Macking 53

Firewalls
What's a firewall? This technology has been common in corporate sites for years now, but as more and more home users get full-time Internet connections, this term needs to become more familiar to individuals.
Basically, a firewall is hardware and/or software that presents a barrier to any unauthorized access into your computer from the Internet.
TidBITS recommended Intego Products' "NetBarrier", an economical software solution ($75) that prevents people from slipping into your Mac and copying files or doing damage. A dedicated computer with two Ethernet ports is better, and an old Quadra 700 with a 2nd ethernet card, properly configured, will make for a virtual brick wall and cost you only a few hundred dollars - or nothing if you have one sitting in your closet. That 2nd Ethernet card will set you back less than $100.
Of course, Macs are inherently more secure than Intel boxes running Windows, but as the Mac incorporates more Unix capabilities and TCP/IP protocols in its personal networking, need for packages like this will increase. Linux users are by definition "power users," and they will usually be able to secure their own systems against attack, and hire themselves out to others to do the same thing.
Of course, if you are technically savvy and want to save a few bucks, you could use an old PC, a couple of cheap ($20) ethernet cards, and install a $30 copy of OpenBSD. (Why waste a good Mac on something that is practically invisible on your network?) OpenBSD concentrates on security and includes IPSec VPN, firewall and cryptography applications as well. All of the code has been checked by security experts looking for possible problems. OpenBSD is available from their site and there is a version for the PPC as well as the older 68K Macs. You know, like that old Quadra in the closet.
The simplest thing you can do right now, however, is to either turn off File Sharing, or if you need sharing on your home or small office network, make sure Guest access, under the Users and Groups control panel, is NOT enabled and/or your whole hard drive is not set for read and write access. Use specific shared folders instead. Cable modems are especially insecure, compared to DSL from US Worst or your phone company.

Old Mac sighting
The Techline company in Portland ran an ad for its small office/home office furniture package "The Workable Office." The computer? A Mac IIci, vintage 1990 or so. Oh, it could also be a Quadra 700 as new as 1993, but I think someone in the advertising department needs to plop a new machine into their picture. How about one of the new charcoal iMac DV models? Since the ad is B&W anyway, it would certainly make the furniture look better. I bet they could even borrow one for free from a local retailer.

Got me an iBook
Last month I revealed my ever-increasing whelmage levels (three months straight I get to annoy everyone with the non-word "whelmage") regarding the new laptop. Well I guess I could not be more whelmed because the day after actually touching one, I phoned in an order to two retailers, with the first one to deliver getting the sale. I was astounded to return from MacCamp that very next Monday to an answering machine message recorded Friday that PowerMax had come through in ONE day!
Now my MasterCard has been thoroughly shotgunned to the tune of $1599 for the unit, $307 for the 128 megs RAM (inc. shipping), and yet to come, another $99 for the AirPort card and finally, $299 for the AirPort transmitter for my primary Mac. Whew. $2304 grand and glorious total. I better work my butt off to pay down that card or the interest will hurt worse. Oops, I forgot, another $140 for two copies of Timbuktu so I can actually control the main Mac from the iBook while in a different part of the house.
That will let me do my email without creating a separate Eudora folder on the laptop, a mail-management nightmare reserved for traveling.
Meanwhile, I have an Ethernet cable snaking out the upstairs window, in the dining room window, and across the floor. Good thing there's no one else here to trip over it.
Even though I have become spoiled by a two-monitor system (totalling 2048 wide by 768 deep), the 800x600 screen works very well. The quality of the color and sharpness of the image is first-rate. In a very sunny environment things get washed out and hard to see, but so does a conventional CRT monitor.
I got Blue(berry) but I wish I had gotten orang(erine). All I would need is a little Sharpie and every Halloween I would have an appropriate and proper iMac'o'lantern. Instead it is best thought of as BlueBaby Blue, the color for the hypoxia-afflicted among us. (Maybe that color should come with a "lack-of-AirPort".) (Sorry. It's Halloween.)
Remember the Dvorak anti-iBook rant I referred to in a previous column? In honor of that I named the hard drive "Makeup Kit."
If you have long fingernails, I can state from experience that you will not be able to type on the iBook keyboard unless you develop a technique of typing with the nail tips. Although mine are normally longer than most men's, for Halloween this year I grew them out to almost 1/2 inch, which is longer than most women's. I simply could not use the keyboard on this thing. (Conventional keyboards became difficult too, but not unusable.) They're gone now and it's nice to type again without making dozens of errors. Those of you buying iBooks, or any PowerBook for that matter, will have to keep that in mind.

