Macking 70

OSX Notes
On March 24 OSX hit the streets. I got my copy at the demonstration/rollout at the Computer Store, but soon found out that it wouldn't install on my beige G3 desktop due to the fact that some monitor cards and SCSI cards are not supported.
Because I can't play in this pool on my desktop Mac, I put it on my iBook instead. Oh, well, I was hoping it would work on the main Mac, but that's what I get for so severely customizing it.
The company that made the monitor card for my SGI went out of business and an X-compatible replacement costs $300, and then I would have to replace the SCSI-3 card too. Eventually there will be support for 3rd-party cards, but not just yet. I didn't even bother to ask about my USB card.
At the demonstration, Apple techs were present to answer questions and I must say it really looked great. Good looks are not enough, however; in no way should this OS be considered ready for prime time; this release is for you experimentalists and early adopters who don't mind headaches with your fun.

Who Should Buy Now
Anyone who needs to buy OS 9.1 should get X, even if you have no plans to install it. The 9.1 CD is included in the $129 purchase price, normally sold alone for $99. (Fry's was selling the X package for $109 the day after release and now some retailers are charging only $99.) Anyone who has a relatively stock Macintosh, from the Blue & White G3 onward, and is not dependent on legacy software (not 9 compatible) can safely install OSX. Graphics professionals, however, should wait until summer, when Adobe releases "Carbonized" versions of InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. For now, those will run only in the "classic environment."
The way this works is that you must first be running OS9.1. Then, when you do an install of X, any applications that require the older OS will simply launch as a process, meaning you will see the startup sequence normally viewed when booting under 9, except this will take place in a window while X is running. Once the startup is complete, the window will fade into the background, and your screen will look like a normal X screen, until you click on the classic program. Then your menubar will change to the normal OS9 menubar. You will see your Apple Menu Items, the Chooser, etc.
Printing will not be the same. For now, some USB printers may have trouble; RIP (Raster Image Processing) software will not work, meaning you will not be able to print PostScript files to Epson printers, and serial printers won't work at all.
Any PostScript laser printer will be supported under X and will print normally.
If you are running 8.5 or later, Apple recommends a "dirty" install (this still astounds me) of the 9.1 OS. Then, once your system is performing normally, you can install X. A "dirty" install, means just launch the installer while running from the CD-ROM and let it do its thing. A "clean" install, traditionally the safest way to upgrade the system software, means that the previous system folder is disabled and renamed, and a stock new system folder is installed. The user must then move over all appropriate folders, extensions, preferences and panels while deleting those that are obsolete or inappropriate to the new system software. This has always required a degree of expertise.

Booting under 9.1
You will not be required to boot into X unless you want to. For the purpose of using incompatible printers and devices (including Palm synchronization) you must boot into 9.1. This is done through the Startup Disk control panel (9.1) and the System Preferences (X). Until new drivers are released, Palm synchronization, either under Palm Desktop or Now Contact/Up-To-Date, will not work under X. Old serial devices, including those using Keyspan USB-to-Serial converters, will not work until new drivers are released from Keyspan.

Classic (9) Mode
While running under X, you can launch a 9-only application, and you see the OS9 startup sequence, but only if you click the triangle in the window that displays it. Warning: This is a very good way to turn your early iBook or iMac into a IIcx. Even if you have 160 megs RAM, performance slows down to a crawl. Many are recommending that you have at least 256 megs RAM (which is pretty cheap these days) and at least a G4 processor. I agree.

Who Will Have Trouble
The people who will have the most difficult time making the switch will not be Mac beginners, nor advanced users, but those who have been at it for only a year or so and still do not understand how to use drag-and-drop or open programs from the File menu. Those of you who still double-click on things and hope they work should not even consider getting OSX. Even though it will be very easy to learn how the new interface works, you will really need to become more comfortable with the Mac you have now. New users, just getting started, will have a very easy time of it because they won't have to unlearn old habits. But if you still don't quite "get it," and have to struggle even to reach a level of normal comfort with how files and folders are manipulated, skip this upgrade for now.

