition, Apple released another one to developers on a loan-basis, with an A12Z chip in it. If you were […]
Once again, the base MacBook Pro takes a step forward with better performance. The machine is actually nearly identical to the newer A3113 (13″ ‘Air), except it looks like an A2992 (14″ ‘Pro). Essentially, a MacBook Air in the shape of a MacBook Pro. As of Late 2024, this was the final Apple Silicon-based MacBook […]
Now available in Space Black versus Space Gray, the M3 Pro MacBook Pro 14″ is terrifyingly fast. Almost feels like a wider, 2023 version of the PowerBook G3 Lombard. The M3 Pro cranks it up a notch over the M2 Pro, boasting even higher performance and efficiency core clock speeds, and newer, more power efficient […]
The M2 Pro/Max 14″ MacBook Pros were sold to the consumer market by Apple for a grand total of 286 days in 2023, making it one of the shortest-lived Apple computer models in history. There are some benefits to having an M2 Pro/Max over their M1-series counterparts, however, the M3 Pro/Max series released soon thereafter […]
