Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks November 2000

I'm really not surprised that Apple stock took a beating on September 28th. The Cube is way over-priced with too many problems. Word travels fast on the internet these days. After Apple announced less than expected earnings and lower sales next quarter all the fast money guys dumped everything without looking back. Believe it or not, many folks don't invest in stocks for the long term. So any sign of prices dropping sets off the sell button.

The real price of a Cube should be around $1000. After all, it's just a replacement for people who want an iMac with a big monitor and a G4 processor. The fact that it's not flying off the shelves at $1799 does not surprise me in any way. Bring the cost down and fix the power cable and molding problems and then it should start selling. Oh yeah, get rid of the fancy non-standard monitor port. Anybody who wants to blame someone at Apple for the Cube needs to be pointing fingers at the Big Steve. I've always said he wanted to build Toaster Macs and he did it. Sniff... does the toast smell burnt or... no that's just stock holders, sorry.

To Beta or Not
How not-ready-for-prime-time is the Beta of System X? Apple wasn't even allowing testers to post reports on its public forums at first, although that has now changed. You have to be pretty dedicated to risk your hard drive and all the data on it plus pay Apple $29 for the right to do so. Most users should stay well clear of this. As I have said many times before: those who lead, bleed. Please note the System requirements of 128 Megabytes of RAM. What that means to the end users is that most likely you need more RAM to get anything to run. Apple was surprised at the volume of users willing to pay for the chance to risk their hard drive contents to Beta software. At this time about 90 thousand copies have been ordered. That's about 2.5 million bucks to test drive a product that's not ready for public use.

Please don't take warnings of playing with beta software lightly. I don't mean to scare anyone off but there is a good chance when using beta software that you can, or will, lose or damage your data and programs. So if you decide to try it, be sure to have a good backup of all your data, just in case. I recommend that you have two partitions: one for System 9.04 and one for System X. Do not try to install System X on any IDE/ATA slave drive. It will not boot unless it is installed on the master drive. Remove any SCSI adapter cards you may have in your machines; most are not supported and will prevent System X from booting. Be aware that most utilities do not understand what System X has done to your drives. Most programmers I know are suggesting not running Norton Utilities if you run into problems. So good luck.

iBooks are good
Interesting bit of humor from the PowerMax people: they have stated that the Key Lime iBook is too ugly for them to sell. Please note Apple is currently only offering that model at the Apple store. Your local retailers don't even have access to it. So as long as you can't sell it anyway why not make the best of it and get some laughs from your customers.

The new and improved iBooks took away my reservations about recommending them to any client who wants one. Larger (10 Gig) hard drives, 64 Megabytes of RAM, as well as a FireWire port, 256K on-chip L2 cache and composite video output pretty much make it an all around winner. The low end 366 MHz is just fine for most users. The 466MHz Special Edition version covers the more advanced user's needs with DVD replacing the CD ROM drive. The only thing I really don't understand is why Apple didn't bump the RAM in the SE up to 128 megabytes. I was so impressed by the new iBook that I bought one. I have no reason to purchase a $2,500 portable when an iBook will do everything I want. In fact my iBook arrived on the 28th of September. After looking at the $300 difference between the SE and the standard iBook, I chose to invest in the DVD drive and the extra 100 MHz of clock speed. This is going to be my test System OS X machine. So far I'm impressed with the ease of set up and battery life. More on this later as it gets put through its paces.

Quark XPress font problem
Quark 4 really has problems with corrupted fonts. Most of these problems show up under System 8.6 which tends to corrupt fonts. Several of my clients and other consultants have been seeing more and more cases of Quark crashing upon launch or documents corrupting themselves.

Here are some ways to find out if you have a bad font or if Quark is corrupted. Steal the fonts folder from a Mac that is not having the problem, start-up with a CD ROM System disk and replace the fonts folder you have with the one that is OK. Please note if you are using SuitCase or MasterJuggler turn them off for this test. If Quark starts up now and does not crash, you have a damaged font in your fonts folder. If Quark crashes, you may have a damaged or corrupted file in your Quark folder. Throw away the Quark folder and reinstall from your CD ROM copy of Quark. I have had several phone calls from people telling me that an XTension crashed their version of Quark. These XTensions are kept in the Quark folder, not in your System folder. OK, so now you've turned off all your extra fonts and you need to check which are good and try to find the bad one. One of the ways to do this is keep installing fonts back into the System until Quark starts crashing again.