Ease of Use
Many features have become simpler. PowerBook users who have to make changes to their TCP/IP and Remote Access control panels every time they move from the direct internet connection they use at home (or work) but want to use the modem when elsewhere, will find that the OS now takes care of that for you. You configure a control setting to have the Mac look to see if there is still a direct connection. If it doesn't find one, it looks for an AirPort connection. If it doesn't find one, it then turns on the modem and connects that way. Once you configure it, you can forget about it. This is called "multihoming," and it simply means that it can search for any functioning network on its own.

The Dock
The most-maligned feature of OSX so far has been the dock. Critics say "This is Windows" or "This is UNIX." Well, it certainly ain't Windows, even including the cheap hack Microsoft is foisting upon Intel users with WindowsME PX or whatever the hell they are calling it. No, the Dock is elegantly designed, very configurable, and instantly intuitive. I am quite amazed by how well it works. It is a major improvement over the version demoed in the Public Beta, released last year.
The icons are beautiful. You decide how big you want them, you decide if they should magnify when you hover over them in the dock, you decide the size of the type on the screen. And speaking of type, Suitcase and ATM are no longer necessary. Font management is built in (although I have not located the settings for it yet), including the ability to create sets and open them only when needed. This is great news, because even though Suitcase 9 has its act together, ATM Deluxe is still a piece of dog vomit, possibly the worst Adobe application after PhotoDeluxe - which, hopefully, will not even load or run under X. It's about time that dripping pustule of a Windows port dropped off the face of the earth!
(Note to those of you who use PhotoDeluxe and have removed ObjectSupportLib from your system folder, which it stupidly installs: For only $35 you can instead use GraphicConverter, a shareware program from Europe that is frequently updated, offers many Photoshop-like editing tools and can support any TWAIN-compliant scanner directly. Use Google to locate the download site and read the docs. You'll be glad you did! Otherwise spring for the $99 Photoshop Lite.)

Finder Integration
Many things are integrated into the Finder that were not before. You can view windows the way you always have, or in a view that shows the paths (what is in a folder, and what is in a folder below that) and even previews or plays MP3s and QuickTime movies without having to launch the Movie Player or iTunes! Long filenames, from Windows and Unix files, are now readable, up to 256 characters. About bleeding time, I say to this.

Network utilities
Because the underlying kernel of OSX is UNIX, specifically BSD 4.0, there are many included network tools not previously available except through 3rd-party applications (ping, finger, whois, etc.) and for those who want to learn how to use UNIX directly, a terminal application opens the command-line interface that lets you control the OS directly. There will soon be many books available to teach you how to do this.

Security
A poorly managed UNIX configuration is almost as insecure as a Windows machine, if not more so. The OSX installer sets all of the risky features to OFF. You cannot even log in to root without knowing how, and why you would want to, and so it appears that an OSX Mac will be just as crack-resistant as is an OS9. But you still want a firewall box between you and your DSL or cable modem anyway, even if yours is the only machine plugged into it and Sharing is turned Off. There is still mischief to be made when you have a static IP address and no protection.
But now, guess what, you really can run a web server from your home on your own Mac, although out of all the clients I have visited in the last three years, only one has actually done so. AT&T, of course, prohibits this, unless you buy a busine$$ account. Home DSL, maybe, with limitations.

Alien Psoriasis
Costco stops selling my favorite food items, TV shows I like get cancelled, none of the CDs I buy are hits. Bear this in mind when I remind you how much I hated "Alien Psoriasis" and "Bad Acid" (aka Blue Dalmation and Flower Power), the two new iMac colored cases. Turns out that these are the largest selling models Apple has released to date. And I must admit that they don't look as bad in person as in the original photographs on Apple's web site.

