Macking 93

X10 Home Automation on Macs
This issue is all about home automation using the X10 protocol. No need to repeat things here, but you do need to know that the software to drive the equipment is available from SmartHome. When you buy the Thinking Home hardware/interface package from X10 ($80) all you get is the software for Microsoft computers, but you can get the Mac controllers for another $40. See SmartHome's Mac area for the rest of the info and to start browsing the entire site to learn what's available. I have some X10 stuff now, and may join in this game before too long. Chuck Coleman, a longtime PMUG member, is an X10 fanatic and his house is a giant robot. I was quite amazed when he showed me what he has done. The whole thing runs off an ancient SE/30 in a closet!

Found the iDVD Patch
Thanks to a correspondent who tracks Usenet, the patch from Other World Computing has been found! I sent it off to everyone who requested it but so far no one has the version of OSX and iDVD that it was designed for. 10.2.4 is too new, and the patch is for iDVD 1.5. But if that's you, or could be, stop by my site and snag it while it is still there. If it works for you please let me know.

No AlBook for Me
I changed my mind about buying the new PowerBook: I discovered a deal-breaker in the form of the external monitor port. The 15" and the 17" PowerBooks all have the same standard DVI port as the original G4 towers, which requires a DVI-to-ADC converter from Apple or Dr. Bott to use with the current Apple displays, but the 12.1" model uses the same miniature VGA port that the iBook does. I didn't know if there was even a way to use it with an external Apple monitor or how much more it would add to the $2879 I was prepared to pay for the AlBook.
But it's only $1799, you say? Nope, with the SuperDrive and a 60 gig HD it's $1995 and on top of that add the cost of AirPort Extreme card and base station, 512Mb memory, and $300 or so for the extended warranty.
If they had only included the proper video port, I could have made the laptop my primary machine and sold off my G4 tower. Maybe the next revision but for now, Apple can count this as a sale not made - as if they care; it is selling like crazy to people who don't need or want an external display.
This all bothers me because I already have the Apple 17" display. The VGA port will support the cheaper VGA TFT displays made by other manufacturers; it's just remarkable that Apple would release a major product that doesn't support its own displays - at least without licensing the converter so a buyer could get one at the same time, thus ensuring more sales of their displays.

I Lied, I Did Get It
A few days after writing the above segment, my order came in and I had a chance to cancel it or not. I told MacForce to find out if it is indeed true that there exists no way to use the Mini-Me PB with an Apple display. After a little net.scouring, they found an expensive adapter ($299 from http://www.gefen.com). Oh, hell, I figured. Go ahead. I got the new PowerBook and will go ahead and get the converter. This means I will probably unload my G4 and the DVI converter I needed to use the display with it. It may not be sold by the time this hits print, so if interested drop me an email. It's a Sawtooth G4 tower, 400 MHz, with a CD-RW drive installed to replace the CD/DVD reader that came with it. That is also available. It has two internal HDs: the original 10 and a 40 on top of that. It has 384 megs RAM and a SCSI card. Price? Around $999 including the DVI converter (originally $149). Buy the DVI converter separately for $125; it's only a few months old.
Also available is a SCSI DAT drive, for backups, and 20 tapes. It was originally $500 refurbished and the tapes cost about $8 each. Includes Retrospect, originally bought separately for $169. Will not work with OSX unless you buy the new Retrospect 5.0, but I don't recommend using SCSI with OSX anyway. This is for those of you who will be sticking with OS9 or 8.6 for a few years more. Want it? $399 for the whole mess. Oh, yeah. My iBook also goes on the block for $999 which includes 256 MB RAM and an AirPort card and CD/DVD reader.

Other PBooks Still Need a DVIator
Those of you who DO get one of the larger PowerBooks will discover to your horror that you can't use IT with any of Apple's new displays either, until you spend an additional $150 for an ADC to DVI converter from either Apple or Dr. Bott. G4 towers since the Quicksilver have had the correct port built in, which supplies video, USB and power to the new monitors, but the original Sawtooth G4 had the old port still used on the PowerBooks. (First generation TiBooks had a VGA port as well; you will need the $300 adapter that I need now.) The new displays are certainly gorgeous, though. The 20" is smaller than you would expect; along the lines of the old SGI display I have written about before. It maps pixels at 109 DPI, which means small fonts and icons. Fortunately both can be adjusted in Views or the Finder Preferences, but remember that the 20" model cannot work under OS9 at all, even on the Macs that support it.

Living with my new AlBook
After 10 days and switching everything I do over to the new unit, I am pretty happy. It feels more comfortable in my lap, the keyboard is more solid than the iBook (because it is not removable) and it is so much more responsive and peppy than my desktop G4 or the iBook were. I just this evening burned my first DVD backup disk: 4.2 gigs worth of data in my Users folder. A warning, though: don't plan on doing anything else that evening. It took about 2.5 hours to copy the data, burn and verify the disk. But it is so nice not to have to distribute the backup over 7 CD-Rs!
I never thought the computers were the bottleneck in my DSL connection, but pages load faster and email downloads faster too. I have AirPort Extreme, but the extra speed there is not used because my DSL connection is nowhere near the normal speed of wireless Ethernet. That's not why I got the Extreme base station, though; I had a perfectly good old base station. The new one lets me put my printer on the wireless without having to run two computers and Printer Sharing.
Battery life is great, too. I get at least an hour more time than with my iBook.