The second way is to open up each font folder and suitcase. In each suitcase you should see a listing of fonts that may look like Times 8, Times 10, Times 12, etc. If you open this up you should see a representation of the font in question. If the font is corrupt you may see garbage or it may not let you see the font at all. The next way of looking is to download and install Apple's Font Manager. When you mount the Font Manager you will be able to install the Font Manager Update in your 8.6 System Extensions folder. This prevents System 8.6 from damaging your fonts. Also in this image file you will find a Fonts First Aid program. This works like Disk First Aid to try to fix damaged fonts. However, I have found that it tends to stop scanning the hard drive when it finds a damaged font. The bad thing is it doesn't tell you which font is damaged when this happens.
[This is not a just a Quark problem. We have experienced numerous PageMaker crashes that have also been caused by a corrupt font.–MT ed]

Updater Information
There are new updaters for Toast CD ROM burning software. Be sure that you have the right version of the updater. There are indeed two different versions of Toast. One is the full version from Adaptec called Toast Deluxe. This is a full version with all the bells and whistles. The other is what is called the OEM version or Adaptec Toast. This version has limited options and is supplied with a CD ROM burner. You have to understand that Adaptec gets very little money from vendors for the OEM version. It makes money on those people who decide that they need all the bells and whistles. Both updaters are in the software forums on the Sheep or on the internet if you prefer.

Many utility users are discovering that if they have a brand new Macintosh, their old Norton/TechTool/DiskWarrior CD will not start up the CPU to work on the hard drive. In fact many of these utilities won't be updated to work with the new hard drives for a couple of months after their release. This is normal, because Apple doesn't want people who work for software companies to spread the word that new machines are coming out. They are simply not told about the product until you are. This means that there are several weeks of product in the pipeline and still more lead time till the product can be fixed. While we are on the topic of utilities please do not use old utility software to work on new systems. If you can afford a $1,600 computer you can afford the $50 upgrade for utilities that were built for the newer systems.

Office 2001 conflict?
Microsoft Office 2001 seems to have a conflict with Norton Utilities extensions. Removing them allows Office to function. This was reported on the internet. It seems a fellow had installed Office and every component failed upon launch until the Norton extensions were turned off in the extension manager. Let's hope this gets fixed quickly because there are more Norton users than Office 2001 owners. Also you should not try using Office 98 if you have installed Office 2001 due to compatibility issues. Microsoft Office 98 uninstaller is planned for release around October 15th.

Another Microsoft tidbit is that Corel just sold 24.6 percent of itself to Microsoft for $135 million. Corel has had problems for the last couple years and was very close to bankruptcy. Some may feel this is a plot by Microsoft to grab Corel and get rid of another competitor. It's possible, but more likely it's an attempt to make sure there are competitors out there, so Microsoft is less likely to get another antitrust suit with these folks around.

PowerBook hinge problems
It seems that after a few hundred openings and closings the hinge of the Wallstreet model of PowerBook breaks, leaving it no longer capable of holding the lid open. Not only that but the sharp edges inside tend to chop the monitor cables in half leaving the user without a monitor. Apple seems to think that it can pick and choose when it comes to warranty work. Many Wallstreet owners are getting told by Apple that their hinge wear is normal wear and tear and is not covered under warranty repair. Apple charges $350 for the repair and if you let it cut the cables the cost can rise to more than the machine is worth on today's market. The sad part of this is the PowerBook 140, 170, 190, and the 5300 had the same problems. The life of a portable computer is dependent on opening and closing the lid as you move it from place to place. This does not appear to be a few machines nor a case of overuse. Some folks are reporting that they only open and close their lids four times daily and the hinges are breaking. I'm not sure how Apple can class this as an abused part. If I have a warranty and the hinges break I expect to have you make good on the warranty and replace them.

Adobe's GoLive 5.0 seems to have problems with Kaleidoscope 2.2.4 and Adobe Type Reunion. Now I can understand Kaleidoscope but Adobe's own product? You sometimes wonder if any beta testing is done on some of these products. Seems the larger the company the less testing gets done and the more the customer has to do it in the field.

I tend to be really hard on Steve Jobs. He tends to be really hard on people that disagree with his choices. But the sheer truth of the matter is he saved Apple from going under. With this in mind the following tidbit will amaze some folks. Seems that one of the folks complaining about the Cube got a personal call from Steve about the cracks in the finish of the Cube. The person was pleasantly surprised that Steve called back to assure him that the problems would be resolved. Apple needs more of this kind of feel good, do right by the customer action or we will be history.

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

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