Readable Email Font
Have you noticed the increasing number of emails and web pages that come in a tiny, poorly designed typeface? I was getting increasingly annoyed by this and discovered that the culprit was the Arial font installed by (who else) Microsoft.
This is the default font used by a lot of Pee Cee users, and web pages created in FrontPage.
If you remove all traces of the font from your system, the browsers and email programs will default to some other font, usually Geneva or Monaco, which I prefer. Eudora installs Mishawaka, better looking than Arial, but I still like Monaco. Besides, Arial is a variable-width font and you should always read your email in a monofont because otherwise people's signature lines come out distorted.
When sending email always turn off the special font features and send only plain text unless you know for a certainty that the recipient can read formatted text. Otherwise, your message is filled with formatting codes and is almost unreadable. This is especially important when posting to an email list because some people subscribe to these lists in digest format and the codes make for a real mess. Never choose "Send formatted and plain text both" as an option, because then your message is repeated twice, once as plain and once with garbage codes. AOL users, stay away from 6.0 because it doesn't even give you the choice of plain text.

Sonnett Cuts Prices
In its day, the 7200 was Apple's best selling PCI PowerMac. There are still lots of them around, and users are increasingly dissatisfied with their sluggish performance and non-upgradability. Last year Sonnett, an accelerator manufacturer, designed a PCI card that let the user boost the 7200's speed up to 13 times using a G3 processor on the card and separate memory.
Problem is, a 7200 is worth only about $200 these days, and the cards started at $400. Well, now you can get one for $300, or a faster one for $400, and it's almost worth it. Because memory for the 7200 is quite expensive now, this is worthwhile only if you have already installed a large hard drive in your 7200, and have over 96 megs of RAM. That makes the machine worth the upgrade because you are going to spend more than $400 to replace it, no matter what you buy. But if you need to add RAM at $200 for 64 megs, and add a larger hard drive at $249 for 4 gigs, you might as well just start shopping for a used beige desktop G3, which is going for about $750 at the used-Mac retailers.

Into Birdwatching?
At a party last month, I stumbled onto an ad in a 1995 birdwatching magazine for a bird database called Bird Brain. The ad header said "For Macintosh." So I called the company to see if they still existed and they do. Bird Brain is now up to 5.0 and is designed for you to keep track of every bird you have ever spotted by date, species, location, season, etc. from your own back yard to your field trip to Tierra del Fuego. Bird Brain is $99.95 + $4 shipping for new users, plus $15 for a pre-printed Users Guide (included on the CD so you can print it yourself instead).
The publisher is Ideaform Inc., 908 East Briggs, Fairfield, IA 52556, phone 800-779-7256. They maintain an online store "Birdwatching Dot Com" where you can buy the program and all kinds of other birdwatching products, and heaps of free information.
Glad to see niche market products for Macs still available.
(Speaking of niches, a recent survey by the American Bar Association revealed that 25% of the surveyed firms ran their offices on Macs. You're not alone out there, folks!)

Mafia Cracking Bank Servers
From the EvangeList: This is the price we are paying for using Microsoft products... (http://www.fbi.gov/pressrm/pressrel/pressrel01/nipc030801.htm and http://www.arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/01q1/greathack-1.html)
In short, the FBI announcement confirms that an organized hacker attack on financial institutions has been successful, in 20 (U.S.) states, at least. The attack has been financed and coordinated by the Russian Mafia.
Now, there's more to the story than this (there always is). First off, what's the one commonality in all these attacks? Drum roll please... Microsoft platforms in allegedly every case. Windows NT 4.0, IIS 4.0, and SQL 7.0/7.0 Enterprise.
(signed) Tom Mehle (tmehle@earthlink.net)
People still wonder why Mac users are so zealous of their choice of computer. The world would be a much more technologically advanced place with secure Operating Systems if it was not for the garbage that is Win/xx (or should I say Win/XP). And no, I do not mean that Apple would have led us into bliss, but others would have been able to compete which they currently cannot do.
Use this next time someone criticizes you for choosing Mac over Windows, and forward a copy on to your bank!

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.)