Macking 56

iTools
Apple has been spending too much time reading the Microsoft business plan. Their latest attempt to provide an all-enclosing internet experience, tied to the company and embedded in the OS, is turning out to be a Big-Brotheresque horror show.
iTools, a set of server-side (at Apple) internet tools that require OS9, supposedly give you a place for your web pages and a free email address, much like the Yahoo mail/GeoCities web hosting or Microsoft's Hotmail. But if you put your pages on their site, you may find that you no longer own any of the images or text you put there. Go read the terms of agreement, with which you have no right to disagree, and then pay close attention to this paragraph:
"By submitting or posting content on public areas of iTools, you are representing that you are the owner of such material or have authorization to distribute it. You hereby grant Apple a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise all rights, under copyright, publicity and related laws, in any media now known or not currently known, with respect to any content you post in any public site within iTools."
In short, if you decide to put cutesy pix of your sprogs on your home page, Apple has the right, if not necessarily the desire, to snag those pics for their own advertising campaigns, use them to promote themselves in any way they desire, and you have no recourse. Then after you finish gagging on that, pay attention to the parts about how you cannot post certain information in private emails without violating their TOS (terms of service).
This has generated quite a brouhaha on Macintouch and a special area for discussing the issue, which exploded just after this column's deadline, Feb. 3. The point was made that Yahoo's TOS was equally intrusive until the merge with GeoCities, after which public outcry made them revise the offending paragraph to something more in line with private property and permissions that a reasonable person would expect. I hope that an equal outcry will get this issue resolved before you even read this column. Check with Macintouch to see the current status.
In short, you get much less than you pay for when you opt for a "free" web host. Do yourself a favor: ignore the whole iTools promo and keep your pages, your domain (if any) and your internet access on a local provider who doesn't need to play these kinds of games to keep your business.
Addendum:
After a firestorm of protest and Apple vehemently denying that the iTools TOS were under review, they went and revised them Friday night, 2/4.
To follow the whole saga visit the special pages on Macintouch. To see the whole nasty document, prima facie evidence that Shakespeare was right wrt treatment of lawyers, visit Apple's TOS site.
Revised or not, I will not be using iTools any time in the near future and I would recommend the rest of you stay away as well. Be aware, however, that the terms of service required by any of the free-web-page services look pretty much like Apple's, with few exceptions.
Make life easier on yourself. Join a local internet service provider and host your web pages there. Free is not such a good price, all things considered.

Bye Bye Netscape 3
Some of you are probably wondering what the hell happened to Netscape 3 and also Internet Explorer 3. You keep getting messages that "the certificate has expired" and you should upgrade. Well, that is exactly what happened: the legal version of the Y2K bug.
In this case, neither Microsoft nor Netscape, in negotiating with the people who provide security certification, considered the fact that users might need to keep running those versions after the end of 1999. Now that AOL owns Netscape there is no motivation to release patched versions of 3 for those who cannot use a newer version. And Microsoft - well, why even ask?
Who is stuck? Anyone who is using a Quadra ('040 chip) or older non-PPC Mac must install OS 8.1, the last officially supported version for Quadras. Further, you cannot use any Netscape older than 4.0.6 (4.7 is current) because of the same expiration problem. There is only one version of Netscape for Quadras, 4.0.6 for 68K and I believe that 4.0 of Explorer will run on Quadras but do not know for a fact). Another alternative is iCab, an independently-developed browser from Germany that will work on Quadras, under 7.5.x, and has no certificate problems. Free beta versions are available now; when finished it will cost $29.
(Some of you may say "I don't have a Quadra, I have a Performa." Well remember that Performa is just a marketing term and conveys NO information about the Mac you have. That info is embedded in the model NUMBER, and if it is three digits, you do not have a Mac with a PPC chip - PowerMac - which always sports a 4-digit model number. Some three-digit Perfs are not even Quadras, though; the oldest ones have a 68030 chip or worse. Those should not even be considered as internet machines although they can send and receive email with the right software. Oh, and the term "Centris" was used for a while before Apple settled on the the name Quadra. Same chip family.)
You could try setting your system calendar back to 1999, but it probably won't work because the target web server knows what time it is.
The 3.0 browser will still work, at least for non-financial pages, but the Netscape site is itself locking out users, making it difficult if not impossible to go there and download a new version! Those of you who never changed the Home Page default since installing Netscape, your browser wants to go to that page upon launching. The fix is to go to the Options menu, pick General Preferences and click Blank Page, or type in a different home page location. Note that you cannot change the home page when Blank Page is selected. This will at least let you run the program without having to click through all those Continue buttons.
If your Home Page still cannot be changed, then you must go to the Internet, or Internet Setup, or AICK control panels and change your home page there.
The final solution, unfortunately, is to upgrade your Mac. Since there are a lot of 6100-model PowerMacs around selling for around $200 (stripped; equipped with sufficient RAM and a 256K cache card, around $450) that is probably your cheapest option. Relegate that Quadra to the kids' bedroom or pass it on to someone who does not intend to use the Web. It still will serve as a good word processor and email machine. And plan on running OS 8.1 or 8.6 on that 6100; avoiding OS9 is still a good idea. You can also get a G3 accelerator for a 6100 for just under $300 from Sonnet and Newer Technologies, but if you have to upgrade RAM and get a larger hard drive too it's hardly worth it.

