I've recently acquired a couple of low end Apple Macs, they are effectively obsolete now, and are comparable to running Windows 2000 or XP on a PC. The Mac world tends to move on a lot quicker than the PC world.

Consequently, some of these machines run Mac OS 9, which is no real problem since I started supporting Macs running 7.5 and the only big change came with 7.5.3 which was a software update that changed things in a big way. Mac OS 9 has the distinct advantage that its extremely compact and runs happily on 32MB of memory.

Apple decided to drop support for Mac OS 9 back in 2002, instead embracing their newer OS X. 

The family names are:

10.0 Cheetah - Originally shipped with the iMac all-in-one CDs

10.1 Puma - The free upgrade for 10.0 and the first time OSX was installed on new machines. Introduced medium compression disk images .dmg, prior to this the disk images had no compression so you had a floppy disk image the same size as the floppy disk.

10.2 Jaguar - The last version that worked with beige G3 macs

10.3 Panther - The last version to support New World ROM macs such as the imacs and ibooks, the last version to be supplied on CD

10.4 Tiger - The last version to support "classic" OS9 applications, Intel Macs don't do Classic. Supplied on DVD and the last to support G3 and slower G4 macs. The format of the disk image .dmg changed in this version to support high instead of medium compression so the format is unsupported in older versions. Also the first version to bring the dashboard, which is a set of applications like the sidebar in Vista but only appear on the click of the scroll button.

10.5 Leopard - The last version to support the G series macs. Apple moved to Intel processors. Supported both 32 bit and 64 bit operating system.

10.6 Snow Leopard - 64 bit operating system, runs on PC hardware.

I know a lot of Apple Mac users that believe that their computers are immune to viruses and that its only the PC world that get viruses. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case.

While the Mac maybe more secure because of the small percentage of Mac users to PC users, as this percentage rises it becomes more of a target for virus and trojan writers.

In the latest release of Apple's OSX, named Snow Leopard, there is a trojan preventer that prevents known trojans from being installed on your computer. The recent updates show that Apple is trying to keep the fact that Macs are prone to viruses a secret by not disclosing what the updates were for.

However, this only prevents you from downloading and installing a trojan on your computer from the Internet, it doesn't stop it from entering from another source, such as a CD, DVD or memory stick.

You need an antivirus on your Mac as much as you need one on a PC.

In fact, these days your Mac has exactly the same hardware inside as a PC, ever since the G series Macs were phased out and replaced by Intel Macs.

Apple have announced that smoking around their computers voids the warranty. So if the computer is taken in for repair, they won't touch it as it has been "contaminated" by cigarette smoke. Apparently, there is a clause in the warranty that allows them to bail out under "extreme" environments. Since Apple classes smoking and the tar/ash build up that clings to the fans and other cooling components as biohazard.

This is something I knew would happen, the release of Mac OSX 10.6 codenamed Snow Leopard will not run on the G series macs. Anyone who bought a G series mac recently will find there is no upgrade in the same way the older macs were made obsolete. As of this release, the operating system will only work on Intel processors. This may leave Apple in an odd position, since their software could run (and has run) on Intel PCs.

There is a flaw in the Monday update of Mac OSX 10.5.6 that causes the back light to fail on MacBook Pro laptops. Its not a hardware glitch, and there is a fix available that resolves this as long as you have access to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. MacBook fix