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| Author | Changes at LowEndMac.com (Read 25795 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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mac-cellar
128 MB  Posts: 176 Gotta love System 7 
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on: December 26, 2021, 22:27
https://lowendmac.com/2021/starting-over-a-low-end-mac-legacy/ Saw this article posted today at Low End Mac. It appears Dan Knight has stepped away, and a new editor, Dan Bashur, has taken up the reins. I'm happy to see this sign of life at what has been one of my favorite Mac sites over the past 20+ years. Kudos to Dan Bashur for stepping into the gap, and best wishes to Dan Knight for keeping this great site alive for a long time. |
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #1 on: December 27, 2021, 02:15
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If I remember correctly, I got my first MacOS disk images from there, when I started out with B-II, and only later "upgraded" to the Garden (via MacRepo to be frank).
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #2 on: December 27, 2021, 09:43
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I had been an avid LEM reader since the early 2000's and learned a lot from its excellent writers. It was my favorite go-to page for many years and at one point, it served as my browser's home page for a few years. Like many good content-focused sites, LowEndMac got hit from two sides during the mid-to-late 2000's - Social Media and dropping display ad revenue. The first one started to suck people's life out. They'd forget about informative well-written content and rather start to engage in political meme flame wars with strangers. The second (plummeting ad prices) in combination with less visitors made it less feasible to run such a page in full-time as a one-man-show, so you have to divide your attention between a day job and your love job. In a way, big business had won once again. As Dan has publicly written, after that he went through a painful divorce and a few other things and so his focus shifted. It's a pity he waited so long to allow for the transition as the page is pretty lifeless now, with most of the regulars (and it's editors) gone. I had been somewhat involved with helping out Dan Knight over the years and also wrote a handful of articles. I hope LEM can find back to old glory and be the awesome source it used to be.
Last Edit: December 28, 2021, 14:14 by Bolkonskij
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #3 on: December 27, 2021, 22:48
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Oh yeah, them pointless flame wars. :-O I fought quite a few of those myself - before I wised up and realized what a waste of time they were. By sheer accident I rediscoverd vintageapple.org and almost lost myself in some of their old PDF files. A book about Mac guerilla marketing struck me as a special gem (full of interesting inside stories), but then I found their page with Byte magazines from the 1980's. Lord behold, I never realized how lively the PC market used to be, brimming with competition and almost a 1000+1 brands and models to choose from. And look at us now: We got Windoze, we got Linux and then there is MacOS. The boring, the confusing and the exclusionary - I wouldn't consider that "progress" in a good sense.
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #4 on: December 27, 2021, 23:22
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Back in the 1990's I was the moderator of an old Mac listserve, which I think was gone by 2000. Dan was a member and I recall his posts talking about setting up LowEndMac. The listserve of course is long long gone. It was an interesting setup. Members send emails to the list serve, the moderator downloaded them, compiled them into a digest then sent the digest back to the listserve to be broadcast to the members. I never knew what to make of LEM. Most of the articles struck me as unquantifiable opinion, many I thought were just plain factually not correct. Mostly it seemed to lack a specific purpose. System7Today clearly has a theme and a focus and LEM is just anything a few years old. So over the years I probably only visited the site a dozen times. I was and still am a member of the LEM Swaplist. It has gotten very quiet over time. Going from maybe a hundred messages a day down to maybe 10 a week. It is sad to see long time vintage Mac people leaving, but it is nice to see people stepping up to keep it going.
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #5 on: December 28, 2021, 11:45
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@wove: You hit a point there with me. The "lacking direction" of LEM was the reaason why I didn't hang around there, once I had downloaded those image files. I could never figure out what it was supposed to be about (other than talk about old stuff).
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #6 on: January 02, 2022, 06:50
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Very interesting discussion  I know that I never read much on LEM myself but kept bouncing back via web searches to read-up on particular Mac models showcased there as well as get a few hints when doing things like setting-up WiFi on my PPC Powerbooks and the like. I may have also bought some RAM modules from their web ads so at least their sponsor's ads nailed their target at least once, lol!  If nothing else, I really appreciated the heart of Dan Knight's articles and I'm glad that a new Dan has stepped in to continue the Classic Mac crusade.. in a way, we're all LEM users, you know? 
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #7 on: January 02, 2022, 10:24
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I understand what bothered you guys about LEM. I came to appreciate the huge variety in LEM's articles. It may seem unfocused, yes. But being able to find articles on the Mac Plus alongside a discussion on Mac Pro 5,1 GPUs is fascinating. It was this "what will I find there today?" that made me open the page every day. And there's nothing like that elsewhere on the Mac web. Whether or not you share an author's view on a certain topic is on another page. I think Dan's idea was always that of an average Low End Mac user passing his findings along to other Low End Mac users in order to "get the most out of it". Apart from Dan's editorial it wasn't a classic magazine. I liked that. Due to its focus on the individual authors it had a very personal note to everything. Like you ripped the columns from MacUser magazine and made a website just about that. wove, you just remembered me of another relic of ye olde days - mailing lists. I was a member myself and I think I still got tons of them archived away somewhere. I need to do some digging later :-) I was aware of the LEM swap list and of the dev list, but had no idea about that e-mail digest you described. Neat!
Last Edit: January 02, 2022, 10:32 by Bolkonskij
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #8 on: January 02, 2022, 22:11
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I just realized.. a lot of Dans gave a lot of love to Macs, Dan Palka's amazing forum site would be one of them haha, and as it just so happens, we're all on it 'to boot' lolLEM did feel more like a personal pit-stop for me I guess, mostly to reminisce about earlier times, and in its own way, it catered more to my inner used Mac tinkerer I loved scooping Mac deals on Craigslist and getting some perspectives on the most favored Macs Apple had cooked in prior years and then perusing LEM articles on those models.
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Europa
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64 MB Posts: 109 she/her
Reply #9 on: March 22, 2022, 15:42
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I'm happy to see some signs of life from the site again. It was something I read a lot of, especially before I actually had acquired any Macs to use. I learn best with hands-on experience, but, short of that, I learn best by taking in as much information I can and, thanks to the large variety of articles that others have pointed out, I was able to do that and much of the information that I still have today I got from Low End Mac. Hearing of Charles Moore's passing in 2018 was saddening. I particularly remember reading many of his articles and enjoying them greatly. Anyway, happy to see activity at LEM again and I do hope it continues well into the future.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #10 on: March 22, 2022, 17:12
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Unfortunately, not much has been happening since then. Too bad.
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Europa
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64 MB Posts: 109 she/her
Reply #11 on: March 22, 2022, 18:49
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Yeah, sadly. Hopefully there'll be more coming before too long, but it seems that there have been multiple writers saying they'll post new stuff to the site without much to show for it over the past few years.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #12 on: March 23, 2022, 14:54
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At this point, it just needs a lot of time and passion to get things going again, it's virtually starting anew. That takes a decicated crew - or a lottery win.
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Europa
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64 MB Posts: 109 she/her
Reply #13 on: March 23, 2022, 21:01
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Definitely. Here's hoping they can make it happen, by either means.
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Knezzen
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Administrator 512 MB Posts: 608 Village idiot
Reply #14 on: March 24, 2022, 08:56
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When everything settles for me at home with various things I would love to contribute to LEM in some way, be it writing an article or whatever. It was always my go to place and used to be my start page on all my browsers. Glad it's had a shift in management and hopefully it will be back up on it's feet again
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