SETI@home
I have joined in with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project. Go to the SETI site and download a control panel so you too can participate. The project takes packets of information from radiotelescope sweeps and analyzes them for any sign of intelligent patterns. The program downloads a packet which you have your computer analyze during downtime. It connects to the Net and uploads the finished packet and downloads a new one automatically, or it can be set to ask you to do it manually. I have been letting mine run on both my G3/233 and my 6100/66 MP3 player. To give you an idea of the relative speeds of the two machines, a packet takes about 22 hours on the G3 and 149 hours on the 6100. (I cut that time to 135 hours by putting the SETI documents on a RAMdisk and putting an alias to replace it in the Preferences folder. Just don't crash or shut down or you will lose the data.) New G4s should beat the pants off of the G3 time. (Note: if anyone is running SETI@home on their G4, please send me your packet time. See next month's column for the best times I have received so far.)
The G3 can run the SETI in the background while you are working with only minor hesitation during your foreground programs. When you need uninterrupted processor time you can just quit the process and relaunch it from the menubar later. In screensaver mode it runs only when nothing else is going on. And yes, the 6100 is completely incapable of playing MP3s while SETI is running!
Afterwards, you also might like to visit YETI@home, the search for the elusive beast in the NW mountains. You won't be able to actually participate, sadly, because (to quote the page): "Coming Soon! Download Version 1.00 of YETI@Home for: Windows, BeOs, OS2, Linux, Amiga Workbench, Atari ST, Altair, TRS-80, Vectrex, Babbage's Difference Engine, Palm Pilot, Sega Genesis and Timex Indiglo (sorry, not available for Macintosh)."

Navigation Services problems
New under 8.5 and later is what Apple calls "Navigation Services," a half-assed attempt to mimic what was done so well under Super Boomerang and now Action Files: give you more control in the Open and Save dialog boxes. I find that Action Find, which enables you to do a Find command while in such a dialog box and display the results within, is blocked out by Navigation Services-enabled windows. Instead, the command-F launches Sherlock, which switches you out of the dialog box, defeating the entire purpose of Action Find.

