Macking 59

Microshaft Gets What's Coming
Three Cheers to the (Obstruction of) Justice Department! This branch of our government, believed by many to be thoroughly corrupted by the current administration, finally did something right. As of deadline time, it looks like they will order Microsoft broken up into two or more companies, one for systems and the other for applications.
I guess it will then be up to Mr. Bill to decide which one he wants to keep. Of course, appeals will stall off any final action until at least three more generations of hardware and software have passed, but at least the message will have been sent.
While most of my conservative associates, and the public commentators, deplore this as just another screwup from the Feds, I see it as Sturgeon's Law in action. A long time ago, science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon was being interviewed and the reporter asked him, "...but Mr. Sturgeon, isn't science fiction just a bunch of crap?"
(The actual conversation is long lost in the mists of history but that was the general idea.)
(I expect that within two days of this being published, someone will locate the actual interview on the Web and email it to me.)
His response: "My dear sir, 95% of everything is crap." That became known as Sturgeon's Law. Now think of the world around you: television programming - maybe 5% is worthwhile. Comic books? Software titles? Novels? Housing developments?
If I were a truly blind religious Macker I would say "and Apple is the 5% of the computer industry" but I won't. Let's instead say that Windows is 85% poor programming, design and implementation and 15% brilliant innovation due to the fact that a company can't hire that many programmers and suppress the talent and originality in all of them. Likewise, the 15% or so that truly sucks about the Mac platform keeps me in business and the 85% that is truly wonderful keeps people buying Macs. The remaining 5% difference? Well, let's try to not split infinitives here.
But those who are not hardcore conservatives will see that breaking up M$ will be a good thing. Even though the stock market will suffer for a while, the fact is, a company dedicated to making Microsoft applications that will no longer be motivated to make only Windows products, or to make products for other platforms inferior to the Windows versions, means that we should start seeing more good Mac products from Microsoft. Hell, they may even start developing Office for Linux and cement their domination of the office market even more than it is now.
And a company that focuses on operating systems alone, Microsoft Systems, would be interested in making sure that any and all developers will be able to easily integrate their applications into the Windows environment. Why, they might even publish a list of standards and requirements called "Inside Windows" that will give all programmers and hardware developers the kind of guidelines Mac programmers have had to work with since "Inside Macintosh" was first published in 1984.
And real competition might motivate Apple to keep ahead of the game. Suppose Microsoft Systems were to develop a version of Windows that worked well, looked better and crashed less than OSX, and ported it to Motorola chips? Users could switch between MacOS and MacWindows just as easily as we can now switch between MacOS and LinuxPPC and, for that matter, VirtualPC.
As an optimist I can't help but think that the breakup of M$ will be good for the world in general, and the "Justice" Department will finally get its long-overdue 5%, which it so desperately needs after Waco, Ruby Ridge, and now Elian.

GeoPort, the Modem from Hell
Recently I commented on a problem in which a user found that their Mac could not keep up with their typing when online, writing email or filling out fields in their web browser. I had completely forgotten about the GeoPort, a synthetic modem (that is, a hardware device that offloaded all the modulation/demodulation to the internal processor) was installed instead of the Global Village Teleport, a proper modem. The problem affected many 6400 and 6500 Macs.
The only cure is to replace the GeoPort with a real modem. For the excruciating details, visit http://www.compunerdz.com/d/geoport.html.

SGI Flat Screen Monitor
Oh, the toy of toys, the Apple Cinema Display. Twenty-two inches of digital flat screen. It'll set you back $4 grand, plus around that much more to get a G4 Mac to drive it. But there is an alternative.
Silicon Graphics was (is still?) blowing out factory-seconds of their $3,000 (formerly $3700) flat-screen display for $1410 including shipping and the necessary PCI card to drive it, and I got one. You should have seen the radiated green envy at the last MacCamp!
Any PCI Mac will do, not just the G4. The only negative side to this gorgeous display is the fact that it is mapped at 110 dpi, which means your inches, normally assumed to be 72 dpi, are reduced to 65% of normal. You better have good reading glasses to see it, but the sharpness and clarity of the 1600x1024 display makes it worth it.
I used to have a pair of 17" Apple monitors, effective desktop of 2048x768. Sure, a little width is lost, but the added depth means two full pages, side by side, and no monitor edges to divide the images. If you got a big tax refund or just like nice toys, stop by SGI's page and see if they have any left.
What is really entertaining is the fact that I am now not using the built-in video port. If I were truly nuts I could get one of the Apple Studio Displays, the 14" flat displays that sell for about $1100, to put next to this one. But no, I am not that nuts. Besides, I've gotta pay off my new Color Palm IIIc, which I mentioned last month.

