Macking 27
by Michael Pearce
From the October '97 Computer Bits
I'm Still Insecure, But...
The rumors have been flying hot and heavy for days: Depending on who you read, Jobs has either lost his mind, is in the pay of Microsoft to kill off the Macintosh, or is doing what is absolutely necessary to bring Apple to profitability and keep the MacOS alive.
A Jobs quote from early 1996 in Fortune magazine was enough to make anyone cynical. Talking about the plight of the company he started and the strategy of the man (Mike Markkula) who wrote its first business plan, put up the first cash, and ultimately cast him (Jobs) out, Jobs said,
To me it's simple. If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth -- and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.
With that in mind I had written a negative column this month, hoping against hope that the news to come after deadline would be better, but until today I had no such news. Fortunately it came in time! Printed news is always obsolete in this industry, even in a weekly like MacWeek.
On Sunday, 9/7, Ric Ford of Macintouch wrote a stinging open letter asking for answers to five questions, and filling with his own cynical guesses. Jobs responded that afternoon with a nasty get-lost response, which was published immediately. But on the 10th, Jobs phoned him and over a 20-minute conversation, left Ford "enormously relieved about Apple's direction... and excited about moving forward into a healthy future for the Mac platform." I guess Jobs was clued in by the overwhelming flood of email that went to his Pixar address, printed in the response, and decided that a lot of other Mackers were equally unhappy about recent events.
Jobs admitted that cloners _did_ help slow the migration of Mac users away from the platform, but insisted that Apple had to take the licensing actions in order to ensure profitability. He denied that he was milking the Macintosh to finance the "next big thing," as some have charged (based on the above quote). He said that the Mac OS was "the epicenter of Apple's strategy, and it would run only on PowerPC, not Intel. Apple will be selling PowerPC-based Macs running the MacOS through 2000 and beyond. Rhapsody is _not_ replacing the MacOS. He also said that we can expect a series of "great" new computers from Apple this year, along with "much, much better marketing." Halleluja! Finally, he asked for 90 days in which to complete and announce all the big changes in progress and on which he is working as hard as he possibly can.
Power Computing will stop selling Macs by the end of the year, and Apple will take over service and support for the duration of buyer warranties. Apple has also bought their direct-sales expertise and hired some of their staff. This will be at the root of significant changes in the way Apple manufactures and distributes Macs, moving from a build-to-order model and reducing the forecasting problems that has left Apple with months of overstock on some models and unavailability of others.
Don't expect the prices at Power Computing to drop to "fire sale" levels, because they make their machines after they receive orders, so there is no accumulated stock to unload. Power Computing had already decided to make Wintel boxes, as declared in their IPO; less than 1% of their sales were to new Mac users. Their PowerCenter Pro 180 or 210 is still a wonderful buy; it is worth a go but may be surpassed by the new Apple boxes.
Umax announced a signed agreement on 9/5 to bundle a copy of OS8 with each Infiniti T2 clone. CHRP is not dead, just put on hold to deal with compatibility problems (such as parallel ports) that could damage the Mac's key asset: plug and play. No word yet on Motorola's position in the clone heirarchy yet, but always check the Web for the latest news.
No More HP
Another Jobs dig: Apparently he wanted Hewett-Packard to charge less for the printers they were making for Apple, and told them so in a phone call. HP's response? They decided they were not going to make ANY Mac printers any more. HP had already demonstrated they did not care about us; they developed those useful all-in-one units for Windoze (scanner, printer, copier and fax) but never bothered to write drivers so we could use them too. So if Apple is getting out of the inkjet printer business, you had better score yourself an old Canon-made StyleWriter or a new Epson Color soon. I hope Epson is still on board.
Norton Time-Waster
What a waste of precious nanoseconds, just to look KewL: Symantec used a small application called Iconizer that converts any PICT into icon segments and then assembles them into a window, naming folders with spaces and arranging them to recreate the picture by pasting each segment onto the folder. It was interesting the first time, then it just got annoying waiting for the Finder to draw each icon in place before I could get on with the business of launching Disk Doctor.
They would have been smarter to install an alias of the Norton Utilities launcher under the Apple menu, then set the CD's window to Not Open unless double-clicked. You would have to open the window to run the Installer, but to repair a drive, just boot from the CD and launch Norton from the Apple menu. It would not have taken users very long to appreciate the thought, by coming up with this idea before I did. Oh, well. Symantec is not the only offender, but the image is pretty big by comparison.
Norton FileSaver settings
A necessary install, as mentioned last month, is the FileSaver control panel. But I have found occasional conflicts with it that manifest when it is set to scan the drive during "idle" time. The amount of time your Mac must sit idle before the scan is engaged can be defined by clicking on More Options, then Preferences in the control panel. There is a popup menu showing General, Prevention and Protection preferences. In the latter two you will find that idle-time option. Uncheck the Idle Time box in both settings.
I have experienced a dramatic slowdown of general operation after coming back from an idle-time scan that requires a restart to clear up. I have not yet determined the cause, but have noticed it on my 7100, and on other Macs: 6400, 6100, 7600 and 8500, all running OS8. Maybe by next month I will have a final answer as to cause, but if you simply set your preferences to scan only at shutdown/restart that will be enough to keep yourself protected. If you seldom turn your Mac off, then it wouldn't hurt to do a deliberate shut down every few days, just to clear out RAM and give FileSaver a chance to scan the drive.