Letters
Dave Brook writes,
Thanks for your updates. As you may recall I'm not a power user, but I am very disappointed by the amount of bug fix stuff you keep reporting about for new versions of the OS in your articles. Avoiding these kind of problems is why I have stayed away from Windows all these years and it would appear that Apple users are no better off. Am I missing something?
Comparatively, there are a lot fewer problems. I write this column to warn people to watch out for the existing ones, and show ways to keep up with the changes so your own machines have less trouble.
If you doubt how well off we all are, read any of the Windows Assistance magazines, web sites and news feeds.
OS9 is a major change and nobody should upgrade until they are good and ready. Premature upgrading can put you out of commission.
These changes are necessary for OSX which will be the way all Mackers will work in the future. It looks very good so far. Transitions must be made and people are going to have to do what they can to keep up, or understand how to successfully stop upgrading and live with their current software, avoiding pitfalls of introducing new utilities in a system not set to accept them. I do what I can to call attention to potholes. The idea with OS9 is to get most of the changes handled now so that when X comes out the applications will be updated and ready. That's the theory, anyway, but I would not bet on it. Don't even think about switching to OSX until at least three months after release, and then only after talking to experts and experienced users, and reading the usual web pages.
_____
J. Michael Burke, D.C. writes, re: Y2K glitch in Quickbooks 4.0 M12A:
I thought you might find this amusing. There is a minor yet annoying problem with the supposedly Y2K compliant version of Quickbooks for the Mac, version 4.0. (The M12A update is their fix for this relatively quite old, yet latest, Mac version.) Yesterday I noticed when I printed checks and statements with the current date (01/03/00), Quickbooks put an apostrophe ( ' ) before the two zeroes, so the date looked like this: 01/03/'00. I looked at my cancelled checks from 1999, and no apostrophe appeared before the 99 digits.
I called Intuit's tech support number and, to make a long story shorter, after hassling with the customer service rep and the rep's supervisor, I was finally transferred to a real techie without first having to pay their tech support fee (minimum of $40). The tech supporter printed some checks from his Mac and -- lo and behold! -- the same thing happened. He explained that the apostrophe was actually Intuit's cure for the Y2K problem in earlier Mac versions of QB4. In other words, for Mac version 4 to work after 12/31/99 and not cause the entire computer to crash, this extra character was inserted in the year field.
I asked if there was any plan to "fix" their fix. There isn't. Also, no new Mac version of QB is anticipated. "But," said the techie, "you never know."
Prior to speaking with tech support, the customer service supervisor gave me the name and phone number of Intuit's president, Bill Harris, 520-295-3280. I called that number today to lodge a complaint about this annoying problem and Intuit's poor support of the Macintosh platform. Guess what? "Beep, beep, beeeeeep ... the number has been disconnected."
I hope you'll publish this info in your column and perhaps even post it to some web sites. Maybe Intuit will be embarrassed into doing the right thing.
Keep up the great work. I appreciate the info in your columns.
_________
Peter M. B. writes,
I got your name from 'computer bits' and am going to take you up on your offer to give advice.
Here is my present system: Performa 6400, memory 136 MB, Virtual memory disabled, Hard Disk 1.5 GB, available 640 MB, Mac OS 8.5, Netscape 4.08, ISP: Peak; Modem - original with the computer 28.8K. Applications Microsoft Office 98, Quicken, Canvas, printer HP870Cxi
Main use: writing articles, keeping the books, some technical drawings. Future use: more internet usage.
Main drawbacks: extreeeemly slow on the internet (actually just typing this message is so slow I am better off using one-finger typing so I don't get too far ahead of what is on screen); can't print from the Netscape.
What do I do?
get a new external modem?
upgrade to a G3 processor?
new video card?
get a new computer?
buy an insurance policy to protect me against upgrades?
Thanks,
Peter
Even on the slowest modem, you should be getting better performance. Open the folder that contains Netscape and do a GetInfo on it, selecting the Memory option. Boost the Preferred Size to 20480. That should speed it up.
Open the Extensions Folder, locate the PrintMonitor and boost the Preferred Size of its memory option to either 512K or 2048K, whichever is somewhat larger than the Suggested Size. Make the minimum size match the Suggested Size. If you have the HP Print Monitor installed, boost its memory allotment too. Throw out anything that contains the words "Desktop Print..."
Run Norton Disk Doctor, version 4.0.2 or later, on your drive, then run SpeedDisk from the same CD to optimize the drive. If you don't have Norton, get it. The current version is 5.0.2.
Update your OS to 8.6. It is a free upgrade from Apple, a long download, but it fixes a lot of bugs and makes your OS stable just as 8.1 improved things over 8.0.
After all this is done, you can think about getting a 56K Global Village modem to replace the internal one you have now. If you always connect at 26,400 then don't bother. US West has multiplexed your neighborhood phone lines (shoving an increasing number of users down the same pairs) and you will never connect faster no matter what modem you get.
G3 accelerators are available and recommended for your model.
______
Collin Prasch writes,
I finally have my system all set up and running. Here is what I learned about my Epson and printing with USB under OS9:
The Epson Color 1520 printer wants a USB to Parallel cable (not USB to serial) -- get Epson PK-4, but RIP software does not work with USB, it needs to be upgraded.

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.)