Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks February 2000

Well here it is, another Macworld Expo come and gone. Apple decided that product announcements were going to be limited to new software. The new items that were announced are Mac OS 9-style products meant to push users toward that platform. Mac OS X (officially pronounced "Mac OS Ten") will be coming out next year with all sorts of fancy features. It is expected to run three levels of applications: Classic (anything that can run under current Mac OS 9), Carbon (current programs which have gone through limited reprograming to adapt to Mac OS X), and Cocoa (those written as native to Mac OS X). The release timetable given by Steve Jobs at the Macworld keynote was: announced now, start beta testing around May, shipping on machines in January 2001.

As usual most of his show-and-tell was eye candy. Lots of people were oohhh aahhhhing all over the place with very little thought of how much computing power (hardware or RAM) will be required. This seems to be the way of things now; most people at the opening ceremonies were professional people who have fewer restrictions on the cost of updates or equipment. If you really think Mac OS 9.0 is great, try loading it onto a 7200/7100-style machine and see how fast you can go from point A to point B. Most people who have tried this have gone back to OS 8.6 or 8.1, some have even dropped back to 7.6.1.

System X will spend the first year of its life in trial mode. Most folks may get it by buying a new machine, not by installing it on their old machine. In fact, many of the old machine owners will most likely buy the product and wait for the bugs to get worked out by Apple and other users before installing on their machines. I find myself in a mixed state of mind about it. I really do see the advantages of moving to a System that is more powerful with preemptive multitasking but knowing that many older applications will be left to die due to the need to reprogram it. If you have Internet access you can go to the Apple Web site to see examples of the new interface. If you don't, we'll be talking about it more as the year goes by.

Mac OS 9 must not be selling very well, because if it was Apple wouldn't have to resort to blackmail or iTools in order to push people in that direction. It seems that iTools is really directed at converting those people who do not believe System 9 is in their best interest. It forces you to buy and use System 9 whether you like it or not.

There are some good things about iTools. One of the best things that I have seen is the ability to save information on Apple's Web site to a 20 MB folder reserved for you. It's called iDisk; the great thing about it is being able to save information off of your computer and onto a server that will be there if your hard drive ever breaks down. Backup storage is one of the few things that a lot of folks using the iMac do not have.

The other important part of iTools is the ability to share the data you placed in the iDisk with other people by giving them your address so that they can get to your public folder. With this ability you should be able to share files that you could not normally easily get to some other person. Being interested in how the system works, I loaded System 9 on the my hard drive, downloaded the iTools installer and installed the program. It is as easy as dragging a file from one hard drive to another.

Unfortunately, my biggest impression using a blue-and-white G3 is that the program (or is it System 9?) is incredibly slow when using these features even over a cable modem. KidsSafe, the second feature of the iTools family from Mac.com, features a place where you can configure Internet access that keeps your children away from the sites that you do not want them to visit. It basically gives your kids access to more than 55,000 educator-approved Web sites and blocks all the rest. As most of you know, porn sites are not easily blocked by people-approved filtering. They're constantly changing Web site addresses so that things not approved can get through. I don't think there ever will be a totally secure way to block your children from sites that you don't want them to see. The best filter in the world is still adult supervison.

iCards were also introduced with iTools. iCards is another electronic greeting-card maker. You can create and send greeting cards to other Mac users. iCards furnish all the tools and you pick what you want to say or even supply your own pictures to go with the card.

Home page is also another feature; basically it's a place where you follow specific instructions to create an instant photo album or iMovie theater to be hosted on your Apple (mac.com) Web site. This can be accomplished on other sites by anyone who knows how to write HTML. Yes, I know most folks don't want to write anything like HTML, and I really don't blame them. So if you have a really fast machine and you don't mind this big hit that System 9 is going to give you, this is a great way to get things done. The problem is that most users don't have a superfast machine to do this with.

You can also get email at Apple's site "mac.com." You must be running Mac OS 9.0 in order to sign up for this e-mail address, although you can then use other e-mail programs to check for mail.

So, with all the features that iTools offers, the most useful is giving you off-site storage at no cost to you, providing you have an Internet provider and System 9 on your computer. AppleWorks 6.0 was not really announced as launched, but the beta software was placed on most of the iMacs that we were all using to sign up for Apple's new mac.com mail service. Janet and I have been beta testing the product for about a month. It was nice to see that they had corrected the bugs Janet found. For those of you who are AppleWorks or ClarisWorks users, be ready for some changes. There are many new powerful features in the version due out in February. It may be like getting a new program.

IBM's ViaVoice seemed to be the hot product of the show. Its booth was filled everytime I went past. Never did get to see the demo but came home and ordered it anyway. It may save Janet from having to figure out what the devil I'm trying to say in these columns. Or it may make it worse ã how well did this one turn out?

Of the many other exhibitors, there were not any truly new and exciting products. Some vendors from previous years such as Educorp were not there, and some companies have merged during this past year. MetaCreations has bagged most of its lower-end software to focus on its high-end products. We're not sure what's happening with Goo or Soap, but hopefully they will be sold to new owners. There were some interesting devices such as new hubs and hard drives; but I will talk about them later.

The User Group meetings were the main focus of our trip to Macworld. This year Apple, Adobe, and Macromedia were the sponsors for the breakfasts. Apple had informed those who signed up for the meetings that we would be going to the Keynote speech right after our Wednesday morning meeting. For those of you who don't know, these meeting are for User Group leaders to get together and discuss problems and solutions. They also allow Apple and the other sponsors to tell us about new and exciting events that may be coming up. Many of the problems PMUG has are the same problems other User Groups have, so the exchange of information and ideas helps give us insight to problems and solutions. Diane Cohn, who is Apple's User Group liason, has recreated the User Group Advisory Board to help direct input to her from the User Groups. They would like to encourage all user groups to work together.

This Macworld was filled with electronic cameras. The most popular model seemed to be the Nikon 950. I had borrowed Terence Dodge's Nikon 900 to take pictures at the show for Mouse Tracks and was amazed at how many people asked me if it was the 950. Flash shots were going off at a pretty good rate almost everywhere in the show. Now don't get me wrong, there were lots of other brands there. It was strange how many people actually said they wanted one of the 950s. Macworld Expo attendence was record breaking this year with a grand total of 85,179 walking through the doors.

HOW TO HANDLE DIMMS
I really couldn't help myself. After watching a young man at the PMUG swap meet handle DIMMs like they were pocket change, I told the potential buyers that they should wipe the salt and oils off the contacts with a alcohol swipe. What I didn't say was that SIMMs, DIMMs, and SCRAMs all are very static sensitive, and damage could occur but not show up for weeks or months. Please folks, do not touch RAM without taking the proper protective steps. Always be sure you're grounded, never touch the metal contacts that go into the socket on the motherboard. This also goes for handling PCI and Nubus cards, processor cards and cache cards. The sad thing about this is someone will put these cards into a machine and not know they are possibly damaged. They will find out only after many hours of testing to find the bad RAM or card months later.

NEW STRINGS
On the Internet people have been experimenting with different initialization strings for the internal modem on the new G4. They've found the fastest and most stable results with AT&F1W1+MS=12,1 which enables KFLEX and V.90 but prefers V.90. This, of course, is helpful when programming FreePPP 2.6.2.

G4 USB BUG
An Apple tech library article notes a Power Mac G4 USB bug with "self-powered" USB devices, which can prevent successful startup. Apple "is currently working on a solution."

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