Macking 12

MacCamp
I'm writing this on the last weekend in April from a rustic-looking cabin in Silver Falls State Park Conference center, at the semi-annual PMUG MacCamp. Behind me come the sounds of screams, gunfire and death: people are playing Marathon II over Ethernet. There are four cabins like this one and all of the Macs are on the net. Outside, squirrels skitter about, the sun is shining and any sane person would be riding one of the free bicycles or hiking the trails.
But why would we want to do that when we can watch over each other's shoulders to see how we customize our Macs, what configuration we have, what that new monitor looks like. We trade CD-ROMs and games. (PMUG, of course, has a no-piracy policy so we don't swap commercial software.)
Also on our net is "the Lamb," a baby version of our BBS, the "Electric Sheep" (as in Do Androids Dream Of...). People are uploading files and sending email to each other, and there is a CD-ROM from BMUG (Berkeley) available online. Raines Cohen, one of the founders of BMUG, is teaching a class on HTML authoring in the big instruction hall by Smith Creek. Raines attended MacCamp for the first time last year and flies up from the Bay Area just for this event. The rest of the classes, 3D modeling, Advanced Quicken, Word 6.0, Adobe Premiere and ClarisWorks 4, are taught by PMUG members familiar with those applications. Classes are professional quality and are included with the room and board for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, for only $149.
This is the premier Mac experience, especially for new users, and no other user group offers anything like it. Next event is the third weekend in October, so mark your calendars and join PMUG so you can get in on the fun. (Note: if you are a member of another user group and would like to come, that is okay. PMUG's mailing address is PO Box 8949, Portland, OR 97207. Attn: MacCamp or Membership, depending on what you want.)

More on System Upgrade 2.0
Users of older Macs are advised to acquire the latest hard drive formatting software and upgrading the drivers before installing 7.5.3. The reason is that the SCSI Manager 4.3 that was a separate extension in 7.5.1 is now part of the System itself, and some older drivers are not compatible with it. If you have not changed your internal HD since getting your Mac (before 1994) then you need to get ahold of Apple's Drive Setup 1.0.4 from Drive Utilities 1.1 and update with it. The file is available from Apple's web site and mirrors, most Mac-centric web sites and the online pay services. If you formatted your drive with Silver Lining from LaCie or HD Toolkit from Hammer, make sure you are using the latest versions. Any drive acquired since early 1995 may not be using the very latest drivers, but will nevertheless be compatible with the new SCSI Manager.

Got Me A Newton
After wanting one for a couple of years now, I finally decided to spring for the newest Newton, the 130. What did it was the backlighting, available in this handheld Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) for the first time. Since I spend a lot of time in dim environments, the backlighting, and the extra RAM in this model, made the difference. My reason for getting it was the need to have all my phone numbers and calendar items from Now Contact and Now Up-to-Date available in a device that I can just carry along in my Mac Doctor bag. A utility from Now called Now Synchronize automatically updates information from both the Newton and the Mac so I can enter new items in either place. Plus, I can make notes to myself on the fly and also carry various odd key-combinations and repair hacks, modem strings and other data that I just can't memorize because I don't use them often enough.
The NewtonOS 2.0 won the Best OS award at the last Comdex, and it deserved it, because they finally got the handwriting interpretation down right, and the thing is intuitive and easy to use. It reads my scratchings just fine; I only had to quit making my capital Bs look like 13s. While I can't say the thing has paid for itself right away, I can say it was worth the money and is a useful tool I now carry everywhere.

Q&A
Where can I find a list of all those items in the System Folder? The manual only mentions a few of them.
"The System Zoo" a huge (2.6MB) Filemaker Pro database of everything you might ever find in the system folder and then some, can be found here. Also visit Ric Ford's MacInTouch page on the subject. Ric's gives more detailed info and is updated regularly, but the Zoo lives on your HD for easier access. If you don't have Filemaker, a demo version can be downloaded from the Claris home page, links to which are on Macintouch, above. Another good source is Macintosh Associates/Madison Web Works' Macintosh Extensions Guide. These are extremely detailed descriptions of all extensions and panels in searchable form, with all the info you need to learn what to remove and what to keep.

