Macking 44

More on PlayStation
As reported last month, Connectix has released a Sony Playstation emulator for G3 Macs. I got the price wrong, though, it's only $49. There are still rumblings of a lawsuit, but since no proprietary code was used in the emulation (called "clean room" development), and the software division was ecstatic at the thought of more than 800,000 potential new customers for their games, it appears that all the talk of injunctions and lawsuits is just the Sony law division trying to justify their jobs. Hopefully, the emulator is on sale as you read this. If not, ask your friends if they know anyone who got it at Macworld, and borrow their copy.

Y2K Update
It wasn't known until January 25, but an important application, QuickBooks by Intuit, is not compliant. Typing a 1/1/2000 date into the date field freezes the machine. Intuit, red-faced as you can imagine, will be releasing an update between April and June.

Qualcomm is Screwing Up
According to MacOS Rumors, the Eudora (software) division of Qualcomm, Inc. has lost $10 million since purchasing Now Software, and is thinking of dropping development of Eudora Planner (formerly Now Contact/Up-To-Date). Furthermore, they have allied with Microsoft and may be dumping support of the PalmOS in favor of WindowsCE. What this means for the combined PalmIII/Qualcomm cel phone is left to wonder. Also left hanging is the future of Eudora Pro. Qualcomm has reportedly offered the software division for sale, but found no takers.
This is all-around bad news, folks. Eudora has been the consistently best free email program for Macs for years, and the Pro version, at only $40, offered many useful features for the power email users. Because of Apple's contract with the Dark Side, their push is for us to switch to Outlook Express. Just what we need: another forced switch to a Microsoft product due to the lack of alternatives. At least Netscape has an email module. All we can do is hope for a positive outcome to this, and also hope the "Justice" department does the right thing and breaks up Microsoft.
Later note: Eudora Planner is history, but Qualcomm has declared that Eudora will continue to be developed and promoted and we can release our collective breaths. Great news, but I still need something to replace Now Contact. Palm 2.0 Mac's contact module is awful!

CompUSA is Pathetic
I just learned that CompUSA requires piss tests of their $8/hour employees. No wonder they have a hard time finding and keeping knowledgable staff! Maybe someone can explain why it is any business of the retail chain's management what people smoke on their off time (marijuana is the only unauthorized chemical that stays in the body long enough to set off piss tests) if they know what they are doing and can move merchandise. You would think by now that people in management would develop a clue. Guess I am wrong. My recommendation? Buy from companies that do not subject their people to these invasive and degrading tests and know when to respect people's privacy. Give me a break!

More on the new G3s
At the end of January I attended an Apple dog-and-pony show featuring the new machines. I had a lot of my questions answered and nagging doubts put to rest.
Whether you like the new color and design of the box or not, these are truly hot machines. The benchmarks beat anything out there in the Intel world, and the real-world tests agree with the benchmarks.
Apple has licensed OpenGL, the industry standard for games, so it will be easier for developers to write Mac versions. The 128RAGE card has the highest frames-per-second count, so you will get fast, smooth play from the most demanding games. QuickDraw 3D will be going away in favor of GL.
This month, LaCie will be releasing a FireWire external hard drive, six gigabytes in size, physically no larger than a paperback book. In June, they will have a 6-gig drive the size of a Palm Pilot! Price is not yet set. The best thing about these new FireWire peripherals? They will get their power from the FireWire bus! So you will have this really tiny drive, capable of running on any FireWire-capable Mac, that can hold all the data you could probably need!
This is why Apple is forcing the technology. FireWire is fast, so easy to use and free of SCSI voodoo problems. Can you imagine starting up a big QuickTime movie from an external hard drive, then in the middle of the movie, pulling the SCSI cable off? Probably fry your SCSI controller chip! But with FireWire you just plug it back in and the movie resumes!
If you need SCSI, you can use up a PCI slot for a SCSI card, either fast or standard, and keep all your existing SCSI devices.

OS X Server
The server software will ship soon, too. This was demoed at Macworld and the performance is amazing, as is the price. $995 gets you the entire software package, and unlimited clients. A G3 server with the software pre-installed can be up and serving web pages in -5- minutes, and if not preinstalled, from 0 to serving in 30 minutes. Those of you who have set up and configured UNIX and NT servers will appreciate the time savings.
The package is robust enough to host 50 domains, with 18 million hits per day. If you get more hits than that, get another G3. The ease of configuration and the power makes it the best value out there. The server software includes WebObjects and Apache, the most popular Web hosting programs on the Net. WebObjects, inherited by Apple when they acquired NeXT, is being made available on Macs for the first time. And the kernel of OS X is BSD Unix. Experienced Unix hackers will find access to the full power of the command-line interface; those who know nothing about Unix will never even know that is what they are running.
How powerful is it? They showed a video of 50 iMacs all running a different QuickTime movie, all hosted on the server. You need control over your network? OS X is network-bootable. One system folder will launch all Macs on the net. Each user can have a login that will display their own desktop, with all personalization preferences and all applications they use. They would not even know that they were on a machine with no internal hard drive until they looked for one. Now THAT's Network Computing. I can hear the snapping of the heads of school and corporate network administrators from here. Down side: The IT department will not need as big a staff to administer the network, which is why so many IT departments have been converting to NT. Nobody likes to lose staff and budget, except the owners of the company (or the school board).
But as far as the individual user is concerned, the new units, running 8.5.1, will be the fastest, best Macs to date. They just need to be savvy enough to work on the leading edge of the technology and avoid using obsolete, incompatible software. As the months go by, programs will either be eliminated or updated. And as of this month, 1,332 new developers have signed on to produce Mac applications. Apple has had 5 profitible quarters, almost $2 billion in cash, and the largest selling single computer (the iMac) ever. The future indeed looks bright for Mackers.