More Iomega problems
An Apple source says many of the Zip drives installed in their machines are bad. The Zips fail after less than a dozen uses. Some just die, others corrupt disks for a while and then die. Apple is scrambling to deal with the problem; they started replacing the built-in Zips with blank bezels. This may end the option of buying a Mac with internal Zip.
My own Zip, an Iomega (not an Epson-brand) has worked pretty well since I got it, so I would not recommend rushing out and replacing yours right now, but this is a chance for a second look at the SyQuest EZ-230, which has dropped to $199, the price the Zips USED to be, with twice the capacity. It would not surprise me if by the end of the year SyQuest sales started surpassing Iomega as people start getting sick of their arrogant, customer-hostile policies and increasingly problematic products.
Regarding the propensity of Iomega Driver 5.0.3 to waste processor cycles by over-polling the SCSI chain (thus slowing down your Mac), I find the best workaround is to remove the Iomega driver from your Extensions Folder and instead install Iomega Guest where you can conveniently access it, such as your PowerBar, Launcher, or under the Apple menu. That way your Zip or Jaz remains inactive until you actually need it. Problem is, the Guest application (which loads the driver into RAM) causes the same slowdown. Next Restart clears it out. If you can find version 5.0.1 use that; Iomega Tools requires 5.0.1 or later and won't run under 4.1. Version 5.0.3 is installed by Apple's System 7.6.1 updater and your older version is automatically replaced; beware. System 8 does not install Iomega Driver at all. Ask your friends to do a Get Info on their copy of the Iomega Driver. If it says Version 5.0.1, get a copy for yourself.
Avoid Sharp Scanners
I used to have, and rather liked, an old JX-320, but I sold it when it looked like there would be no more support and updates. Well, yesterday I had a client with a much newer JX-330 and discovered that the last guy in Portland who really knew Macs and handled Sharps has dropped away because the company would not support him. He got tired of having questions that he could not get answers for, and the difficulty of reaching any actual humans at the company. When I called 1800-BE-SHARP I got the usual phone robot, but with a twist: my trick of pretending to be using a rotary phone to force a human to come on line was thwarted. Sharp uses voice-recognition software which makes you SPEAK the number choice from the menu. Conclusion: don't get a Sharp scanner, new or used, no matter how cheap it is, unless the seller can support and update it for you for at least a couple of years.
The client later got ahold of an actual human who determined that they had sent the wrong disk; the drivers were incompatible with their model and even though it was visible on the SCSI chain, the scanning software could not see it. I still won't recommend Sharp scanners to anyone; buy Epson, LaCie or UMAX instead.
Microsoft Greed
In last month's Bits editorial, Paul excoriated Microshaft for their greed (Microsoft greedy? Naaah) in making the file format for documents created in Office 97 incompatible with Office 95.
You do read the rest of the magazine, don't you? Go on, how are you ever going to learn anything if you don't keep tabs on the rest of the computing world! Excellent article on the history of the Amiga, too. But Paul, you gotta do something about those backwards apostrophes plaguing the magazine.
Anyway, I had wondered why there was so much garbage in a Word 6 document when viewed in Word 5. What was all that stuff surrounding the useful text? Reason: the data is saved in binary format, not Rich Text Format (RTF) or some other easily convertible style. Actually, most programs save their data in binary anyway, but the new 97 is incompatible with 95, and does not offer the option of saving into the older format! This after all the trouble MS went to getting Office 95 established as a near-universal format. Now, says Paul, the Winworld is expected to pungle up big bucks to upgrade to 97. Of course, Office 97 users can Save As their documents into RTF which anyone can read, but it is slower to convert and less convenient for those users who barely know how to change folders or volumes, let alone formats.
Mackers who might be confronted with an Office 97 document but do not want to get the upgrade can buy the latest version of MacLink Plus instead. Get the full-featured "desktop" version, not the one that works with Easy Open. You can create a document that will convert a folderful of Word 97/PC into ClarisWorks, Word 5, or whatever format you want, with a single drag and drop. Contact DataViz at (203) 268-0030 or www.dataviz.com.
Choosing Mac
If your company is thinking about going Wintel, here is a study you can use to fight back. After months of research, an article comparing Mac OS and NT as a desktop tool is complete. It contains 57 citations from various magazines and research papers, only 9 of which are Mac-specific. That is, it isn't just Mac people lauding the Mac or warning about NT. It's mostly PC people.
If you like what the article says, print it and take it to the people who decide what OS you'll be using, the highest in management you can reach, and especially the folks in accounting.
VoiceMail on your line?
If you are installing your first modem, there is a problem with voice mail that can prevent your connection. Voicemail alerts you that you have messages waiting by rapidly pulsing the dial tone when you first pick up to make a call. This pulsed tone can drive your modem crazy.
Quick solution: collect your messages and the pulse will go away. Long-term solution: Get another line. Your friends will love you and so will US West.
Just don't put voicemail on that line too.
No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.
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