Macking 120

Ten Big Ones
Ten solid years! This is the longest I have written a continuing column, or done much of anything on a continuous basis. This also coincidentally marks the first episode in Computer Chips, the new, reborn Oregon-based free magazine focused on computer-oriented topics. I would imagine that most of you reading this in said magazine are familiar with the previous incarnation. Since you missed the last two columns, which were only on my web site, I am excerpting the most relevant from those for this issue.
In any event, it's good to be back in print.

A Trojan for Macs
Anti-virus company Sophos has info about Mac Cowhand/A. While its prevalence is low, it might be time to think about buying an anti-virus program. Not Sophos, though, because they sell only to small business or larger with a 5-pack for $249/year (which includes all virus updates and support). Discounts: $375 for two years, $498 for three. Otherwise go to Authentium (see Macking 115, or go directly to Authentium for info about their $50 product.) Or just use Norton, such as they are - Symantec doesn't care about Macs very much.

Fresh Exploit for Tiger
We are finally insecure, at least as of early May. First posted on Slashdot, Zaptastic, a developer of widgets (little applications designed to run under Tiger's Dashboard) had released a proof-of-concept widget that takes advantage of the auto-install feature of Dashboard.
In other words, just visiting a web site installs the widget. No password required, no warning from the system, nothing. Since print deadlines take time, this will probably be resolved by Apple before you read it here, but be aware that our false sense of security has just been Zapped. For more info visit the Zaptastic site at http://64.70.134.217/widgets/zaptastic/. Unless, of course, you are running Tiger. But it is a harmless widget, just a proof-of-concept, and a warning to us all that the whole Dashboard scheme is a potential for mass destruction. Included on the site are instructions on how to remove offending widgets (not yet defined in documentation from Apple) and other things that they can do. A must-read before you install Tiger.
One thing you must do NOW to protect yourself is to open Safari's preferences and UNcheck the box that says "Open 'safe' files after downloading" under the General tab. This is important to your general security, not just Tiger's.
Speaking of Tiger, as of 5/5/5 Apple has seeded their developers with the 10.4.1 build. Already. And since you are reading (the print version of this) in the far-off future of mid-June, you may know that it might have already been completely resolved - which is a lot more than can be said about Microsoft's weaknesses to malware.

Hitachi Increases Density of their Micro Drives
and
The Well-Equipped Mac
are repeats from Macking 119 for the print column.

G5 iMacs Showing Problems
An inordinate number of G5 iMacs are turning up with backplane (motherboard) problems. The problem has been traced to a bunch of bad capacitors, a problem that plagued the PC industry in 2003. Apple is reluctant to issue a wholesale recall so you should keep on top of this yourself. Follow reports on MacFixIt and Macintouch and take apart your own G5 and check yourself.
The problem is that the capacitors were manufactured using a pirated formula. Entire companies went out of business because of this. To check for yourself to see if you have an impending problem do this:
Lay your computer out on a flat surface with a towel to protect the screen. Remove the screws holding the back in place. Remove the back and put it aside. You will see most of the logic board. Capacitors are little tin-can-shaped objects about a quarter to a half-inch in diameter and length. Notice if any of them appear to be bulging, much as a can of food contaminated with botulism bulges. If you see nothing, take a picture of the board, as close as possible, with your digital camera and save it for future reference. Reassemble your Mac and cross your fingers. You might want to print the picture.
If you have any bulging capacitors (it will be obvious, not subtle) then call your dealer and schedule a fix. MacShopNW has the ability to replace individual capacitors, but this is warranty work so plan on having Apple replace your iMac. Do a backup of all your files (which you should be doing anyway) and get it fixed. If you do not yet have the AppleCare extended warranty, buy it now! It is extremely important that you have this with any Mac that has a TFT display which, nowadays, is all of them but the eMac (which has its own problems).

