Apple

I’ve been a Mac user since 1991, so it’s inevitable that I’d have this as a category.

[From Usenet: 1.2.02 0143]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the alt.sys.mac.newuser-help Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

Albert –

First off, I hope your experiences with OS X continue to improve, as you indicated they had started to in a followup post. Figured I could go ahead and jump in the fray, though… ;)

In article <asteg-5FD600.02164401012...@news.mindspring.com>, Albert Steg <as...@mindspring.com> wrote:

The installation process disbabled my Enternet software, crippling my internet access, and even when I got back to system 9 I found my internet aliases (eudora and netscape) hidden from my desktop and replaced with Explorer. Felt like a Microsoft ploy.

That’s something of a surprise. Each time I’ve done an OS X install (starting with the Public Beta), it’s gone smooth as silk. Really unsure as to what may have gone on to actually disable anything.

…and the interface is totally new, isn’t it?” Why is there no warning or explanation in the manual that this system represents a radical departure from the Apple of the past 15 years?

Well, it’s definitely a new system, but the manual I got – while really underwhelming – did at least have a cursory “this is what you’re gonna get” feel to it. Much as ‘puter people sterotypically go with a “install first, read later if something explodes” attitude, sometimes it can be helpful to at least flip through the documentation at least once first… ;)

I am, along with others, somewhat surprised that you were caught so completely off guard – wherever you’ve been, you must have been really out of touch. If you start poking around the web, though, there’s a lot of good information on all the various changes, both why they were done and what the various repercussions are. The OS X manual that Carl linked to (http://homepage.mac.com/rgriff/files/osxguide2.pdf) is a good start, I’d also recommend spending some time digging through Mac OS X Hints (http://www.macosxhints.com/), lots of good info on there.

Am I alone in being dismayeed and bewildered here? These huge Playskool-style icons,

These can be scaled up and down to your preferences…they are a wee bit on the big side by default.

the inability to open two windows at one time

You can have more than two open at once. Check your System Preferences and View Options (under the Finder’s View menu) for the various options there.

…the oily, gimmicky sluuuuurping of windows

Some people like the ‘genie’ effect, some don’t – I’ve switched it to the ‘scale’ effect, as it’s a bit less processor-intensive (and therefore a bit quicker on my machine).

down to the Windows-like “dock”

It takes some getting used to, but I’ve found the dock to be a very nice addition (though, I’ve gotta admit, I’ve liked certain aspects of the Windows taskbar too). I keep my dock devoid of any aliases, so that I don’t have to try to distinguish between icons of running aps and icons of apps that I can run if I want, and only use it for whatever’s running at the moment. For me it works much better as a application switcher than as a launcher, but different things work for different people…experiment with it a bit, after the initial shock, you may find it more to your liking.

instead of the crisp windowshade feature of previous systems….

As has been noted by a couple people, there is a shareware program that will bring windowshading back to OS X (though I don’t use it myself).

these are improvements?

Overall, yeah…just improvements with a bit more learning curve than has been necessary for past OS updates. But then, past OS updates didn’t completely rewrite the OS from the ground up, either…. :)

How about an explanation of the itools program, rather than just thrusting it at you in the config process?

Apple would do well to explain this a bit more. However, breifly, iTools isn’t so much a program as it is a set of services that Apple provides that you can use or ignore as you like. It includes free e-mail with a mac.com suffix, an online storage space (your iDisk), and some other features that can be explored in more depth on Apple’s iTools site (http://www.apple.com/itools/). You don’t have to use any of them, though, if you don’t want or need to.

Can I use Eudora instead of Itools. . .

Yup – I think there’s even an OS X version of Eudora out by now. Check VersionTracker (http://www.versiontracker/macosx/) to be sure.

or do I have to use Itools to access eudora now?

Nope, though you probably can use Eudora to access your iTools mac.com e-mail account if you’ve set one up (though I’m not 100% sure on that).

. . . granted I have to give it a chance, but I am not looking forward to this.

Well, go ahead and poke around, play for a while, and give it that chance. There’s some culture shock – especially since you apparently didn’t know what you were in for – but it’s not that bad once you get used to it.

Quotes: OS X, iPod

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The computing world needs an OS X ad blitz that would show people that Apple is alive and well in the OS business (and advertising would finally convince white people to relax around me, since they would then know that my wearing a T-shirt with a blue X on it doesn’t mean that I’m a Louis Farrakhan follower paying homage to Malcolm X, but, instead, I am a computer geek showing my OS partisanship).