How Fast is Fast?
eMedia Weekly (out of business as of 2/4/99) printed a chart recently of just how fast, in megabits-per-second (Mbps), the various formats are. The numbers are theoretical maximums; real-world performance is somewhat less. To calculate what the numbers mean in megabytes, divide by eight.

Ultra2 SCSI:           640
FireWire:              400
Ultra SCSI:            320
Fast and Wide SCSI-2:  160
Fast Ethernet:         100
Fast SCSI-2:            80
Standard SCSI-1:        40
USB:                     9.6
LocalTalk:               0.24
Serial ports are even slower unless certain hacks are done.

Which Mac for You?
So you love the look of the new iMacs, but you need SCSI. Or you have been poking along with your LCII and decide it's time to upgrade. Here are a couple of example users and appropriate recommendations.
System I: LCII, monitor, Stylewriter II printer, Zip drive. Primarily used for word processing and Quicken 4. 10 megs RAM, 80 HD. Wants to go on Internet.
You would be a good candidate for the iMac. It's bundled with Quicken 98 and ClarisWorks (now AppleWorks), Netscape and other software. Order yours with an extra 64-meg RAM module so you won't be cramped in the future. Delete Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook Express; download a copy of Eudora 3.1.3 for your email, or just use Netscape. Plan on buying a USB printer (Epson is still the best), a USB hub so you can connect multiple devices, a USB Zip drive for your backups, and a SuperDrive or, if available, a USB floppy drive. You may be able to do without the floppy entirely because your Zip will let you move your files from the LCII.
Similar systems but with an old LaserWriter or HP LaserJet can keep their printers but will have to buy a USB-to-serial converter for about $99. Non-Adobe PostScript laser printers (like the Personal NT) should dump them in favor of true Adobe PS.
System 2: Quadra 630CD, Zip drive, scanner, external hard drive, Palm Pilot with dock, Wacom tablet, Apple 16/600 Laserwriter plugged in with a serial cable. System has 40 megs RAM and uses PageMaker, Photoshop, WordPerfect, Quicken 7, Netscape, Eudora, KidPix, and a host of games.
You are not in the iMac demographic. You would have to give up too much and start over. Instead get the new G3 minitower, or save yourself some money and scrounge up a first-generation G3 model. You will be able to use your original monitor, although you might want to buy a 17", just on general principles. All of your software will work on the older G3 (if you stick to OS 8.1), and all your SCSI and serial devices will plug right in. Price of the desktop (non-tower) model should be no more than $1300; plan on adding at least two 64-meg S/DIMMs, just to keep Photoshop happy. Want to be real happy? Install three 128-meg S/DIMMs and lust after the forthcoming low-profile 256-meg S/DIMMs. Or get the original G3 tower model and max it out. Try to pay no more than $1500 for the base unit.
If you opt for the newest G3, then look for an Adaptec or other SCSI card for the PCI slot so you can continue to use your devices. Avoid Apple's cheaper SCSI card because it may not support booting from an external drive. You will need to get a USB-to-serial adaptor for your Pilot dock because the new G3 does not use serial ports. You can use the Zip to transfer data from the 630, or if you buy an Ethernet card for it, you can network it to the G3 and keep it as a second Mac for others in the house to use. The 16/600 will plug right into the Ethernet port with a crossover cable but you would be best served by getting a cheap Ethernet hub (5-port should be fine) so you can leave Ethernet enabled all the time and turn the printer off except when you need it.
System 3: High-end 8500 with 256 megs RAM; 21" monitor, Jaz drive, Zip drive, scanner, Wacom tablet, two external SCSI drives; Photoshop, Quark, QuickBooks, MS Office, Illustrator 7; Epson 1500 large-format inkjet printer.
Wait a little while longer. You will want the 400-MHz G3 with a high-end SCSI card, and you will be a willing customer for the new FireWire external drives that will be on the market soon. The G3 has an ADB port so you will be able to use your Wacom tablet, but you will need to get an Ethernet card for your Epson. Upgrade to Illustrator 8; users have been complaining that version 7 was a poor implementation but 8 makes them very happy. Get it with an internal Zip drive and the Adaptec Fast&Wide SCSI card for your Jaz. Remember that if you plug a slower device into a F&W SCSI chain, the whole chain slows down to match it. You might want to wait for choices in the USB and FireWire market and get a new scanner. By late summer there will be so many choices that the SCSI card will become unnecessary. Max out the RAM and be sure to get the 12-gig internal HD and the DVD drive.
System 4: nothing. All your friends have Wintel machines and you like games, but you have learned enough about the Mac to know you don't want Wintel.
Get an iMac. Add in 64 megs extra RAM and buy a copy of VirtualPC. You will be able to read all PC disks and run all PC applications. Buy a copy of Connectix' PlayStation emulator too. Then make all your PC friends jealous by showing off your collection of PlayStation games that have no PC versions, and don't forget TombRaider III for Mac. Plan on buying a MacAlly mouse to replace the little finger toy that ships with the iMac, and maybe even a new keyboard too. Also see what is available in USB game controllers; there is a choice that increases monthly.

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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.)