Quark Causes Serious Security Problems
Macintouch readers reported an insanely irresponsible action apparently programmed into the QuarkXpress installer:
"Our tech dept has verified the following: Installing Quark 6.1 on a 10.3.x system (I can't speak for other versions) results in thousands of changed permissions. We captured a logfile from such a repair, which weighed in as a whopping 9.9MB plain text file... opening the file in Word resulted in over 4,000 pages of corrections!
"It seems the idiotic Quark installer manages to reset every single program on the drive to world read-write-executable (chmod 777). Ditto after installing the 6.5 updater. Lesson learned: With Quark, repair your permissions before and after each installation and update!"
The final solution for all Quark users is to first create a folder in the Applications folder (call it "Quark Folder") and then tell the installer to put XPress into there. That way it won't affect the permissions around it. Still, always repair permissions both before and after installing or updating ANY major piece of software.
Letters:

Apple Tech Support Hell
Michael - FYI:
Today I noticed there are now updates to the two programs found in iWork, Pages 1.0 and Keynote 2.0. I think I must have come across them on the Apple site because the updates did not appear in my software updates system preference which checks for updates weekly. I downloaded them and proceeded to install but got a message for each one that I could not install the update because the program (Pages or Keynote) was not in my Applications folder. Well, of course they were in the folder, so I tried a few things before giving up and calling Apple support. I've had the program less than 90 days, so I'm suppose to get free tech support.
Thus began an hour's effort for a very trivial endeavor. When you call Apple's 800 number you will be met with a polite male voice recognition entity (I can't think of a better term for this) who asks what kind of computer you have. My advice is to stick to the basics like "G4." When I said "Cube" it was really thrown for a loop and hastened to get me to a "real time" human "on the ground." Later, when I called a second time (as you'll soon see if you keep reading), I regretfully got a little smart with the voice recognition entity and found myself on the receiving end of a lecture about how there are more people calling and having their calls placed in the queue, and if I cooperated with this entity I'd be given preferential treatment, but otherwise he'd have to transfer me to an operator which meant that I'd be in line behind all those people who had called after me. So I played nice. I guess I now have a friend at Apple, even if he is only an entity. Shows you that getting somewhere depends on who you know.
Back to my first call, I was quickly transferred to a human, a screener who triages the calls and sends you to the appropriate tech support area. My area must have been in Bangladesh. After waiting on hold 10 minutes (the approximate wait time, I was presciently informed), I was connected to "Gary" which was not his real name, I suspect, because his English sounded more like Deepok Chopra's. Gary needed to know what kind of Mac I used. I think he had to look up Cube in his reference book. Then he needed the serial number of my Mac. I told him. He repeated the cryptic combination of numbers and letters back to me. Wrong. I told him again, more carefully, using descriptive names for the letters, e.g., "A as in Apple" (clever use of name recognition, I thought). This time he got the numbers in the wrong order. I think he got it right the third time, though. Next came a lengthy discussion about what my problem was and how I'd have to pay for tech support. "No, Gary, you don't understand. The cube is old but iWork is new. It's less than 90 days old, so I still get free tech support." I think we got over that hurdle, but he seemed to have no grasp of the problem about the applications being in the Applications folder but not being recognized by the update installer. He even started referring to the software as Appleworks!
It was then that I made an even more time-wasting mistake. I asked to speak to Gary's supervisor. This ploy has often worked for me when speaking with front line customer service reps proves frustrating. I've found that I can spend 30 or 40 minutes with a rep trying to convince him that I'd paid the bill three months ago and had the cancelled check to prove it or that I shouldn't be charged for the 13 long distance calls to Beijing that were made after I changed my long distance carrier, only to get the same negative response repeated endlessly ("I do whatever my computer tells me to"), but if I ask for a supervisor she will generally agree with me immediately like it was never a problem and she can't imagine why I'd be so steamed up when they were quite willing to oblige my all too reasonable request. So I expected the same miracle working supervisor to come immediately to my aid, but instead I waited on neglect for another 15 minutes and was beginning to think that Gary had blown me off when, finally, Gary himself returned and asked politiely, "Could you please tell me your problem again so I can explain it to my supervisor?" No, Gary, I'm not going to even try to explain this to you again. I gave you ample opportunity to get it right but you blew it, and I won't give you another chance. I WANT Š TO TALK Š TO Š YOUR Š SUPERVISOR! "OK. I will go get her. Could you please wait just a moment?" Ten more minutes on hold and I hung up.
I called tech support again. I wanted Steve Jobs to do my tech support, but it wasn't one of the voice recognition entity's programmed options. After being chastised by the entity (remember to be nice to the androids, Michael, they have more power than you think) and listening to his spiel from the beginning again, I made nice and answered his questions. I said I had a G4, Š a desktop model, Š a G4 desktop running OS X 10.3.8. I then waited only briefly until a native English speaker of the American variety came on the line and quickly determined that my call needed to go to the Cube tech support area. After only one small and short-lived error in which my call was mistakenly transferred to the wrong place (I think it was a support group for Picasso addicts and other recovering Cubists), I arrived at the Cube tech support center. The tech guy, Chris - his real name, I think - who was talking to me from CALIFORNIA, the home of Apple Computers, the birthplace of the Mac and all things silicon, didn't know what the problem was either, but he knew how to troubleshoot it, and within a few minutes he'd figured it out.
The problem was that iWork installed Pages and Keynote as separate packages in my Applications folder. It should have installed them in a folder named iWork within the Applications folder. So the cure was to create an iWork folder and put Pages and Keynote in it. Then the installer knew where to look.
Please feel free to share any part or all of this with your readers.
J. Michael Burke, D.C.
(I recommend anyone who calls AppleCare help line tell the answering robot that you have a PowerBook G4. It will then ask you if the Mac belongs to a school. Say no. If you tell them the truth for, say, an iBook or iMac, the robot will transfer you to India. If you want help from someone in THIS hemisphere who has a better command of English and at least a chance of knowing something about Macs, the PowerBook support is handled by Canadian companies. Once you get the tech, he will not know or care how you got to him, so it's okay to tell him which Mac you have, but mostly he will want to know which version of the system you are running.)