— Rodney O. Lain, in his ‘iBrotha‘ column for MacObserver

The iPod certainly got a lot of attention when I showed it to people, including a Windows guy named Bill Gates. He spun the wheel, checked out the menus on the display screen and seemed to get it immediately. “It looks like a great product,” he said. And then he added, incredulous, “It’s only for Macintosh?”

— Steven Levy in Newsweek, commenting on Apple‘s new iPod mp3 player

Headaches

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Argh — I’m really starting to wonder if this whole site redesign was a bad idea. Between the fact that I’m learning how to correctly code CSS-based layout as I write this, and the bugginess in the current version of Internet Explorer (Exploder?) for Mac OS X, I’m never sure if something isn’t working because I screwed up, or because IE decided to tweak out on me again.

I think that I’ve got things so that they should be visible at the moment — at the very least, the page displays correctly under Opera for Mac OS X — but with IE crapping out every time I make a change, I’m not entirely sure. Keeping my fingers crossed, that’s for damn sure….

But, I’ll keep playing with it…hopefully I haven’t completely broken my site for anyone out there.

Yet.

Heaven forbid that happen!

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Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under its own name…without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art.

— Bill Gates, 1983 (New York Times, 25 Sep 1983, pg. F2)

I love finding things like this…

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…I found this over on /. in the middle of a discussion about Mac OS X. While probably only of interest to my more ‘geeky’ friends, I think it’s damn cool….

Mac OS X is better than I could have imagined!

Let me begin by saying that I used to be a rabid, frothing at the mouth Linux/UNIX advocator. I’ve been using Linux exclusively for nearly two years.

Anyways, when I found out about Mac OS X, I was very excited. I wanted to try it. The interface looked so incredibly well done. Whoever says that Windows has a nice user interface must be joking; I think that the Windows GUI is extremely bland.

So I bought an iMac 233 for a steal over at eBay. I ran Mac OS X Public Beta for many months in anticipation of the final release.

The day the final release came out, I was so impressed with Apple hardware and the beta, that I ran out and bought one of the new iMacs just so that I would have the extra speed boost in running OS X.

Anyways, let me say that I have not been disappointed in the slightest! OS X is everything that Linux should have been. It’s powerful enough for the command line lovers, but elegant enough for the common desktop user. I don’t care what anyone says; Linux is not ready for the common user.

Common Linux scenario. I’m running KDE with some GNOME apps, along with Netscape 4.77 and emacs. Say I want to change my computer’s theme. That means I have to find a KDE theme, a GTK theme (and figure out how to install it from KDE), and edit my .Xdefaults file, testing new values for Netscape and emacs until everything is the way I want.

That’s just too inconvenient. In fact, after running OS X for a week now, I found that there were a lot of annoying inconveniences that I put up with in Linux that I don’t have to deal with in OS X. It got to the point with Linux where I was saying, “I’m so tired of constant sysadmin battles…I just want something that works.” You know what? Mac OS X just works.

Not to mention the fact that I find Apple hardware far superior. There’s none of the Intel Driver Hell that I’ve dealt with using other OSes. I plugged in my iMac (which was equipped with CDRW, ethernet, modem, etc…) and everything worked, no tweaking necessary.

What I like the best is the XonX program that a bunch of sourceforgers are working on. By hitting Command-Alt A, I can switch back and forth between my old XFce desktop and my new, spiffy Aqua desktop.

To those who say that Apple hardware is too expensive…yes, the powermacs and the cubes are still fairly high in price. If you’re looking to play around with OS X, pick up an iMac. They’re very reasonably priced machines that pack a lot of power.

— vorpal^

New ‘puter!

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This just rocks — I’ve added a new ‘puter to my stable here at home. One of the guys at work was selling his off for a good price, so it came home with me today.

Now the iMac that was playing a dual role as my main work machine and webserver (which occasionally caused the server to go down when I needed to do certain things on that machine) has been designated as just the webserver, and the new machine is my workhorse box.

For the curious, the new box is a 350 MHz blue and white Power Macintosh G3, with 128 MB memory, DVD player, 22.3 GB of storage spread across three drives (1 ATA/IDE, 2 SCSI), and dual 17″ monitors, one running off an IMS Twin Turbo card, the other running off an ATI Rage 128. Quite the step up…and I’m cheezing like mad. Time to play!

A little too obvious?

