Macking 21

Netscape Crashes
Netscape Navigator users: Is your Mac crashing occasionally during Web sessions? One of the primary causes is the cache. The purpose of the cache is to store incoming pages and graphics so that when you click the Back button, the info is loaded from your drive instead of re-downloading all over again. It's faster, and also saves valuable Net bandwidth.
However, the program crashes if it tries to do cleanup operations at just the wrong time. The cure is to go to Network Preferences and set the cache to zero. Click the Clear Cache Now button, and say OK when it asks. Then quit the program, open the enclosing folder and do a Get Info on Netscape. (Single-click to select, then Cmd-I.) Change the Desired Memory size to 18,000K for version 3.0 and 9,000 for version 2.0.2. If you are using an older version, upgrade! It's free, and older versions don't support Frames or Java. Since doing this to my own copy months ago, I have not had any unexplained crashes from Netscape.

Good Monitor
Buying a new 17" monitor? I have heard recommendations for the Hitachi CM611-U, which is the sharpest, cleanest monitor made. It is produced by the Hitachi NSA division, which makes them for the demanding CAD market. Buy it from places that specialize in CAD applications; most conventional dealers won't have it. Price should be around $850. Like all monitors not made by Apple, it has a VGA cable, and will require an adaptor to use. Good news: Power Computing clones (and others) are including a VGA port as an alternative on their built-in or add-on video cards, obviating the need for that adaptor. Apple needs to do this too; there is no inherent advantage to the design of the Apple monitor port.

MMX Hype
Notice all the MMX hype coming from Intel these days? Don't worry about it. In tests conducted by Byte magazine, the PPC Macs do better in the Photoshop tests than the MMX Pentia. MMX is an advantage only for people who are stuck in Wintel, and are willing to buy all-new hardware and new MMX-aware software that takes advantage of the added instructions. Everyone else can forget it.

Internal Batteries
Is your older Mac failing to start, defaulting to undesired settings, or demonstrating unusual behavior? It may be the internal battery failing. The good news is that Radio Shack is stocking these batteries! I was quite surprised to see them there, on a card with all their other batteries, and costing just $10, much less than I was used to paying at regular Mac outlets. The card even says, "Macintosh internal battery." Good job, Radio Shack!
The battery is super-easy to install on LC/Q-605 models, and very difficult on compact Macs, IIci/cx and the like, because it is buried under other components. But if you are comfortable taking your Mac apart, check and see. This is the kind of battery used in all Macs except the 62xx/63xx Performas, Powerbooks, and a few others. Most dealers will replace it for you for around $20 including battery if you don't want to do it yourself. Mac II (original, big box) owners need to be especially aware of this: your batteries (2) are soldered to the board, and when they die you won't be able to start up at all!

Caveat Emptor
I just read a warning on PMUG's Electric Sheep BBS about Shreve Systems, a mail-order house in Louisiana:
"Shreve has a firm policy that they don't tell you about when you order and don't print in their ads. It's only in the catalog in the box, on the last page, in fine print. It's not even on the invoice. Ads tout the 90 day warranty and the possible 15% restocking fee on returns. But there is a major omission: They will accept returns, defective or for any other reason, only in the first two weeks after you PLACE your order. If you order surface delivery, don't receive it for 10 days, don't open it right away... whatever reason you miss the window you didn't know about in the first place... you are screwed." --Wendy Gleason
"I ordered from them once and they said the price had risen from that indicated in their ad. (This was for System 7.5 CD which was, even then, a dated release). I did place the order and it came through fine but the price switch left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I have since read on the web that they have plenty of customer complaints." --Keith Fish
"I ordered a chip from them which was to be sent next day air to me. 3 days later, after numerous calls at my expense, I found out it was back ordered. Then I had to go through the credit card dance to get my money back. Bad business." --John Hartman

Q&A
Q: In reading your article in Feb. Computer Bits, I noticed the phrase "annoying message," and it reminded me of one on my machine. It isn't a big deal, other than the fact that it stops the process each time I fire it up. The message is: "Please insert the disk Mega Rom", a game CD that I haven't used in a couple of years. Fortunately, it also has a cancel box, so things can move on after clicking on it, but I'd like to get rid of it. I had the cover off the box some time ago, when I installed some more RAM (do you usually have to use a hammer and Vise Grips when you do that? - it's the only way I could get them to fit), but I didn't see it in there anywhere. I did find part of a Milky Way and caught a glimpse of an old password, I think, but no message. Can you help me with it? --Michael Lemley
A: (Hammer and Vise Grips? And your Mac still works? No, the SIMMs should go in with a minimum of effort. You are one lucky dude!) Are you using Suitcase or Master Juggler? Old fonts, once loaded from a now-absent volume is usually the cause of this. Check the font list to see which fonts are unopened, to see which is not on your drive now. Then Cut that font from the list.
I bet you DON'T see the message when you start with Extensions Off, right? Other possibility: check the Startup Items folder. Sometimes a game or program installer will put an alias in there and it is launching at startup and demanding the missing disk.

