Macking 121

I'm A Pod Person
I'm one of the last people to be assimilated, but finally, thanks to my new Mini-Cooper (more on that later) I now possess a shiny new 30-gig iPod Photo.
I never needed one before because all my music is in my dedicated Mac media center (an old G4 with two 160-gig drives) and I hardly ever walk anywhere that would need music; I can't wear one while working on customer sites fixing their Macs; my car played CDs and all I would listen to on the radio was Air America.
That all changed when I took delivery of a 2005 Mini, which has the iPod option. Now I just plug the pod into the cable embedded in the glove compartment, and I can control it from the car radio controls. I may never listen to FM again!

Degrading the Mini-Cooper
Most people don't do what I did - trade in a perfectly good 2003 model for a virtually identical 2005. But I wanted the iPod option, and since the cars don't depreciate much at all, I was able to sell my old one and apply a substantial down payment on the new one, which cut my car payments by $100 a month and left enough over to get the pod.
Imagine my horror (somewhat of an overstatement) when I discovered that the company removed some perfectly good features present in the 2003 for no apparent reason:

1. The old one had a "summer vent" feature that would open both windows and the sunroof if I held down the Unlock button on the keyless remote. Gone in 2005.
2. If the wipers were on and I turned off the ignition, the wipers would finish their sweep before parking. Now they just stop in place.
3. There is no more Off switch on the air conditioner/heating system. The only way to shut it off is to click the fan button one stop past its slowest setting.
4. The overhead clock, large and conveniently mounted to the ceiling is gone with a little one integrated into the speedometer/trip odometer that requires me to toggle between the two. There is nothing in the space where it was. It's a shame to waste space in such a tightly designed car.
5. The cupholder, not in the 2003, looks spooged into the design as an afterthought, and is not easily removable.
6. Finally, they seem to have removed half an inch of foot space for the rear passenger from under the front seat. Even half an inch makes a significant difference in such a tight space.

Where's My Internet?
If your connection inexplicably disappears, it may be a heat issue with your router. I have a Linksys that routes the connection to a wired network, and from there, to an AirPort base station.
When my net connection disappeared recently (first hot day in May), I reset the router and DSL modem but it didn't help. I noticed that all the port lights were out on the router.
I felt the underside and it was very warm. It was sitting in a 93-degree upstairs room so I tilted it on its side and aimed a small fan at it. Within 60 seconds I was back on line.
In my new place I made sure the network devices were placed in a nice cool room.

Tiger At Last
I have never waited so long to install a system upgrade as this. I was an immediate adopter of OSX originally, even going so far as to buy an iBook to dedicate to that purpose. All the following upgrades were done upon release because each was an improvement on the last, and the early versions of X were obviously developmental and not mature at all. It wasn't until 10.2.5 that it because fully useable, and 10.3 introduced such a useful feature (Exposé) that I upgraded to it on the first day in spite of the bugs always inherent in a zero-point release (10.3.0, 10.2.0, etc.).
Not this time. There were no compelling features in Tiger; just speed enhancements and a few dangling dice and chromium fender skirts (such as "dashboard") and a major step backwards in searching technology (Spotlight).
There were so many negative reports about it on the Mac blogs that I warned all my clients to avoid it until further notice. The only safe exception was for new Macs that came with it installed, and those people upgrading from OS9 to X for the first time. Neither had issues with legacy programs that were not compatible with the new version.
Finally, when enough people I knew had installed it and were mostly happy with it did I even buy the release, heavily discounted from Amazon. Then, two weeks ago with 10.4.2 almost ready for release, I went ahead and put it on my 12" Powerbook. I did a "dirty install," just a straight upgrade which is the default choice in the Installer, and amazingly it seemed to work. Bootup took ages, though. All my programs worked that I expected to. I run a lot of hacks like WindowShade X, Virtual Desktop, CeePeeYou (a processor-use tracker) and various temperature monitors and system status monitors. I also still use several major Classic apps. I had removed or disabled the known incompatibles.
What killed it, though, was Software Update. I went ahead and said OK when Update offered to install 10.4.1 and patches to Java, QuickTime, etc. After it finished I restarted and I was dead in the water. It would never get past the login window. Yes, I had done all the tricks before like Repair Permissions before and after installation, and before running Software Update.
The next morning, while fretting that I might have to restore from my backup and start over, I decided to first try a reinstall using Archive and Install, which preserves user settings, documents and everything else important like bookmarks in Safari, print drivers and the like.
It worked. I was running much faster than before even though still on 10.4.0. It seemed pretty smooth. Safari was less stable, though; I did and am still experiencing crashes on sites that used to work just fine. But I decided to forgo the 10.4.1 update. I lost a lot of preferences and other items from Library that I had to manually move over, though.

No More Find
If it ain't broke, then shatter it. That's what happened with the simple and reliable Find function that has been every OS since System 3. Now there is an overly complex and bloated Spotlight that has its most difficulty doing a simple search for a folder or filename. It returns way more information than I want, sometimes to the exclusion of what I actually seek.
Example: I have a folder containing photographs and short movies I simply titled Ÿ (option-f). That character, which is really the Olde English "s", has been a semi-official conventional shortcut for "folder" and many programs use it. Spotlight would not find that folder, and would not let me limit the search for it. Even when I told it that the FOLDER NAME IS (option-f) it still returned all the folders that had that character as part of the name (of which there are dozens). This is a clear failure of the function.
Fortunately, that got fixed in 10.4.2. However, if I don't make changes to the find window that requires three clicks, but just type in the character and hit return, I get 158 results. There is no way to set the Spotlight default to the old one and have it save the settings.
Maybe someone will release a simple search utility that can take over the Command-F hotkey and work like Sherlock used to.