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Okay, so Micro$oft unveiled the beta of the next iteration of Windows — Windows XP — at an event yesterday. Funny thing is, this time Micro$oft’s brainwashing wasn’t enough to hide the fact even from their own minions that, as usual, they seem to be following in the footsteps of Apple.

This is so sad. They’re just lamely trying to copy Steve Jobs’ Apple presentation — right down to the guy having a black shirt and black pants…. It’s almost like Windows ME 2. Or as Apple might call it, Windows Me Too.

— anonymous Windows tester, while watching the webcast of the unveiling of Windows XP

[From Usenet: 5.24.96 2300]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the alt.sys.mac.newuser-help Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

Nils Dahlmann-Resing wrote:

I do not know how to print postscript files I got off the net without a helper application on a MAC, though the printer is a postscript printer. Any idea?

A shareware utility called Drop*PS (the * is really a bullet) will work wonders, as long as all you want to do is print. Drag the .ps file onto Drop*PS, and it sends the postscript data directly to the printer to interpretet it. Nice ‘n simple…

[From Usenet: 5.23.96 2300]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the comp.sys.mac.misc Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

Was wondering if anyone had attempted an install of NetBSD on a mac…?
–and–
Anyone attempted a firewall system like this…?

I’ve currently got a Performa600cd, which is networked in my apartment to two Win95 machines and a Unix server running FreeBSD. Ethernet connects all the machines, and we’re using TCP/IP to communicate among the various machines (as Win95 apparently doesn’t support AppleTalk).

Problems: Haven’t found a way to get filesharing going yet. The Winboxes don’t support AppleTalk (which would be easiest on my end), and I haven’t found anything to let my Mac recognize the Winboxes (at least in a filesharing type setup). Currently we’re telnetting/ftp’ing among the boxes to get files back and forth. Works, but a bit of a kludge. Also, haven’t been able to get a completely uesable proxy/firewall system running on the Unix server yet. My roommate found a version of SOCKS to run that Netscape is recognizing without a problem, but few other of my Internet clients recognize SOCKS. The only programs I’ve found that have SOCKS options available are Fetch and Anarchie, neither of which will work outside of our intranet. We’ve also been unable to find proxy setups to put on the FreeBSD-based Unix server, so I can’t configure those options in my programs. End result…Anarchie, Fetch (to a limited degree), Telnet, and Netscape work fine from machine to machine within our apartment, but only Netscape is able to travel outside our apartment. Luckily, Netscape does support E-mail and Usenet, but I’d still much rather be running Newswatcher and Eudora.

Possible solution: Installing NetBSD on my box to let me run Unix, and start figuring how to connect things from there. I’m just unsure how useable/stable the current (1.1) release of NetBSD is, and whether it would be worth the time to experiment with.

Pertinent Info:

  • 1 Macintosh Performa600cd w/FPU 20/510 (one 160Mb internal and one 350Mb external) running 7.5.3 (with Open Transport).
  • 2 Win95 boxes
  • 1 FreeBSD 2.2.1 Unix server
  • All machines connected via Ethernet
  • Single ppp dialup line to connect to my local ISP via a 28.8 modem connection

Feel free to re: to Usenet, but I’d appreciate it if you’d cc: the message to me (wo…@alaska.net), as I’m none to thrilled with Netscape’s Usenet interface, and have a tendency to ignore it for days at a time.

Many thanks ahead of time for any possible help…

[From Usenet: 4.9.95 2300]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the comp.sys.mac.system Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

In article &lt;jgrabill-0204952317270...@jgrabill-ppp.clark.net&gt;,
jgrab...@clark.net (John N. Grabill) wrote:

In article &lt;3ktmaq$...@nyx10.cs.du.edu&gt;, jscor...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Dover) wrote:

> ok, i just downloaded the 7.5.1 update installed it and decided to play with the new speech manager. unfortunately the voice on it keeps skipping like when you talk facing a really big fan. :-(

> I’m using a IIsi if this makes a difference… is fred to complex a voice for my computer?! I used to have bruce on without probs…

The IIsi has a documented problem with the connection between the speaker and the motherboard. Cleaning the contacts between the speaker and the motherboard and the problem should go away, for awhile. Connecting an external speaker fixes it forever.

Thing is, this happens to me, too…and I’m on a IIvx (well, Perf600 with an added FPU and Sys7.5). The ‘main’ voices (Bruce and Agnes, I think) work fine, but all the ‘secondary’ voices (Zarvox and the like) have the fan-stutter in them. Any other ideas?