Macking 91

Don't Bother with QuickBooks 5
One of the most anti-Mac companies out there is Intuit. I think they secretly hate us and are doing what they can to force people over to Microsoft.
The new version of QuickBooks for OSX is turning out to be a turkey: an old one, aged in the basement among spiders and dust soaking in the brine of leaky sewer systems. Reports are stacking up at Macintouch and the salient points are:
1) Data files are not compatible with Windows. You can't send your data to your accountant unless they are also running a Mac.
2) Still no payroll tables. They send you to Aatrix for $129/year. They are available for the Microsoft version, albeit at a higher cost than Aatrix.
3) The program is unchanged from version 4, which is several years out of date compared to the Windows version. There is no file-sharing between users, no way to email an invoice, not even a standard field for a contact's email address.
4) They will probably even eliminate the ability to run it on Virtual PC! They have already redesigned the TurboTax installer so it won't install under VPC, so it is an easy assumption that the next Windows version of QuickBooks won't either.
In short, it's nothing more than a minimal carbonization of an obsolete version and the only reason it exists is because they got pissed at seeing MYOB's AccountEdge win over more than half of the Mac bookkeeping market.
The final proof of their hate-Mac ideology is in Canada: Intuit bought the Canadian arm of MYOB and promptly shut down the Mac division entirely. Even Microsoft isn't that blatant.
I know I have bought my last copy of Quicken (which was bundled with my iBook) and if I need to ever upgrade I will switch to the home version of MYOB.

OS9 Drivers
Ran into a TiBook recently that I could not boot from the Norton 7 CD. The owner had removed Classic from it entirely, and had reformatted the drive for a fresh install of 10.2. In the Disk Utility, which is used for reformatting your hard drives, there is a check box that says "Install drivers for OS9." These drivers are needed for the drive to be accessible when running from OS9; otherwise it simply won't appear on the desktop and Norton won't be able to work on it.
If you ever have reason to reformat your hard drive, be sure this box is checked, even if you plan on never booting under 9. Some day you may need a tech who will.

Fresh Meat for OSX
FreshMeat is a site that has supplied source code and applications for Unix and Linux users for years. This month they unveil a section dedicated to OSX. This has been a great resource for those obscure and hard-to-find utilities for others; now we Mackers can play.

$1500
I have been haranguing clients and readers alike for years about the importance of backing up - your personal data at least, if not your entire hard drive.
Want to know what it costs to use DriveSavers to recover a dead volume? It's $1500 as one unhappy client found out when his drive spontaneously died one day. He had no choice in the matter; it contained medical records and billing information about the entire practice. For this he got five CDs containing the contents of the drive, 80% of which was recoverable, and included the most important files. Then he still needed a backup drive.
Now you have a number to keep in mind. Here are some other numbers: DAT drive from www.dattech.com: $550 or so for a refurbished tape drive capable of storing from 4 to 8 gigabytes per tape. Copy of Retrospect, the needed (but not bundled) software to use the tape drive: $179. Total: Less than $1500. Or, new 40GB DDS-4 including Retrospect: $899, also less than $1500.
Cost of an external FireWire drive, 120 gigabytes, from LaCie or Maxtor: $269. Copy of Retrospect Express to manage your backup: $49. PocketDrive from LaCie, needs no external power supply: $399 for 60 GB or $199 for 20 GB.
Cost of manual backup by burning a CD-ROM using your own CD burner, included with most Macs since the Snow iMac and the early G4s: 39 cents for the CD. Cost to buy an internal CD burner to replace the read-only drive in older Macs? $199 or less. All of these are way less than $1500.
Just keep meditating on that $1500 figure. You will start backing up and do it as often as you need to should your drive die unexpectedly, as they almost all do.
But if you don't do it and need to recover lost data, a company called Data Recovery Group, (888) 462-3282, doesn't cost as much as DriveSavers and probably does just as well. Do you feel lucky?

Attention, eMac Owners
According to Charles DeVore, writing in PMUG Mouse Tracks, Apple is having a hard time with the eMac's video display. The screen starts to display what Apple calls the "Raster shift problem" which causes the bottom third of the screen to go black. Static on the rest of the screen renders it immediately useless. Apple's fix has been to replace most of the unit's parts, but a few have seen the problem return within 90 days.
His advice, which I absolutely agree with, is to immediately purchase an AppleCare contract. It's only $150, which is less than any part of an out-of-warranty repair. I have always recommended AppleCare for laptops, but if you want to foil the Murphy chip in your computer, get AppleCare for any Mac you buy. The Murphy chip knows when your warranty ends. There's one in every electronic device, and a Murphy cog in every mechanical device, and you can't remove it.

