Macking 60

Macking Five Years
Five years (human years, that is)! That is how long Bits has been running this column. Almost an eternity in computer years. Remember how much web surfing you were doing in 1995? Not much, I bet. That long ago you could have reserved a bunch of cool valuable domain names like cars.com, business.com, fun.com, store.com, sales.com, help.com and almost any of the generic verbs and nouns that are selling for as much as $7 million now.
The less imaginative were reserving corporate names in hope that when the corporations realized that they wanted their own domain that they would have to pay big bucks to buy it back from the first registrant. Little did they know that they were merely contributing to higher employment for lawyers.
No, I didn't think of it, either.

Save this info
It took a letter to the Oregonian to remind me of the particulars of a particularly dirty Microsoft trick. I never referenced it in previous columns because I did not have the exact info. To quote the correspondent, "In April 1998, the Los Angeles Times reported that Microsoft planned to hire public-relations firm Waggener Edstrom to contract individuals to write letters to their local papers. They were to provide simulated, and paid-for, 'personal' testimonials of their experience with the software monopolist and its products."
When I first read this, everyone I knew also read about it and we knew that any letter that appeared, ever after, favoring MS was, at best, suspect. But time has gone by and people forget. Keep it in mind the next time you read anything from a supposed individual defending Microsoft. It may be real, but then it may not.

Eudora at risk too
Of course, not the Mac version, just the Windows version. There is a way to bury a file-executable within what appears to be a harmless web link in a Eudora email message. Although the link looks like this: http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/04/26/hrc.townhall/, it really contains this: <file:///c:/eudora/attach/stealth.lnk>http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/04/26/hrc.townhall/, which could then promptly trash your C drive. I wonder what would happen if I named my hard drive C and put in the appropriate folders. Oh, that's right, nothing. Because it depends on an .exe file which would be downloaded into the Eudora attachments folder, your Mac is safe because .exe files do not, can not, run on Macs.
But let's revel in our security only briefly, because AppleScript also provides a security risk. Since the Finder can be scripted, all someone would have to do is write a script that would tell the Finder to move the System Folder into the trash, move the Applications Folder into the trash, empty trash and say OK and Continue to the dialog boxes that appear. Since you can't delete a running system folder not everything would be deleted, but a lot of what is in there could be. You would have to actually launch the script for things to happen, but a script disguised as a jpeg image could fool a lot of people.
Other scripts could move your applications or documents folder to the trash and delete. Or move the system folder in there and restart, saying OK to the warning dialog box. Then your Mac would not start up until you booted from a CD and hauled the system folder out of the trash.
This is not news, believe me, to the kind of people who would do such a thing.
Disabling AppleScript by turning it off in the Extensions Manager would protect you completely from this kind of trick, but then you would lose anywhere from a little to a lot of functionality. You could try it and then go about your Macking normally and see if anything you do requires scripting. Most of you don't.
This information was sent me from Peacefire via the Risks digest. Quoted:
Peacefire has discovered a security hole in all versions of Eudora mail for Windows, that can allow a hacker to execute code on a user's machine, by sending the user e-mail and having them click on a link:
http://www.peacefire.org/security/stealthattach/
(For example, a Eudora user would see this message with the URL above made into a hyperlink so that you can click on it and load it into your browser. Using the "stealth attachment" security exploit, you can force code to run on the user's machine when they click on the link. Don't worry, *this* message is safe :-) But you can go to the above URL and request a "demonstration mail" to be sent to you.)
If you want to try it yourself, follow the above link and then read the rest of the info at Peacefire. If a Mac virus like this appears you won't read about it here first (unless you never read anything else) but you could find it immediately at Macintouch or MacFixIt.

OSX: A breather
According to a release from Apple, the final version 1.0 of MacOSX (how's that for a convoluted version number?) will not be available until 1/1/01. This means that none of you should even think about installing it until 2002. There should be at least 5 bug-fix updates and one major revision, plus a complete user-interface redesign before it becomes ready for the average Macker. Maybe by then Apple will come up with a stable version of OS9, but don't count on it. Stick with 8.6 indefinitely.

OSX: Bad As I Feared
As more info about the functions of this OS leak out, ever more reasons to avoid it become apparent. When Apple admitted that both the Apple menu and the Applications menu (each on the opposite side of the menubar) were being eliminated in favor of a "dock" at the bottom of the screen, I thought "This is Windows." Then they further announced that disks and volumes won't show up on the right side of the desktop but will require you to click on a "Computer" icon on the left side of the screen! This is absolutely how Windows works - and NeXTstep as well.
Now a company called SigSoftware has released a free application that will add an Apple menu to the right side of the OSX screen that you can add your own aliases to. Okay, cool, I expect that people will add all kinds of utilities to make OSX more Maclike, but get a look at the installation instructions from the web site:
After downloading, Classic Menu should be installed from within OS X as follows:

• Open a terminal window in Terminal.app (located in System: Administration:).
• Navigate to the directory in which you placed the classicmenu.tar.gz file using the cd command.
• Use the command tar -xzf classicmenu.tar.gz to extract the files.
• Check a new directory named Classic Menu 1.0 was created using the ls command.
• Close the terminal window and open the newly-created Classic Menu 1.0 folder in the Finder.
• If the Finder has not noticed the newly-created folder, log out and log in again.