I am a graphic designer. I need a program to keep track of my billing and other records. All the ads just talk about Wintel products.
Try "Clients and Profits." One client, an advertising agency, replaced a mini computer system with it. Another is a single-Mac shop; both are happy. The program, based on Omnis, comes in several versions, and is scalable depending on your needs. Users of the Classic version 1.0 on a PowerMac need to turn Modern Memory Manager off and cannot upgrade to 7.5.3. Older Macs: no problem. The company, Working Computer, says that both versions (Classic and Agency Manager) will be/are now available in native PowerMac versions. Info: (800) 272-4488.

A lot of people think that the Mac, while the predominant education, graphics and Web authoring platform, lacks certain vertical market software, such as for law office use. Not so: there are currently 80 different products listed on a page maintained by Randy B. Singer, co-author of The Macintosh Bible.

Still worried about Apple's future? Here is a quote from VAR Business, a monthly mag devoted strictly to Wintel. They interviewed Jim Barksdale, President/CEO of Netscape. Check out the final Q&A:
"Q: A large number of Webmasters out there use a Macintosh. Do you have confidence in the new Apple?
"A: I probably have more confidence and hope in Apple's rising phoenixlike from the ashes than anybody here, except for some people in Cupertino. Look at what a serious revolution did to IBM. IBM today is a much different company than it was eight years ago. Its stock is above $120, it has great products and a strategy. You get enough smart people working on a problem with a brand such as Apple and its great software products, they'll figure out what the core is there and they'll sell the hell out of it.
"But it takes that kind of trauma. My experience has been, unfortunately for the fine, hard-working executives and people over at Apple who had to go by the boards, that it takes that kind of total ice water to get people to refocus. That ice water has now been dumped. It wouldn't surprise me to see Apple's stock at $40 or $50 a share a year from now and people saying nice things about the company."

By now you have read of Apple's recall of defects in certain Performa 5200, 62xx series models, and 5300 PowerBooks. I think that their action in this case shows what a consumer-oriented and ethical company Apple is. Remember when Intel shipped uncounted numbers of defective Pentium chips and denied problems until the entire Internet screamed about it? Remember how Microsoft stonewalled people's concerns with Windows95 and the Calculator included with Windows 3.x and 95? (Try subtracting $2.00 from $2.01 and laugh at the results: $0.00.)
What Apple does, however, is admit to the problem and declare a full replacement with a seven year lifetime. Just think: a free warranty extension (for the covered problem) for seven years! This proves that Mac buyers made the right decision. Anyone seeking to upgrade their older systems, though, should take a close look at the 7200/75 which is being wholesaled for $999 or less. You can't beat that deal with a stick! Furthermore, Apple is now giving away the System Update 2.0 free to anyone who asks for it, and they even included a copy of the CD with every issue of the June MacUser magazine. Now off the stands, you may have to scrounge a bit, or even pay the original charge of $13 and wait for shipment from Claris, but believe me, you want this upgrade. Just be sure to read all the gotchas, maybes, ifs, ands or buts on Macintouch.

Are you using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and tired of seeing the "Homage to Windows 95" animation? The April 29 TidBITS, Adam and Tonya Engst's online magazine, points you to Matthew McRae's irreverent Internet Explorer Sanitizer. Get it from his page. For information on TidBITS: how to subscribe, where to find back issues, and other useful stuff, send email to: info@tidbits.com.

Microsoft Bash of the Month
A PMUG member at MacCamp told me about a package developed for real estate developers. It runs on any Mac or PC spreadsheet capable of updating multiple documents based on a change to any one of them. It was being demoed on a pair of Windows PCs, one running Lotus 1-2-3 and the other running Excel. The Lotus version updated each change immediately; the Excel version just sat there with the hourglass icon, taking three minutes for a single update. The developer of the package recommends against anyone buying Excel to use his product.

From rec.humor.funny:
A friend of mine said he was trying to install Windows NT on a non-standard machine. Everything seemed fine until he actually ran Windows and a message told him that something had gone astray. I guess this could be considered an unrecoverable error:
No keyboard found.
Press F1 to continue.
(To be fair, that message is part of the BIOS and it cannot know that such a request is impossible.)

No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.

email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)