Pocket Drives
I don't mean the big 20 - 60 gig LaCie Firewire drives, I mean the little solid-state RAM drives. Barely larger than a pocket whistle, they hold from 32 megabytes to 128 or more. I got a 128 at Fry's recently for $89 and then saw in their ad a deal for the 64-meg model for, after rebate, $5. Keep reading those ads; you never know what you'll find. (The same 128 is $139 in the latest MacMall catalog. I checked other prices and they are almost all higher than they should be.)
It is a great tool for those who need to move small files around quickly between non-networked Macs as well as Linux and Microsoft computers. The devices are hard-formatted in DOS format, which all three platforms can read, but be careful. I was using mine to move the Eudora mailboxes between my iBook and my G4 and the G4 was running OS9. Now version 5.2 of Eudora is Carbonized, meaning the same app will run under both 9 and X. But the traditional forked file system (data fork and resource fork in the same document as well as all applications) that the Mac has been using since 1.0 is gone in X. The problem with a forked file system is when you try to move it into unfamiliar territory, like a DOS disk (including Zip and CD-R) you can be forked yourself.
In this case, I found a folder called "Resource Forks" in with my mailboxes and they wouldn't open in Eudora! It said that it didn't appear to be a mailbox.
To fix it, I had to reboot into OS9 and reopen Eudora, at which point it could read the mailboxes. I had to open each one, which added back the missing resource fork, which X supposedly doesn't need, thus enabling the files to work under OSX again.
I have since not had much trouble with the device; copying Laserwriter 8 between Macs without destroying it, moving JPEGs and MP3s easily. And it fits so well in the pocket (unlike the PocketDrive which would require the pocket of a coat to carry comfortably).
I finally discovered that the formatting isn't hard-coded and the device could be easily reformatted as a Mac HFS+ volume using Apple's Disk Utility, and all my problems went away. Of course now it can't be read on Windoze computers.

Beating the DVD Region Coding
In past columns, I have written about the MPAA's greedy system to limit playing of commercial DVDs to their country of release. You can't play a British release (Region 2) on a North American (Region 1) player.
While it is possible to configure your Mac's player to accept a non-US region, most people want to watch DVDs on their TV with a regular player. I discovered a US-based retailer, 220 Electronics, is somehow able to buy and ship modified players to the US, possibly bringing them in from China.
I doubt China cares one whit about the wishes and desires of the MPAA. If you would also like to thumb your nose at the MPAA and import your own DVDs from amazon.co.uk then visit 220 Electronics and order up a player. I got three from them; one for me and the others for friends. You can even save 5% when buying in quantity. Of course I learned two weeks later that I had paid the highest possible price for the unit and a longer Google search for "Region-Free DVD Players" would have shown me the alternatives.
Speaking of DVDs, I finally found a copy of the iDVD Enabler released by Other World Computing and ordered destroyed by Apple. It was posted to Usenet in the Comp.sys.mac area.

New Mac Repair Shop
Doug Forman, one of the six people who came to the first meeting of what became the Portland Mac Users Group back in 1984, has opened a new shop in Vancouver. Doug was the only one at the meeting who knew anything about the new computer, because he had been managing a Computerland and already worked with Apple II and Lisa.
In 1988 he opened MacShop/NW, which he ran for four years, selling it in 1992. MacShop/NW is still in business, located just off I-5 in the Oregon Business Park II. Part of the deal was a ten-year(!) noncompete agreement which just ended.
Doug's specialty will be general service and repair like me, but he is also MS-certified and a Linux maven. He will be the one to call if you have problems with a mixed network or want to set one up. He can also help you deconstruct a Windows-only operation and convert it to a Mac and Linux system, with Windows kept only where absolutely needed. His store is called CompuDoc, located at 3801 Main Street, phone 360-992-1088 or email doug@compu-doc.us.
Welcome back, Doug.

THE SEAGATE THEFT
(A guest addition to my column from The Outrage newsletter.)
What's the difference between a common thief and an investment banker?
Investment bankers are much richer.
While ordinary thieves steal cars, or TVs, or break into banks, financiers steals entire companies. But the object in all cases is the same; get money by taking it from innocent victims.
Disc drive manufacturer Seagate Technologies is a case in point. The story is quite simple; two years ago Seagate's management, along with a number of financing outfits, stole the company from public investors, like you and me. Today, they started selling the company back to us. In the meantime, despite the worst technology market in the last couple years, the gang managed to put about $5 billion into their pockets.
How did they do this? Did they make better products? Did they hire better people? Hell no! What did they do to earn $5 billion dollars? Simple enough; with the help of a Board of Directors that failed to protect the public shareholders, they bought the company for a song -- and now, after waiting a decent interval, they're simply selling it back to the naive public -- for a tidy $5 billion profit. The main change they seem to have made is to fire 45,000 workers. And, thanks to the board, public investors who knew they were being had were forced to sell.
(Seagate management, lead by CEO Stephen Luczo, will make about a billion on this scam; the rest of the spoils are divided among the financiers, including Silver Lake Partners, Texas Pacific Group, JP Morgan partners, and August Capital.) Put somewhat differently, the investors paid less than $2 per share; the new (public) investors will be paying $12 per share. Showing that even the greediest pigs can never get enough, the investment group took another $461 million in dividends out of the company between the time they stole it and the resale to the public.
In November of 2000 the current owners did a leveraged buyout of Seagate; the board of directors let them have it for about $1.7 billion, but the company had about $800 million in cash, bringing the real price to less than one billion dollars. In selling the company back to a gullible public, aided by Wall Street sales people, the company is now being valued at close to $7 billion, despite the fact that the market for technology shares has tanked during the last two years. Most amazing is that, due to financing sleight of hand, they are able to reap this windfall despite the fact that the total value of Seagate has actually fallen from $15 billion to the current $7 billion figure. How so? They gave the original Seagate owners the company's entire stake in another company, Veritas, which, of course, turned out to be virtually worthless.
For those of us with a pro-business philosophy, it's time to start making a sharp distinction between legitimate business people, who create value, and managers and financiers who simply steal money.
RAGEBACK!
Is the Seagate saga a story of theft or legitimate business? Your own comments are invited.
OUTRAGEOUS QUOTE!
It seems to me that such swine (big businessmen) were and are my enemies even more plainly than the Communists not only because they devoted themselves to robbing me, but also and more importantly because their intolerable hoggishness raised the boobery in revolt, and the ensuing revolt threatened to ruin me even more certainly.
-- HL Mencken

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.)