OS9 Updaters
Apple has released some firmware (EPROM) updaters for the iBook, iMac, and new PowerBook. Meant for users of OS 9.0.4, one of the features offered is the ability to boot off of an external USB or FireWire hard drive.
This is actually useful.
If you have one of the new models running 9, go to Apple's site and download these updaters. Be sure you are running 9.0.4 as well; that version fixes some of the problems with 9.
But it is still not a reason to upgrade if your Mac is capable of running 8.6.

Don't Perform All Firmware Updates
G4 owners are finding that the Apple-released G4 Firmware update disables certain PCI cards, requiring an update to them which may not be available. Before you do a firmware update (you'll know) always check with the manufacturer of any non-Apple devices, like PCI cards, that you own to make sure they will be compatible.
About the only firmware update I recommend unequivocally is the one released for version one of the iMac. It is needed to take advantage of many updates to certain USB drivers and proper support of OS 8.6. If your iMac has never been updated you are probably running 8.1 which is okay unless you get a program that requires 8.5 or later, but do install the update.

Tipworld is back!
Tipworld is an email newsletter that sends you a daily tip in the mail. I have reprinted useful ideas from them in previous issues, but they have been out of production for the last year or so. There are a hundred other subjects to subscribe to on the Topica site (also at the Tipworld link). To get you going, here is a recent tip.
Don't forget the basics in the fabulous Macintosh world view: Your monitor screen is called a DESKTOP for a reason. In the real world, we all have different ways of maintaining ours: some cluttered, some neat and tidy. These days, there's a lot more stuff flying onto our computers in the form of email attachments, file downloads, and more. Try using your desktop as a kind of holding zone for all the new stuff. Here are a couple of ways:

THE NEAT APPROACH
Put a folder (or folder alias) called Inbox on your desktop, open it in the Finder and drag it to the bottom of the screen, thereby making a Pop-Up Folder. Using your email and browser preferences, direct all incoming attachments and downloads to this location. Now, with an occasional click on the Inbox tab at the bottom of your desktop, you can see if anything new has arrived and sort (or delete) it accordingly.

THE MESSY APPROACH
Just select View, View Options, and then check Keep Arranged By Kind. When you close the dialog box, your Mac will make quick work of reorganizing your pigstop--I mean, "desk"top, sorting drives first, aliases next, then folders, then documents. Now if you set your email and browser preferences to direct all incoming attachments to the Desktop, you'll quickly notice new arrivals as more icons stack up on the desk. Then you can toss or file these incoming goodies as necessary. The Arranged Desktop is a little high maintenance, but for some, it's a good way to stay in touch with new arrivals--especially for people who get a great deal of incoming attachments.

MacAlly Keyboard/Mouse Problems
Users of these USB mice and keyboards may notice that the mouse freezes when you wake a sleeping iMac or G4. The company knows about the problem and is working on a fix. Basically, it's a timing issue between the keyboard and the device. When the Mac wakes to the mouse click, the fact that the Mac is awake is not resent to the mouse, which still sleeps. Workaround is to awaken a sleeping Mac by pressing a key on the keyboard, not clicking the mouse. If the mouse freezes, unplug and replug it to fix.
Another issue is the Mac restarting after a shut down. This is caused when a powered device (Zip drive, scanner, etc.) is plugged into the USB port on the keyboard. The fix is to not do that. Plug into a USB hub or directly into the Mac instead. A small unpowered device may be plugged into the extra USB port on the keyboard.

iMovie News
O'Reilly Books is publishing "iMovie - The Missing Manual" by David Pogue. $20 at better tech bookstores, or less at Amazon.

Try Finding 8.6
It is getting really difficult to find it or 8.5 or 8.6 CDs now. All of the usual retailers (MacResQ, Sun Remarketing, and PowerMax) are out of stock and are not finding replacement copies. You are probably going to have to look on Ebay where copies are going for about $60. Log onto ebay and sign up as a buyer, then visit PayPal and sign up to use their free electronic funds transfer service.
Ebay is great. I just bought a difficult-to-find Apex DVD player with a secret menu that disables Macrovision and regional codes. This is a very useful feature as DVD fans know. I have also sold items there. You will need a current browser to participate (4.0.6 or later Netscape or equivalent IE) but you can buy and sell almost anything.

Real Estate Investment Software
(from MacInTouch) RealData's Real Estate Investment software tracks and analyzes portfolios of residential and commercial income property, claiming the ability to "produce outstanding presentations quickly and easily." Priced at $495, it runs on Mac OS and Windows.

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.)