Shamelessly Exploiting My Position In The Fourth Estate
I got in touch with Gefen to find out if they were willing to send me an evaluation unit so I could find out for certain if their device would work with my AlBook and 17" display. They agreed and will be sending me a unit for a 30-day test drive, and will sell it to me, should I desire, at a deeply discounted price afterwards.
It's only fair; there are only two possible reviews: it works or it doesn't. If it for some reason does not live up to its promise then you will read about it here and back it goes to Gefen. If it does, then the check is in the mail, and I can feel secure in recommending it to all of you. Tune in next month.

Kupla Useful Unix Trix
Apple says the startup-in-chat-mode is unsupported(!) but it still offers useful information, if you can find out just what the hell it means. To invoke it, hold down Command-V immediately after startup and watch the text go by. One string you may see is this: Couldn't alloc class "NVDANV10HAL" and wonder if this is a problem you should care about.
Since I had to call Apple about another issue I asked about this and the tech said it meant that there was no second monitor hooked up to the external monitor port. In other words, it's okay and you can ignore it.
Unsupported means that they won't talk to you about Terminal, about System.log or any of the other hidden Unix underpinnings. After all, they designed the OS to hide this stuff from the user and make the Mac run fine without our ever having to deal with it. So don't expect any help with it either.
This is where your local users group comes into play. Join, hang out, talk to others about all this.
But suppose you want to actually read the text of the startup sequence after your Mac has finished booting, when you can think about it? Well, it's hidden behind an invisible folder called var at the root level of your hard drive. But it is really easy to find. Go to the Go menu in the Finder and choose Go To Folder. Type in /var/log/ and a window will open listing a bunch of logs. Double-click on the file system.log and the program Console (in your Utilities folder) will open, displaying all the text you see at startup. Read. Enjoy. Marvel at how little sense it makes and realize that Apple is now part of a 35-year tradition called Unix and, should you desire, how much there is to learn. But relax, Apple is committed to making a great Macintosh that works without your ever having to delve this deep.

Speaking of User Groups
It approaches again: Spring MacCamp. Join PMUG and come to Silver Falls Conference Center and take classes, immerse yourself and have a great time seeing what 55 other Mackers are doing with their Macs. You will learn more in this weekend than in months of casual exploration. Classes this time around: Track 1 - Shooting Digital Video for Editing, iMovie 3, Keynote. Track 2 - Reunion 8, Web Basics, MYOB. Reunion is a program to manage your genealogical research and, of course, MYOB provides the alternative to the evil Intuit's products. Beginning Web developers can learn how to get going and Keynote is Apple's new PowerPoint alternative. $165 plus $42 PMUG membership is all it takes to get you there Easter weekend (April 18-20) and it includes all food, lodging and classes. To sign up, visit PMUG's site.

iPod Warning
Be sure you get the extended warranty. iPod batteries can wear out and they cannot be replaced. Not by you, and not by Apple. Sony makes the batteries under license to Apple and they are prohibited from selling you a new one. Apple does NOT want you to open your iPod.
TechTails from SmallDog.com addressed this issue and provided a couple of links. You with 5GB iPods that are out of warranty need to pay heed:
So what can we do? Now that we know that there is a confirmed hardware issue on Rev. A 5GB iPods, that Li-Ion batteries are supposed to last longer than a year, and that the 1.2 firmware drains the battery faster than before, we can look for a solution. And we find this, from Apple's website discussion area.
The above article describes how to reset the PMU in the iPod. ***THIS WILL VOID ANY WARRANTY!*** Only do this as a last resort on an iPod that is definitely OUT of warranty!
Breaking open the guts of any small consumer appliance is nerve-wracking. To make sure that you know what this involves, see this site.
So, the good news is that you don't have to throw out your $500 iPod just because the battery can't hold a charge anymore. The bad news is that if it's out of warranty, it'll take a little effort to bring back to life. See what you can find in an hour's worth of web surfing?

Power Mac G4 Power Supply Exchange Program Announcement
(Apple Press Release) The Power Mac G4 Power Supply Exchange Program offers owners of Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors) computers the option of reducing the operating acoustic level of their computers by exchanging their original power supplies and system fans for new, quieter versions. Participation in the Power Supply Exchange Program is optional.
The Power Supply Exchange Program kit is available at no charge, with a shipping and handling fee of US$19.95 or equivalent local currency. The kit contains the following items:

Power supply (360 W)
System fan 
Allen key (2.5 mm) 
Installation instructions
Prepaid return airbill and instructions for returning the original components to Apple

Warning to eMac Owners
"DewGuy1999" notes an Apple Discussions posting that suggests Apple is quietly dropping the eMac because of quality problems:
An employee at my local Apple store told me that Apple is going to quietly discontiue the Emac. He said that they are no longer making the Emac. Only the ones currently in inventory will be available for purchasing. The reputation of the machine has been tarnished due to all of the display problems. Look for a new model to replace the Emac soon.
This post has been deleted three times by the webmaster. I seem to have struck nerve.
[Apple reseller Tom Santos described an eMac failure rate of 60 percent in Henry Norr's story about resellers suing Apple. -MacInTouch]
Bottom line? If you have one of these models and you have not purchased the extended warranty, do so immediately. Of all my clients who have eMacs, none have experienced the display problems cited so you may have one of the good ones. But protect yourself and your investment should be good for the full three years. And DO BACKUPS!

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.)