Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks March 2001

Here comes the official version of Mac OS X -- it's due out on March 24th. That just happens to be Steve Jobs' birthday. I always get shudders when a major release is hooked to the founder's birthday. What this means is whether it's ready or not, it's going to ship. Many of the bugs should be worked out by that time; the rest will be worked out by Macworld Expo New York in July. Apple knows if they blow this rollout it could sink the company, and that's a lot of pressure on everyone.

Many of the older CPU models will not be able to load the new version of the System. This may or may not be true of PCI slotted Macs with upgrade cards.Word on the street has it that OS X currently will not allow its installation if it does not see a true G3 or G4 configuration. This hopefully will be fixed in a later release. Sure would be a pity to retire all those 9600s, 8600s, 7600s that have been upgraded to G3/G4.

As most of you know, System 9.1 was released at Macworld San Francisco with very little fanfare. Much of the reason System 9.1 shipped at all is to get folks ready for OS X. Apple wants all the the Applications folder. In other words you lose the ability to place things where you want them. You can move them, but then may have problems when you do an OS X install. For some people the new interface is a good thing and they won't mind at all the changes Apple is making. For others the changes are too great and the old System will be a good friend for a long time.

MAC OS 9.1 REACTS
If you are planning to upgrade to System 9.1 be aware that several problems have popped up. There seems to be a problem with the Logitech mouse driver and Kensington MouseWorks software causing crashes. There have been problems with Epson USB printers and programs quitting when the print command is given. Some external FireWire drives are failing to mount (Maxtor 80 Gig). Synchronization with Palm devices using the Serial Keyspan USB adapter works before the computer goes to sleep but not after, until you reboot (copying the USBSerial extension from System 9.04 solves the problem). The program Suitcase 9.0.1 produces printing errors (you need to disable it and then you can print). Microsoft's Office Manager Extension seems to cause problems (turn it off); Scrollability crashes systems just short of a complete desktop; when Spell Catcher 8.1.2 is active severe BTree damage occurs when attempting to Shutdown or Restart OS 9.1. Most USB modems fail to function after the 9.1 install. So after reading this shortened list of problems (yes there are lots more!), I have decided to hold off on upgrading at this time. On the good side, the new Apple Mice and Keyboard work fine with Mac OS 9.1.

Extensis is discontinuing PhotoGraphics because it broke under System 9.1; so if you use this tool be advised not to try using it with 9.1 installed. Most likely many of the tools Extensis builds will have to be rebuilt to work with Mac OS X.

HARDWARE NOTES
Apple's new SuperDrive is going to be offered in an external FireWire case for $990 according to the PowerBook Zone. This is the same drive Apple is offering in the top-of-the-line 766 MHz desktop machine. The drive features DVD-R at 2x, CD-R at 8x, and CDRW at 4x. My guess is there will be high demand for this model. In fact a company called All4DVD is taking pre-orders for May delivery. Do keep in mind that Apple uses the Velocity Engine hardware for MPEG encoding so using a non- G4 may not allow you to use this unit the way you want.

Want one of the those G4 PowerBooks? Want to do video work with it? Don't count on getting an external drive that can keep up with the frame rate you need. Everyone needs to remember that most FireWire drives are an ATA/IDE drive in a case with an adapter card to convert it to FireWire. As I've said before, until we get native FireWire drives you're limited to the data flow the adapter card provides. Many of the video guys went out and bought the last of the highend PowerBooks due to this fact. With the drive bays in those machines, you can buy a drive that will keep up with the video flow you are producing.

Virtual PC users be aware: if you have USB installed you could start getting -108 errors (USB running out of memory). It seems this error occurs when the USB Notification table is full. If you're using MouseWorks you may want to remove it and try the USB Overdrive shareware for controlling the mouse. It doesn't use up as many spaces on the table as other drives do.

THINK BEFORE YOU SHARE
Lots of folks think that they can lend software to their friends and nothing bad will happen to them (or it). This is not always the case. The problem with lending software to a friend is that often that friend or someone from his family loans it to their friends.Worst case is that someone publishes your serial numbers on the net and then you have a problem. In fact there is so much of a problem with this happening that companies like Adobe now hide the last three digits of your serial number so it can't be stolen as easily as in earlier versions. When your number is stolen and published, companies like Adobe place that stolen number in a database that is checked by the installer software or upgrade re-sellers. So much theft is happening that many upgrades require you to have the old install CD or disk in order to install the new software. All of this makes for a major pain when you are trying to move from one version of the software to the next. So the next time your buddy asks for a copy of your software you might pause to reflect before handling over the keys to your ownership.

