Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks January 2002

If the rumor mill is correct Apple will announce G5 computers at either Macworld Expo San Francisco in January or Macworld Japan in March. These new machines will break the 1 gigahertz barrier. Other rumors suggest that a new version of FireWire will be included with the new machines. This would allow them to run at up to 800Mbps, providing the devices you hook to it can support the higher speeds. There is also the question of the GigaWire rumors ­ maybe it's not New FireWire, but a technology that allows plug-and-play clustering of Power Mac G5s. On to another rumors: the RAM they use in this model may be a different version than what Macs currently use. So all in all it should be an interesting Macworld.

Now if we could only get Apple to understand that one 5H inch front-loading bay is not enough. It's true to say you can get lots of hard drives into a G4 tower, you can get a total of four drives in there. However just try to add a 5H drive to the case and it's a no go. Your only choice is removing the existing CD-RW drive and replacing it with the device you want–only if the device will fit Apple's new small, oval door profile. If you want anything in standard format, you need to whip out the jigsaw and cut yourself a new door hole because Apple has molded its door into the case so you can't just pop it out like the older G4 and G3 towers. Now many of you will point to the fact we can hook FireWire burners up to the Mac and not have to worry about all this. That's true but you also pay extra money for that FireWire case and the space it takes up on your desktop.

Office v.X
Microsoft's Office v.X is now shipping and people are starting to install it on their machines. Here are solutions posted by Matthew Centurion of the MS Business Unit to some of the problems encountered.

1. Word/Excel/PowerPoint unexpectedly quit after showing the splash screen when optimizing fonts.
We have found that many customers have fonts installed in their OS 9 Fonts folder that cause any Carbon application in OS 10.1 to crash when attempting to open it. Classic does not need to be running for this to happen (OS X automatically makes the OS 9 fonts available to all applications). Crashes logged by Console will most likely have at the top line of the list the following text: "#0 ... In FindTablesInNFNT." Apple's update to OS 10.1 (10.1.1) should fix this problem in most cases. If this does not fix the problem then please contact Product Support and please be prepared to send us the font in question (if that does not violate the license agreement of that font vendor) so that we can better serve you.

2. All Office v.X applications start launching but never finish.
Some of our customers have experienced an issue where opening an Office v.X application will cause the Application icon to start bouncing in the Dock, but will never successfully finish launching. Sometimes a restart is required.

Many have identified this to be an issue with Carbon applications set to automatically start-up at log-in. Their workaround is to disable all applications in the Automatically Start-Up at Login list. This seems to be an issue with OS X and not just Office v. X.

3. All Office v.X applications crash when displaying the Project Gallery.
Some of our customers have identified a particular file installed by Roxio's Toast product to cause this. Removing the file named "ToastVideoCDSupport.component" in the ~/Library/Quicktime folder alleviates the issue according to reports. If this doesn't solve your problem, you can temporarily work around the applications crashing on launch by double-clicking on an existing document which will launch the Office v.X without showing the Project Gallery. Then go into the Preferences dialog and turn off the "Show Project Gallery at Launch" option.

So the best advice here is be aware of the issues and be sure to report any problems to Microsoft Product Support. Like any major release they are going to be fixing bugs and product conflicts for awhile.

W32.Badtrans.B.
This Windows-based email virus similar to Sircam is on the loose. Macs cannot spread the virus and are not affected, except as a recipient of unexplained email messages from other infected users. Music and Video Apple's new product, the iPod, seems to be very popular with Mac users. One of the vendors at the You Don't Know Mac event was even showing users it could be used as a FireWire drive to start up his G4 PowerBook. I'm not much for wanting music with me wherever I go, but having a spare hard drive with a copy of my System folder on it sounds as good as music to me.

Sound
How do you get analog sound or video recorded into a current Macintosh computer? Well you can get a USB microphone and use it, or you can buy a FireWire or USB converter that will allow you to use RCA jacks, or S-video. There are several of these devices out there. Irez CapSureUSB Video Capture (USB), Formac studio (FW), Dazzel (FW), XLR USB Interview 2.0 (USB) are just a few of these devices ranging in price from $100 to $400. Your best bet is to write down your needs and then match them to one of these converters. Please note these are only a few of the devices. I'm sure many others are out there ranging in price from $49 to $2,000.

OS 10.1.1
Apple has released an updater to System 10.1 that takes it to 10.1.1. This mostly seems to be a security update. However in doing so Apple has made it pretty hard to reinstall System 10.1 over the top of 10.1.1. The security part of the new version prevents the backwards reinstall from happening. This is not a fun thing because Apple suggests erasing the volume and reinstalling everything. That sounds an awful lot like a Windows solution to this Mac user. What next–the blue screen of death?

While we are on the topic of System 10.1, I have a complaint. After Janet installed 10.1 on a G4 400 MHz machine with 500 meg of RAM it feels slow to us. Why is that, and if it is slow, how slow does it feel on a G3 machine? Guess I'll have to wait for one of those G5s to come out before I move on up.

Exit Excite
By the time you read this, AT&T and Excite@home will have a ruling from the bankruptcy judge. "This month, Excite@Home petitioned the Bankruptcy Court for permission to terminate agreements with its cable affiliates including Comcast, Cox and AT&T on November 30, 2001. If the Court grants Excite@Home's request, there could be a temporary disruption in the services Excite provides to the more than four million customers served by North American affiliates." If Excite gets the okay then all of AT&T's cable modem subscribers will be temporarily out of service. AT&T has said it will get other services up and running as soon as possible. That should be interesting as I have no idea who they will contract to do the Portland area. Sure am happy Janet and I have always kept our SpiritOne accounts and that I send all my mail there rather than to @home. In fact as I write this my service could be pulled at 12 midnight as a judge has OK'd the bankruptcy filing.

Microsoft
You know I swore off picking on Microsoft just because they were an easy target, but what the heck. (A Microsoft proposed settlement with the government would give them a foothold in the education department in most poor schools in America. One of the proposed provisions was that Microsoft was going to give a billion dollars worth of refurbished computers and Microsoft software to some of the poorest schools in the country.) I thought the idea was to punish the bad guys, not to give them lead in the market share. Besides that, I know how this works. MS would take full market value for the products and equipment that cost them pennies on the dollar. How about this: MS gives the schools a grant of money that they can spend on any software or platform. That is not only fair, but an actual slap on the hand for being the bad guy. You have to give credit to Bill Gates and his lawyers for gall. Why that's almost like giving away your browser so that the other company goes broke.

Janet and I will be attending Macworld in SF again this year. Some people spend their vacations in Rio; we spend ours fighting crowds and asking salespeople about new products. Now if only I could afford all those new toys. Have a great New Year and if you see me at Macworld stop and say hi!

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

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