Timbuktu
This application goes back a long time. I remember running it on my Plus in the late '80s. Its purpose is to allow one Mac to control another over a network. The new version allows so much more: control another machine over the Internet, control a Windows machine with a Mac, and vice-versa, local net or worldwide. Amazing technology.
So I sign onto the Netopia site and buy a 2-pack for $139.95. After the appropriate credit-card hoops, I hit download and 5.1 megs later, I have a fully functioning, ready-to-install disk image of the program. I install it on the upstairs G3, restart and go downstairs and plug in the iBook's Ethernet cable. Mounting the HD via AppleShare, I copy the disk image to the iBook and run the installer.
Back upstairs to give full control access to Anyone (the least possible security) on the desktop machine, I then connect the iBook to the G3 and there it is. My upstairs machine is now under remote control. I open Remote Access and connect to Imagina. I check email, and send an attachment. I launch Netscape and view web pages. Because the iBook monitor is smaller (800x600 vs. 1024x768) the window scrolls to accomodate the difference when I approach the edge. But what about the 2nd monitor?
On the edge of the Timbuktu window, which contains the desktop of the other Mac, is an icon that hints of a split screen with an arrow. I click it and yep, there is the other monitor. That is how I switch screens on a two-monitor system. Slick as can be, and more convenient than simply requiring an overall scroll 2048 pixels wide.
Other options include displaying the remote screen in black and white for faster redraw. While not necessary on an ethernet network, Timbuktu is also capable of doing the same kind of control over a modem so you will want to do anything you can to reduce bandwidth demands. There is a noticeable slowdown compared running the desktop machine directly, but since it's a 233-GHz G3, and the iBook is a 300, it's nothing I can't live with.
If you set up a home or office Mac to do modem access, be sure you set up password security or anyone will be able to get in and control your machine. And that leads to the sensitive point: the AirPort system will expose your LAN to anyone with an iBook and a desire to break in, from a car parked out in the street or the office next door (limit declared to be 150 feet). It's inconvenient, sure, to use passwords, but the alternative is exposure to a thief or destructive cracker.
When I do get my AirPort system, a friend in Cypherpunks will come over with a similarly configured iBook and try to break in to my system. Macs are supposed to be crack-proof; we will find out just how true that is and report back in a few months.

OS9 Sucks Bigtime
I hope you heeded my warning to stay away from OS9 -er- "MacOS 9." At MacCamp last month I got ahold of the final pre-release version and well, Apple's "Plan 9" is definitely NOT ready for prime time. Late-night cable, maybe, but if you depend on your Mac to do anything useful, you won't be doing it under this OS for some time.
What dies? well, on my G3 currently running 8.6: Suitcase8, ATM, Type Reunion, MacCast (formerly MacAmp), PowerBar (orphaned and never to be upgraded), Virex 6.0 and Norton FileSaver 5.0 (Norton Disk Doctor works fine.). Yikes! Plenty more incompatibilities are listed on the sites that track them, as well as current versions of all released software (www.macintouch.com, www.macfixit.com, www.tidbits.com, www.versiontracker.com, among others). The CD includes an updater for AppleWorks to 5.0.3; no older version of ClarisWorks will run under it. And get this: Once you update AppleWorks, it won't be able to run under anything older than OS9! Forget about keeping 8.x on another volume to fall back on because your updated apps won't work and you'll have to keep two versions of everything you update. Then when you routinely double-click a document, the wrong version may try to open and fail.
I think the only people who will have little trouble with 9 will be those with brand new Macs and no older software, or enthusiasts who always try out the latest stuff. But even they will have problems when they buy new applications -- one Macintouch reader tried doing it the right way: Clean install of OS9, then clean install of his applications. After a while the machine became progressively more unstable until things got so bad Norton was hanging! The culprit: our old nemesis ObjectSupportLib had been reinstalled. If you thought it was bad under 8, it's hell under 9.
Things are at the point now that you should always open the Extensions Folder after installing or updating ANY software and make sure it hasn't been put in there again. Only if you are still running System 7 should you keep ObjectSupportLib around. You will not see it in the Extensions Manager.
Note: A Macintouch reader suggested installing a folder in your Extensions Folder called ObjectSupportLib, which should prevent the 3rd-party installers from putting in the real one. Brilliant idea, and one I am now routinely doing whenever I visit a client.
A week later the official final store-buyable version turned up on my doorstep, coincidentally the same day the thing went on sale nationally. October 24, Sunday, Adobe posted an OS9-only version of ATM and ATM Deluxe (4.5.2). Of course the place it needs to be, on the CD, won't happen until the next pressing, or later. You handful of remaining non-online Mackers will just have to wait to install Plan 9 until you are dragged, kicking and screaming, into what is no longer being referred to as "cyberspace," if ever. You like your old Mac? Does it fill your needs? Ignore the hype and stay with the system software that works.
OSX? It is to laugh.

Finding Specialty Software
Need a package geared to medical practice? Educational language and cultural studies? Try the Apple Guide to Software Titles, available on CD or at their site. Categories in the Guide are:

Science and Engineering
Each of these categories is broken down further into horizontal and vertical markets (where appropriate).

No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.

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