Fun with Anagrams
One of the more entertaining products from the Wintel world has finally been ported: "Anagram Genius," a highly sophisticated anagram generator. It uses powerful AI techniques to take the names of friends, enemies and politicians and say things weird, wonderful and sometimes insulting things about them.
For example, you want to do some research into fundamental philosophy. Type in "The meaning of life" and it rearranges the letters to say it is "the fine game of nil". Type in "President William Clinton" and say he is male, a politician and you want satirical anagrams and you get "Nice, limp, wild total sinner". Do something similar with "President Boris Yeltsin" and you get "Endless insobriety trip" or "Tipsiness done terribly"!
The software is published and originally developed by Genius 2000 Software and was ported to Macs by SRL Data. Full details are on the web. Price is 24.99 (about $40) in pounds Sterling and may be ordered right from their page. I did so just as I was writing this paragraph (after putting it off for a week).

Safer than a Porsche
Can you use all the speed you can get? Exponential Corp. has announced the X-704, a PowerPC chip that runs at 466, 500 and 533 MHz. The 500 will sell for about $1,000 and will be available by summer in PowerPC 604 boxes with X-704 processor card upgrades. Later in the year look for X-704-specific machines with high speed system buses to take even better advantage of the chip's power.
No garage operation, Exponential was started by people from Sun, Apple and Amdahl and funded by a number of industry heavy hitters; they are reportedly subcontracting fabrication to Hitachi, who has experience with bipolar processors and the capability to produce the first-year sales goal of around 150,000 units.
Exponential plans higher clock speeds in 1998 and is hoping to have a 1GHz processor by 2000. By then, Intel should be up to 500 or so, but I'm sure that Microsoft will have a .8-gig install of Win99 that will keep the brakes on it.

More on NeXT, and Apple's Losses
Another month's worth of ignorance, Apple-bashing and misinformation has passed by, and as usual, there is more to the story. Remember the $100 million loss first quarter? All that happened is that sales of Performas under-performed by that projected amount. Apple's total revenues that quarter were $1.8 billion, of which the "loss" was a mere 6%. Of that $1.8B, Apple's margins were 27%. So, they MADE money that quarter. But all the vultures can focus on is the bad news. Every other division: servers, Newtons, high-end hardware did very well. There were unrealized sales of Powerbooks because they could not deliver enough to meet demand. And Claris Corp, Apple's software subsidiary had the best quarter ever, realizing profits of $51 million.
Amelio is laying off thousands of people. Well, he also inherited 800 engineers with the NeXT buyup, and hopefully fired are the incompetents in Marketing who have been leaving us wondering where the cool commercials are. And consolidating, laying off and selling off divisions is what he was hired to do! He did the same thing in his last rescue job and I expected him to do it now.
Clone makers, especially Power Computing, are also selling lots of boxes. People are still buying Macs, folks, so you do NOT HAVE TO WORRY! Ignore anything written about Apple unless it is here in this column, from any magazine with Mac in its name, or from Mac-savvy web sites. Ignore anything negative you read about Apple elsewhere in Bits, in the Oregonian, Willamette Week, PDXS, Time, Byte or other sources that have ties directly or indirectly to Microsoft. Why, if Microsoft and Intel weren't such positive, ethical companies, one would think that they and their apologists were engineering a disinformation campaign to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) thus scaring people to the Wintel side. But that couldn't happen, could it?
What you really need to watch for is what the developers are doing. And the acquisition of NeXT has been good news all around. Besides adding all those engineers to Apple's stable, a poll taken at Macworld Expo by Seybold Seminars and MacWeek showed out of almost 1900 developers in attendance, 8% have NeXT products in development and 71% are planning to produce for Rhapsody, the Next/MacOS that will replace Copland. Sun Java is growing in popularity, and Rhapsody will incorporate an expanded role for Java, and OpenDoc is being completely rewritten in it.
Speaking of OpenDoc, it will be automatically installed as part of System 7.6, and will be invisible to the user. There are now over 100 "parts" available now, with several developers combining resources to offer bundles at reasonable prices.
Bottom line, as quoted from an editorial in MacWeek: "The good news for Apple: Despite financial and marketing woes, the company still has a claim on the hearts and minds of its developer base." And Mac prices continue to drop as power goes up.

URL of the Month, I
Visit this very well-done "Boycott Microsoft" page. Of interest not just to Mackers, this page should be viewed by everyone who is forced to use MS products, or think they have no other choice. The issue isn't platform or religious issues, it is about the degree of dominance a company has over the planet's computers, and what to do about it. And those of you who are going to buy that non-Mac platform, try to get a chip made by someone other than Intel. Me, if the man with the Uzi took my Mac and said "No more," I would probably install OS/2 on a Cyrex box, or go directly to Sun and do XWindows.

URL of the Month, II
Since there is so much disinformation and plain ignorance in the mainstream press about Apple and Macintosh, Apple has set up a Facts page, part of its new marketing scheme, for the latest truth and important information.

Thanks to MacWeek, MacWay, Corvallis MUG's "Mouse Droppings" and MacInTouch for some of the information in this month's column.

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.)