Ethernet to older Mac
A reader (whose name I lost, sorry!) writes,
I thought that you might pass the tip along to your readers about using an Ethernet crossover cable for their new Macs. I don't think you've ever mentioned it, and I actually came across the info by accident. I had always thought you had to use a hub to link Macs via Ethernet.
Most people I know buying new Macs are spending extra $$ for USB Zip drives strictly to transfer files. All they need is an $8 cable (PC Heidens, 25' cable, $8.50) if their old Mac is Ethernet-ready like mine.
You'll probably want to warn them about the AppleTalk and printer problem, though, but to me the price is worth the pain, and it's only a problem with a serial printer. Anybody using a laser printer won't see it.
I did mention some of that last month, but to clarify: set AppleTalk to Ethernet in the AppleTalk control panel on the new Mac. Only new models will let you do that when the port is open, that is, no other ethernet devices at the other end. Then plug your crossover cable into both Macs. Start up the older one and set AppleTalk (or the older Network control panel) to Ethernet and it should see the newer Mac and accept the setting. Turn on file sharing on both, or at least on the one you want to copy from. It isn't necessary to have sharing in both directions unless you want to move active extensions across the line. Strangely enough, if you try to copy a complete system folder by mounting the volume on the target machine, that is, mount the older Mac's HD on the newer Mac's desktop and copy FROM, you can't do it. There will be a "file in use" message and the copy will fail. But if you mount the newer Mac on the older one's desktop, you can copy the same system folder TO the newer Mac and not get the file-busy warning.
The problem mentioned above with serial printers occurs when you forget to turn AppleTalk off on the older machine when you are done copying. When you unplug the ethernet cable and restart it, AppleTalk will default to the printer port, which will cause any serial printers plugged in to start printing pages of garbage codes, and fail to print anything you want it to.

Erratum
In last month's issue I commented that OS9 is not supported on NuBus Macs (the x100 series). According to reader Mark Buchholz, OS9 is indeed supported, and there is a TIL file at Apple that discusses the issue.

First major attack on FireWire
Visit Semiconductor Business News to see a report on the newly-released standards for Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 chips. SBN is a daily webzine for the semiconductor industry.
The new specifications will allow USB chips to attain speeds up to 60 megabits per second, 40 times greater than the current 1.1 specs allow. This is bad news for the FireWire standard, which has not made it much outside of the digital video industry, except for a few peripherals from hard-drive manufacturers and scanners. This is because Intel is reluctant to implement it as a standard on their motherboards, partly because they hate the idea of paying a license fee, however small, to Apple (which invented the standard).
The new USB 2.0 standards won't start showing up in volume until at least the end of the year, but manufacturers are hastening to implement them, starting with NEC in September. No word yet from Apple as to when or how they will be applied to Macs, but the info was passed to me via a subscriber to the MacMarines mailing list, so it's no secret to the Mac industry.
Since the only real problem with USB has been its glacial performance compared to SCSI, superior only to ADB and serial connections, this update could secure USB's place in the entire computing industry. Since any device designed for USB/Windows will work on Macs with nothing required beyond writing a driver, the faster devices will become available to us as soon as Apple starts including the new chips in new Macs or figures out a way to upgrade older ones. Stay tuned.

Me and ComputerBits on Radio
For the second time this year, on 4/30, I put in a guest appearance talking about Macs on Pacific Solutions' weekly radio show on KOTK-AM, 1080 at 2pm. The show is there to help people solve problems with Windows, but it looks like I may be a monthly regular helping Mackers. I love doing radio, and it seems well received. Listen in, and let them know if you'd like me to bring a regular Mac presence to KTOK. Maybe I will be on the episode following publication of this month's issue, last Sunday in May.
Of course my feelings wouldn't be hurt if KTOK (or someone else) were to offer me a weekly stint of my own. That would be even more fun, and we could get a lot more Macking done in public.

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.)