After spending a weekend at MacCamp checking out all the new stuff, it's kinda hard to come back home and deal with normal days. Those of you who did not go to MacCamp missed a really great event. We saw some really good programs and shareware on people's machines. Everything from screen capture programs to making comic books with pictures from iPhoto. I believe you will see a sample of the comic book program in this or a future issue of Mouse Tracks.

Adobe wants to buy Macromedia to compete with Microsoft. Both companies have a listing of very nice products, but a merging of the two will mean that some people's favorite products will go away or be merged into another product. These kind of mergers have never been good for the industry (nor for the competitive market place) so I'm not looking forward to them. The cost of upgrading these products have almost doubled in the last 10 years and that's likely to get worse with mergers like this.

For all of you AOL users out there who want to drop your account, be ready for 15 minutes of "No, I want to quit." Even though I have not used this AOL account in five years, they still think I need it. However the most interesting thing was the recorded message at the end saying if you want back on, all you have to do is to launch the AOL program and it would automatically re-subscribe you. Be sure to throw away all those AOL backups or you may find yourself back in the fold.

Tiger is released
Parties for OS 10.4 were everywhere on Friday night, April 29th. Janet and I went to several and finally ended up at the Mac Store in Beaverton. It looked like a PMUG meeting because of all the MacCamp Tiger shirts and PMUG people hanging around. When we left to get dinner at 8:30pm, people were still coming in the door to see what was happening.

OS 10.4 is now on the store shelves and selling well. I have my copy and it's sitting on my shelf. There is where it will remain until I'm sure it will cause little or no damage to my files or programs. I have one list of at least eight pages of programs that need to be updated before or after the upgrade. I have heard that some problems are discovered over a period of time and do not pop up when the OS is first installed, so I will drag my feet for a week or two waiting to see how the world in general feels about 10.4 before exposing my computers to Apple's new System. [Update: Charles lasted four days before installing Tiger on his AlBook.]

I guess my biggest pain is the fact that there are tons of updates out there that are "for Tiger only." That means we have to keep track of more versions if we also have computers running Jaguar and Panther. If you have startup or shutdown problems, check for bad login/startup items. Both login items and startup items can cause problems when exposed to a new Mac OS X release. Also make sure you have disconnected all your FireWire devices before you upgrade; having them connected is asking for the install to stall out or even fail. You have been warned! This includes FireWire iPods, so don't forget.

I am not really pleased that the new iChat video seems to require way too much horsepower to do most users very much good. For a four-user chat the hosting machine needs to be a 1 gig or higher Dual G4. Most folks I know are using iChat to communicate with their PowerBooks or iBooks; not very many duals found in those. Here's a hint Apple: if I need to buy a phone company to make a phone call there won't be many users. The new iChat has so much overhead that many folks are reverting back to an older version. Bringing out faster computers is only part of the answer. Making programs run on older machines is just as important for keeping your installed base of users.

For those of you who have made the jump to Tiger, remember my warnings about using old utility software with new Systems. Check with the vendor and make sure your utilities are up-to-date. DiskWarrior just went to 3.0.3, TechTool is up to 4.0.4 and Norton is down the creek. Many of the shareware utilities will just have a problem and say they are unable to complete the task, so please check before running them in Tiger.

Here's a great quote from Symantec "Norton SystemWorks and Norton Utilities will not be updated for compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4. While not supported by Symantec Technical Support, some of the Symantec 2003 2004 Macintosh products have limited features when installed on Mac OS X 10.4." So in other words, don't hold your breath for an update of Norton Utilities or System Works. But most of us have already put other programs to work replacing Norton's functions. Maybe they can give Peter Norton back his name and he can get into the business again.

Many upgraders to OS 10.4 report poor performance until Spotlight has completed its indexing of all the directories. So be ready to be slow for awhile as the program works its way though your hard drive(s).

For those of you who are ready to move up, here are some words to the wise. Make a backup before you start updating your system. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a mirror image of your drive so that you have a complete copy of every thing. If you do not have an external hard drive to do this with, I suggest you invest in one. Run the current version of DiskWarrior 3.0.2 on the drive after you have cloned it. For those of you who do not wish to create a total backup, you may want to copy all your files to CDs or DVDs. Remember, reinstalling programs is a pain; having to rewrite all your personal work is a nightmare. Follow the directions given to you by Apple to start the install or the update. If you have the time before you do the install, you might want to check out the macintouch.com web site for programs that will cause problems and what you should do about them.

Back to Hardware
Apple released new computers in April and May. April saw the release of new G5 towers with top-of-the-line maxing out at 2.7 GHz and at the low end a single processor 1.8 GHz machine. Everything but the single processor machine comes standard with the new 16X (duallayer) Super Drive. The two top models have PCI-X slots and 250 Gig hard drives and the very top model comes with the ATI Radeon 9650 video card with 256 Meg of VRAM. eMacs and iMacs received speed bumps and memory upgrades, plus VRAM bumps to 64 Meg (eMac) and 128 VRAM (iMac). Nothing real exciting here, other than the eMac still exists. Many of us thought it would be dropped due to higher than normal repair rates.

In the humor section, Tiger Direct has filed a lawsuit asking Apple to withdraw its Tiger promotion and remove the word Tiger from all its ads. You can tell when companies are trying for free press when they file the suit on the day before the product launch. Seems their biggest complaint is that the search engines have them listed fourth when doing searches. The really, really funny part are the claims that Apple's marketing campaign amounts to trademark infringement. If anyone had a claim, Tony the Tiger should be the one suing Tiger Direct and Apple and that, my friends, would frost everyone's flakes.

Charles thanks Peren Bjork for taking over as PMUG president; and plans to continue writing this column.

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