Macking 35

New Virus/Trojan Horse
I guess it was inevitable: A new virus that affects PowerMacs has appeared in Hong Kong. You are vulnerable if you are running any version of the System software AND QuickTime 2.5 or later, AND have the QuickTime Settings control panel set to AutoPlay CD-ROMs. To protect yourself, go open the QuickTime Settings control panel immediately and disable CD-ROM AutoPlay. You can leave the Audio CD AutoPlay option on.
Disinfectant CANNOT detect this virus, nor can the current versions of SAM or Virex, although updates are probably available for the latter two as you read this. This virus does not infect applications, it infects the storage media. It directly affects only the Device Data file in FWB Hard Disk Toolkit Folder (Version 2.0 and above) and makes HDT fail to load.
(In fact, it was the appearance of this virus that led John Norstad, developer of Disinfectant, to "retire" it after nine years, at version 3.7.1. He said that although the Hong Kong virus was the final straw, it was the far more common and dangerous Microsoft viruses, now numbering over a thousand, that put an end to the popular free utility. The Microsoft viruses are easily-programmable macros that live in MS Word 6 and later, MS Mail, and Excel. Mackers who are stuck using these products must buy SAM or Virex and check the Web monthly for updates to keep themselves protected.)
The virus will NOT affect any Quadra Mac or older, period. It also will not affect PowerMacs with QuickTime disabled, or 2.1 or older installed. The older QT, however, will not work on most new CD-ROMs or Web pages that require the newer version.
The virus is generally non-destructive, but it slows performance by periodically searching the entire mounted volumes of a networked or standalone Mac, looking for a particular target to infect. It first assaults via an invisible application named DB which is on a floppy or cartridge. The designer of this virus targeted the DTP industry and knows the way work flows from one machine to another.
Using the AutoPlay feature, the first time the DB application sees a clean disk, it automatically activates, creates an invisible system extension called "Desktop Print Spooler" in the extensions folder, quits all running applications and restarts the Mac. This extension is what scans other drives and networked Macs for places to propagate. The author has done serious research and there are lots of picts to show you what to watch out for and how to remove the virus from your system using ResEdit.

Hotel Management software
Nicholas Rhodes writes: Several months ago, we had a small information consulting company based in Southern Spain. We were also developing Smotel - a small hotel management package developed entirely in FileMaker Pro 3.0. We submitted to the EvangeList some PR about Smotel and received hundreds of responses. Among the responses was a company very interested in investing in our software development (which was at that time a very secondary interest). This company has now placed their trust in us and we now have a whole new software division with dedicated programmers and international representative offices in several different countries.
Apart from Smotel (our highly successful Small Hotel Management Package, which is starting to ship), we also have IntelliProp (a real estate management package) and PubPro (another management system aimed at publishers and magazines).
To see our products and services and download demos, please visit our page and if you order any of our products, we offer all evangelists an additional 15% discount.

Zip Plus not wonderful
According to a release from Iomega, using the Zip Plus (the replacement for the standard Zip drive that has almost become a standard) with a PowerBook risks corruption of your data. They also warn you not to use the drive on a multi-device SCSI chain (a ribbon cable with multiple ports), a gender-changer plug, or a cable converter. You MUST use the blue auto-detect cable shipped with every drive; plugged into the back of your non-PowerBook Mac, with other items in the chain plugged into it. But the worst is their claim that you cannot have any other SCSI devices on the chain! That lets out all you scanner users, tape backups, Jaz drives and all the other devices out there.
Yet another thick, smelly black mark against Iomega. Some day there will be a loud sucking sound as people abandon the Zip in droves, for an as-yet-unavailable device that is better, faster, cheaper and produced by a company with a better attitude toward its customers.

QuickTime Pro on the Cheap
by Chris Breen from Tipworld: Despite the vast number of improvements introduced in QuickTime 3.0, many people were shocked to discover that in order to retain the capabilities of MoviePlayer 2.5.1 they had to pay for QuickTime Pro. (For those who don't know, the standard version of MoviePlayer 3.0 doesn't allow you to export or convert movies, nor can you elect to fill your screen with a movie or glean much information from the GetInfo dialog box.)
Canny readers may also have noticed that online versions of MoviePlayer 2.5.1 have vanished faster than Roseanne's acting career. Is there a connection? You betcha!
If you have a copy of MoviePlayer 2.5.1 and its accompanying Authoring Extras and Goodies plug-ins, you can take advantage of many of QuickTime Pro's features-including the new, spiffy video- and audio codecs. Just install QuickTime 3.0, restart, and launch MoviePlayer 2.5.1, making sure that Authoring Extras and Goodies are in the same folder as MoviePlayer 2.5.1.

