Category Archives: Low End Mac

Analysis, advice, editorial, opinion, and commentary.

Was the Original iPhone Just ‘an OK Phone’?

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2014.02.28 - 3 Comments -

Based on the headline on Cult of Mac (WTF? Ex-Apple Executive Apologize For The Original iPhone, Says It “Wasn’t Great”), you’d think Bob Borchers, Apple’s former Senior Director of Product Marketing, had really knocked the original iPhone, saying, “If you had the original iPhone I apologise; it was not a great phone, it was an OK […]

10 Years of Facebook

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2014.02.04 - 1 Comment -

Can it really be just 10 years since Facebook launched? It feels like it’s been around forever, and many of us use it daily – often several times on a day thanks to apps on our smartphones and tablets. Today Low End Mac’s staff takes a look at Facebook, what it does right, where the […]

30 Years of Macs

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2014.01.24 -

Introduced on January 24, 1984, the Macintosh forever changed the way we work with our computers. Instead of memorizing and typing arcane commands, we could point the cursor using a mouse and click to do things – all for well under the $10,000 price of Apple’s Lisa.

25 Years of the Mac SE/30

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2014.01.19 -

On January 19, 1989 – 25 years ago – Apple released the first all-in-one Mac to run faster than 8 MHz. The 16 MHz SE/30 was built around a 68030 CPU and supports up to 128 MB of RAM in a small footprint computer – far more than any other black-and-white compact Mac.

What’s in My Dock

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2013.12.16 - 2 Comments -

The Dock was a new Mac feature when OS X was first introduced. It had been part of the NeXTstep and OpenStep environments, where it was just an application launcher. In OS X, it would also show running programs and could hold documents. As you use OS X, you quickly determine which apps deserve an […]

What’s on My Home Screen

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2013.12.07 -

Once you begin adding apps to your iOS device – whether an iPhone, an iPad, or an iPod touch – you’re faced with the question, Which apps belong on my home screen? In this Low End Mac Round Table discussion, our writers share what’s on their home screens.

The First G5 iMacs

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2012.08.31 -

Apple had introduced the G5 processor with the Power Mac G5 in June 2003, and the amount of heat the G5 processor generated required a case designed to keep air flowing so the computer wouldn’t overheat. The G5 also used much faster memory than the G4, running at one-half or one-third of CPU speed rather […]

The First G4 Power Macs

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2012.08.31 -

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 […]

Preparing Your Mac for the Worst

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2012.07.18 -

Computers die. Laptops get dropped or stolen. Hard drives fail. You deleted a file or folder and now realize that you need it back. You need to use an app that’s not compatible with your current version of Mac OS X. Your system just crashes and now refuses to boot from your hard drive.

The G5 Legacy

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2012.06.23 -

On June 23, 2003, Apple introduced the first Power Mac G5, which represented some big changes from the G4. The Power Mac G5 was the first Power Mac with built-in USB 2.0, the first to use PCI-X expansion slots, and the first with onboard support for SATA drives. It was also the first Mac to […]

How Secure Are Macs?

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2012.04.02 -

The Classic Mac OS had well under 100 viruses through its history, and Mac OS X has even less after 11 years. (Can you name even one?) That’s no reason to be complacent, because while OS X viruses are virtually nonexistent in the wild, there are other types of malware designed to infect Macs. Most […]

Should I Run the Latest Version of Mac OS X?

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2012.03.19 -

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 […]

The End of the PowerPC Era

LEM Staff,  Low End Mac, Low End Mac Round Table - 2011.10.19 -

The Macintosh was introduced in 1984 using the same 68000 processor that powered Apple’s $10,000 Lisa, introduced a year earlier. Over the years, Apple moved to faster and more efficient chips as they became available. At the same time, Apple was paying attention to a new design theory for microprocessors, RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing). […]

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