10.4.2
So Apple finally released the update and I downloaded it without installing. Although it's more tedious to install and restart after each update (there were five in this package - QuickTime 7.0.1, Java update, iPhoto update, iPod update, 10.4.2 Combined Update) I decided that I should not let Software Update do it all and risk having to do another Archive and Install. I am happy to report that the updates were successful. Few permissions needed repairing and the machine is generally more peppy. The long pauses while Stoplight tried to search for a title before I had finished typing it in have mostly disappeared.
So I am giving Tiger a Marginal Thumb Sideways overall, and a positive review of the 10.4.2 update. If you are happy with 10.3.5 or 10.3.8 you can stop there. Don't get the 10.3.9 update. But if you did, you can go ahead and get 10.4 because it is finally working and pretty stable. Since all you get in the box when you buy Tiger is 10.4.0, be sure to arrange for a copy of the 10.4.2 updates if you are using dialup to connect to the Internet because, as always, the updates are too big for a successful modem download.
I always carry the updates with me so I can run them on client Macs; PMUG makes them available at their weekly Open House meetings Tuesday evenings, or you can always take your laptop to a cybercafe and download from there. The latter option is less convenient if you have a G5 Tower with a 19" CRT display.

No Discount for Verizon
Used to be that DSL was the preferred choice over Concast Cable Internet because you did not have to use the phone company as your ISP. You could get a discount on the DSL charges if you provided (and paid for) a separate ISP and involved the phone company only as the link between your site and your ISP's servers. That has worked well for years. It is still the way Qwest works. You can opt for qwest.net as your ISP (even they got sick of the excreble MSN they had been paid to promote) or far better, opt for a local ISP who has actual humans answering the phones, some of whom even know something about Macs. You will not find that kind of service from the nationals, who would rather you be a Microsoft slave running Outlook, because in India, that's all they know.
But Verizon has become more like Concast. You actually have to pay extra to NOT use verizon.net as your ISP and connect somewhere else. This is a recent change for them and one that needs to generate a lot of complaints.
Since you cannot choose your local phone company except by moving, you might want to include this information in your house-hunting plans. While Concast is faster, you are not permitted to run your own mail server or host websites (except under limited conditions) and you are at the mercy of a national company that really, truly, does not know or care anything about Macs. It is always better to choose DSL with a local ISP you know and trust, but thanks to Verizon's new attitude, your choices just got fewer.
Maybe the impending Portland scheme to blanket the city with WiFi has merit after all. Hopefully that won't turn out to be nothing more than a giveaway to Concast, Verizon or other huge companies. Keep an eye on this one, while tipping your hat to Personal Telco, who pioneered the idea of free, easily available WiFi internet access. Without them we would probably be living under the pay-to-play Starbucks model.

No Toasty iTunes
Once again Apple sticks it to the consumer: The 6.1 update to Roxio Toast, under orders ("discussions") from Apple, will not allow you to burn music purchased from the iTunes Music Store to music CDs. What, you didn't know you could? Just another reason to avoid Tiger but it's inevitable, they've got you because some day you will need to replace your Mac and there you'll be.
For now there is still a workaround for making the music YOU purchased available for YOUR use on any music player you want: Export your iTunes purchases onto a regular music CD using iTunes itself. Then re-import it as a high-quality MP3, which strips out the DRM (digital rights management) code from the song. We don't know how long that feature will remain in iTunes, so best treat all your music now, and then think about going back to buying regular CDs whenever possible.
Remember, Apple's is the LEAST intrusive method of online music purchase. Probably better to just get a good Usenet reader and go back to copying for free if that's how they are going to treat us for being legal.

No Internet for Me
One gets spoiled really quickly, having broadband available. Since moving to my new place a distant FOUR BLOCKS away from my old one, Qworst's guarantee of "five working days" to reinstate my DSL connection stretched into NINE, which of course doesn't count the two complete weekends intervening. So I had to pack my laptop off to my old place (where I am still packing the leftovers and schlepping them home) and hitchhike on my neighbor's wireless connection or visit a cybercafe.
Although that meant I could still check email twice a day, it just showed me how dependent I have become on spontaneous, instant access. I didn't buy an extra-cost dialup account to go with my DSL because, well, Qworst promised "five working days" and I could live with that. Maybe it's because I don't use Q as my ISP (I use SpiritOne, one of our advertisers) that Q didn't feel especially motivated to get me going again.
If anything can be said in their favor, it's probably that this place did not have DSL before and the lines need conditioning before the signal can be sent; that requires labor and the company has been "shedding" jobs for years now. But I am champing at the bit when I am not busy diverting myself by unpacking and putting stuff away. I am getting too old for this! The next move won't be until they carry me out feet first to the assisted living center or dissident prison camp.
I hope they have broadband.

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.)