Time Flies and OS 8.1
You know those pesky time flies, always getting into everything. The Mac has always handled dates well (no Y2000 bugs here), but the latest version of the system has taken Mackers into international, relational time. That file you just got from London, for instance, was created at 4pm, but here on the West Coast it's still morning. So you are now working on a file that appears to be created in the future, and when you return it to the sender with your updates, it will land on their desktop, apparently older than the file it is replacing!
London is 7 hours behind us, and Daylight Savings Time messes things up even more. Your Mac saves local time only, assuming you set the date and time in the Date & Time control panel, and set the Time Zone there as well, or in the Map panel. All well and good, before email.
Unix programmers have been dealing with this problem for some time, because the servers that run it have had to deal with time zone variations more than personal-computer users. OS 8.1 is Apple's attempt to bring this into alignment as well; the new HFS Extended (aka HFS+) file format now stores the date and time as a deviation from Greenwich Mean Time, and doesn't store local time as it used to. The OS then interprets that data to tell you what time it is here and now.
The problem HFS+ has is when you change the time zone or click on the Daylight Savings Time option. It then changes the creation and modification dates on every file on your drive to reflect the update. This wreaks havoc on compilers, backup utilities and file-synchronization programs.
Just setting the time itself in D&T does not have this effect because compensation for adjustments here were written in. Anyone who depends on accurate time on their Mac clock knows they have to adjust it every month or two because all Mac, in fact all computer, clocks drift from accuracy. It is inherent in the clock chips.
There are free or shareware time-adjustment utilities such as AutoClock, SetClock and Vremya that take care of the adjustment by connecting with the national atomic clock and making the adjustments. Some include an extension that correct clock drift every time you restart so they are never more than a second off.
Bottom line is a warning to all 8.1 users: Do not use that convenient check box to turn daylight savings time on or off. Adjust the clock manually. And by all means, before you convert to 8.1 in the first place, make sure your time zone is set correctly. Then, when you get around to reinitializing your drive under HFS+ you will not experience the time zone problem because you will have prepared.

Allegro is coming
OS 8.2, aka Allegro, is due this summer. The fix for the time zone bug will be in by then, but so will a lot of other changes and improvements. Some will incorporate features promised in Copland, the originally-planned OS8, and many look pretty cool. Finally there will be a fix for the column order in the Finder, and the Appearance Manager will get many more options that let you tweak how your windows look. More native code will be incorporated in the system file, and there will be improvements to Open Transport and related networking extensions that will ease integration of Macs into networks.
Disk First Aid will become even more useful; a crash or other system error will launch DFA on startup and immediately fix any volume problems induced by the crash. Read articles on this from Apple's promotional pages as well as www.macosrumors.com. It looks like a worthwhile upgrade, and should be as easy a transition as it has become to move from 8.0 to 8.1. As always, though, wait until the first field reports start coming in before you make the leap, unless you enjoy being on the bleeding edge, like me.

Best Emulator
Which is the best Windows emulator for your Mac? According to the EvangeList, it depends on which model you have. For G3 users, go with VirtualPC. But users of 601-604 PowerMacs, you will get better performance from SoftWindows 95 5.0.
When you need to convince someone in authority why you should be given a Mac instead of a Wintel box, the answer is simple: G3 will give you both worlds, but a Wintel box limits you to the Microsoft Way, period. (Well, not entirely "period"; Intel boxes can still run UNIX and OS/2, both preferable to Windows, according to their fans.) Of course, the Mac can also run Linux, and Rhapsody, now available to developers and soon to be released for consumers, is itself based on UNIX.
Now that Apple has returned to profitability and is producing more and better hardware and system software, you can feel absolutely secure in sticking with Macintosh. I know I feel a lot more secure these days!

Personal note
By the time you read this, I will have had a coronary bypass operation to fix a problem caused by a "silent" heart attack I had a few years ago, that I didn't even know had happened. I discovered this earlier via apparently unrelated symptoms, and since it was not critical, I have had time to get ready for the operation. But I may not feel like thinking or writing Mac for a few weeks after May 20, so there is a chance that there will be no column next month. I will try to put something together beforehand to turn in for July, but a 7 week deadline instead of the usual 3 week deadline will eliminate anything very timely, and keeping you up to date has been one of my major efforts in this column. But I should return in better shape than ever, says my doctor, and I will be ready to roar the next month.
If you want to know how the operation went, I will ask Paul to append a comment to this column on the ComputerBits web page, sometime after the 20th. I figure I will be off work for a month, though.'Bout time I had a vacation!

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.)