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AppleMail Addresses
Michael,
When addressing emails in Macintosh Mail, I'm sometimes frustrated by the system suggesting old and bad addresses. I never could figure out where the database that stored these addresses was kept in order to edit it. I discovered it the other day - it's found in the unlikely place of Window > Previous Recipients. This is a separate database from the Address Book and I'm not sure how/if they interact. I do know that deleting a Previous Address does not delete an Address Book entry. So, if you're finding that Mail makes poor suggestions - go into Previous Recipients and delete the addresses you don't want it offering. There appear to be two alphabetical collection here: those with names associated with an address and those entries that are addresses only, so you may have to scroll to the second set to find the undesirable address.
Dave Brook

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10.3.9 Problems
There have been many reports on problems with 10.3.9, which I sent out earlier. Here is one letter and response:
Michael,
Pass this on to your other clients. I'm going to post it on Macintouch. (Posted here with other comments:)
Watch out if you update to OS X 10.3.9.
I contacted Adobe's technical support to try to figure out why Shift wouldn't constrain objects or functions along the x or y axis in Illustrator. The Alt key also wouldn't expand facing sides of a text box (not the text) or copy objects like it should in conjunction with the mouse cursor. This is with or without the patch and with or without reinstalling it, and it seems to have happened shortly after I updated to 10.3.9. This kind of thing has also happened with some other updates of OS X, and we confirmed that Illustrator was broken by trying functions in InDesign that use the same engine.
Adobe will be notified by my support rep and myself about this problem. In the mean time, take heed.
Neill Barrett
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I looked into this potential issue and found that I'm not experiencing any of these difficulties. I'm running 10.3.9 (with the latest updates) on my G4 Dual 450 and My PB G4 1.5. I'm also running the Adobe CS apps.
It sounds like the problem could be corrupt prefs. Illustrator prefs are especially known for needing to be trashed and rebuilt.
Gabriel Powell

For Sale items:

Orb drive with 2 two-gig cartridges, SCSI, $10.
Snow AirPort base station. This is the one with an extra Ethernet port and a built-in modem. 802.11b only (11 Mbps) but compatible with newer AirPort cards. Originally $250, yours $69
Xtend-It VGA to ADC converter. Normally $300, this is what you use to link an Apple Cinema Display (clear plastic frame model) to any Mac with VGA output (normally used by standard CRT monitors). This is a must if you have a TiBook or 1st generation 12" PowerBook, or a G3 Blue & White tower Mac. $99.

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.)