WHAT'S NOT WORKING?
Everyone has a bad day or two, sometimes luck just runs that way. Having purchased a 17" ViewSonic monitor for a G3 266 MHz machine, I expected an easy time of swapping monitors. After replacing the 14" with the 17" I restarted the Mac and everything came up just ducky. Then about three minutes into the System install I was doing, the monitor flickered. Again, then again, and then it went black. Back to the store to get a replacement for the defective monitor, back home, and set it up. Same problem, only worse. I tried installing a video card in the computer and running the 17" monitor off the card and all I got was fuzzy video. The computer gets harder and harder to boot. It's not the monitor -- it's the computer. The 266 G3 is dying and the monitor being changed had little or nothing to do with the failure. The moral here is that just because you change something or add a new part does not mean the new part is to blame. The G3 will no longer run for long, so a new mother board or possibly CPU must be purchased for it. Only time and testing will tell what really failed.

I get a big kick out of telling folks I still use Word 5.1a on System 9.0.4. The installer won't work on the new System, but I've been dragging it from System to System all this time. It has all the features I need in a word processor and takes up very little space on my hard drive. Guess what I'm saying here is, the software doesn't have to take up 500 megabytes and take six months of learning all the features to do what I want it to do. I suppose it will finally break under OS X; maybe then I'll need to learn a new word processor program. Until then, I am not going to worry.

There are many ways to damage your files on a computer. One of them is to use really old disk utilities like Norton Utilities 3.5 or SUM. These products do not understand what HFS+ formatted drives are and try to fix what isn't broken. Please folks, if you own the old version, they'll let you upgrade to the new version. If you think you've read this before in my column, you're right, you have.We have new users and readers all the time so good advice should be repeated.

LIFE SPAN OF HARD DRIVES
Why is it that people think hard drives live forever? After all, toasters die, cars wear out, and even people pass away. So far no one has been able to predict when those events are going to happen. Most hard drive producers are more interested in making bigger and faster than long lasting. There lies the problem. If they build hard drives that last ten years, that would be a waste (in their eyes). How many of you are still using 20 megabyte hard drives in your current computers? So most of the hard drive vendors shoot for a three to five year life span. Some of these drives do indeed live long past the expected mean-timebetween- failure. For others the life span is maybe a month, a year or maybe two years. There was a time I told customers to find a hard drive with a five year warranty. That way they were pretty sure the vendor would build them to last that long. Now I tell people to buy a drive that fits their needs because it will be outdated in two years no matter what they do. What used to be big two years ago is now small and slow. SCSI drives in the 9 to 18 gigabyte size are under $500 and IDE drives in the 80 Gigabyte are under $500 also. Guess what I'm trying to say here is that nothing lasts forever and even when it does, most likely you'll retire it for a bigger or faster model anyway. The warranty we used to get would let us send the broken hard drive back to the vendor to be fixed or replaced. Now such a warranty may seem worthless to most of us. There you are with a year old hard drive that the vendor will repair in two to four weeks and then send back to you. Would you really wait for a month to get your hard drive back? Can you afford to wait that long? The vendors, knowing the answer to these questions is "no," realize they won't have to pay out many warranty claims unless it's a brand new drive.

Remember if the drive dies they'll replace it but have no liability for lost time or data on your drive. This means backing up your data is on your shoulders. I'm never shocked any more when trying to recover hard drive data to learn there is no backup of any of the files on the drive. Some of the data can be recovered, some is totally lost. Many of the people have CD ROM burners, Jazz drives, Orb drives, or Zips attached to their system. Please folks, copy your data files over to one of these devices. Don't let hours of work go down the drain due to the "my hard drive will live forever" attitude. Hey, but what the heck; I work cheap. Don't forget to call ahead – maybe some of the data can still be saved.

APPLE SERVICE ISSUES
In January, Apple changed the rules on the AppleCare warranty program but didn't tell consumers. It used to be you could buy AppleCare anytime within the first 12 months of ownership. Now you have to buy it when you purchase the machine or you don't qualify for it. This type of selling service to users at gun point is not my idea of a way to start a good relationship. Many of us purchased the warranty after we had a year of ownership (to get an idea if we had a problem machine). Most equipment does not need an extended warranty if it runs well for the first 90 days. Other machines tend to be problems from day one. I advise all PowerBook owners to purchase AppleCare for their PowerBooks, and iBooks. These machines are hard to work on and usually need Apple parts that third party vendors do not have access to.

In another move Apple also told many small Apple authorized repair shops they were no longer authorized to make Apple repairs. This means that you are forced to go to larger repair centers with long wait times for repairs. It's time for Apple to get a clue on service and support.We need more places to take our machines, not less. Large companies tend to look at profit first, customer last. In fact; many of the complaints I hear about Apple stores is how the clerks didn't seem to care if your visit was pleasant or awful. It's time to get out the email and let Steve Jobs have a piece of our collective minds. Yes it's true one or two letters won't make a difference, but 60 or 70 thousand make a pretty good impact.

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

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