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June 30, 1999

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Previous
1999
January-June

June 26, 1999
I upgraded my email client from Qualcomm's Eudora Pro 4.01 to 4.2 this afternoon, and the free version rev shows a lot of promise. It has an automatic spell check feature which is quite nice and an added ability to preview messages which is handy. Don't know what else Qualcomm has added, but my initial impression is quite favorable.

June 17, 1999
Adobe Systems announced Adobe Photoshop 5.5 which incorporates Adobe ImageReady functions into the industry standard image manipulation tool. This new version is a $129 upgrade for owners of ImageReady, and I am salivating at the chance to jump on the Photoshop bandwagon at this price. Normal retail is $588.

Another day, another testimonial. This one is from Matt Wood, Supervising Sound Editor, The Phantom Menace:

You can read the rest of the article at Editors.net.

June 12, 1999
Apple released the final (non-beta) version of QuickTime 4 the other day, and I've now had a chance to download it and play around with it.

Good news first: It streams audio over the Internet better than any other program I've tried, including both RealPlayer and NetShow. It also seems a lot more stable than the ever-crashing RealPlayer. In addition, the functionality of QT4 appears to be on a par or slightly better than QT3.

Now the bad news: First, the MoviePlayer application has the worst interface I've seen in an Apple product in years. It violates several of Apple's own User Interface Guidelines. I even emailed a friend of mine on Apple's MacOS team to ask about it and his shrug-of-the-shoulders response was more-or-less, "Hey, it's Steve's company. What Steve wants, Steve gets." Well, Steve needs to start wanting an interface that comforms to Apple's own guidelines.

Second, Internet video streaming is not really workable over a 33.6k connection. For the most part, the tendency of QT4 is to drop video frames as necessary and, apparently, to kill the audio entirely. At least this is what happened in my tests of streaming video from the Weather Channel, and the result was unintelligible.

So I'd call QT4 a mixed bag. It easily remains the standard for non-streaming multimedia, and I'd say it's got a great chance at becoming the standard for streaming audio as well. The video end of things needs a little work—that is to say QT4 should drop all the frames it has to in order to maintain full audio—and the MoviePlayer application interface needs a major overhaul.

But then again, QT4 is free, and that's makes it really hard to complain too loudly.

June 1, 1999
Good news on the Power Mac front as Apple revs the G3 line with speed bumps of 350-, 400-, and 450-MHz while keeping the same price points as before. As an added bonus, all machines now come with 1 MB of backside cache. Pretty slick!

For those interested, I just stumbled across a little QuickTime 3 easter egg: Hold down Command-Option-Q-T on startup and you'll get the names and faces of the QuickTime team.

Joke of the Day Dept.: Question: How many Microsoft software engineers does it take to write a really good operating system? Answer: More.

May 31, 1999
I mention this every six months or so just in case somebody's not heard me: Do not use Microsoft's ActiveX technology! If you're still using that slow crashaholic browser called Internet Explorer, for the love of Pete disable ActiveX in preferences. It's a security nightmare.

And while we're on the subject of Microsoft and security nightmares, how about that marvelous Windows NT? You could drive a tank through the security holes in NT, and what's really painful is that these are, for the most part, security problems that were fixed in other operating systems years ago. Peter Mudge and Yobie Benjamin wrote a BYTE magazine article called Deja Vu All Over Again in November 1997 that pointed out just a few of the problems.

Note the part that says "The one stack that is probably closest to being bulletproof is BSD Unix." Guess what MacOS X is based on?

May 30, 1999
Turns out that MacAddict won't be shipping MacOS 8.6 on their discs after all. Whether this is an issue of Apple wanting profit or Apple wanting the ability to count how many users are on 8.6 is unclear. Either way, though, it looks like a big download may be in order.

I've been doing a little MacQuake research over the weekend to help with my keyboard setup for the game (stored in a config file). A lot of the Quake sites are down nowadays, but MacQuakeInfinity is rolling right along, and it's a terrific reference.

There have been over 3 million downloads of QuickTime 4, an amazing statistic considering it's beta software.

May 19, 1999
With The Phantom Menace opening today, it might be a good time to remind fans that a sizable portion of the special effects were created using Macintosh computers. Interestingly, what you'll probably hear about, however, are the special effects done on SGI computers. This is because of special agreement between SGI and Lucasfilm (and their special effects unit Industrial Light & Magic (ILM)) whereby Lucasfilm gets the suped-up SGI computers and in return can only publicly tout SGI machines. Here's what MacInTouch had to say:

May 17, 1999
Twenty-nine game hours and 952 saves later, I finally completed Tomb Raider II featuring the buxom adventuress Lara Croft. I've been playing off and on since I got it for my birthday in February, and as the above statistics imply, it's the type of game that will take awhile to finish. On the plus side, there's lots of Indiana Jones-style adventuring to be had and the in-between level movies are fantastic. TR II has a good mix of puzzle-solving and shooting, and once you get the hang of the controls, it's quite a lot of fun.

Indeed, the difficulty of the controls is really the biggest downside. It's frequently hard to get Lara to do what you want (the shower scene at the end of the game not withstanding), and that proved frustrating on more than one occasion. The other bummer is the camera angle, situated about three paces behind Lara. For 90 percent of the game, it's great, but there were occasions where the camera would be blocked, and the player would be forced to make moves utterly blind. Saving games often was, as you might imagine, essential to ultimate success.

Great single player game, though, and well worth $49.95 purchase price. (If you can find it cheaper now, so much the better.)

May 13, 1999
Reports continue to filter in regarding MacOS 8.6. Most common word is that it shows a noticeable improvement in stability, even outpacing MacOS 8.5.1 in this regard. As for the inevitable problems which have cropped up, it doesn't look like there are too many of them. With the "problem" applications I mentioned last time, here's the latest:

  1. Adobe GoLive 4.0 has a specific issue with PDF files. Other than that it's stable.
  2. Virtual PC 2.11 will not run under 8.6, but both 2.12 and 2.13 will. MacOS 8.6 also fixes a printing problem with the Desktop Printing Extension (mainly because 8.6 doesn't support the extension).
  3. PowerLogix G3 Cache Control version 1.5.2 is supposedly compatible with 8.6, though some people have reported problems. Fixes include downgrading to version 1.4 or changing the load order of extensions so that Cache Control comes up sooner.

Despite all that good news, I don't anticipate upgrading to 8.6 for a couple more weeks. It's not that I wouldn't, mind you, it's that I really don't feel like sitting through the 35+ MB download—especially when MacAddict magazine is putting the upgrade on the July disc.

May 11, 1999
Early word on the street is that MacOS 8.6 is running pretty well. There are a few problems here and there, but on the whole everything's looking pretty good. Unfortunately for me, I've got three applications which appear on the "problem" list: Adobe GoLive 4.0, Virtual PC, and PowerLogix G3 Cache Control Panel. In my case, these are all essential applications—if even one of these won't run, I can't upgrade until there's a patch.

Since there's a new nanokernal in 8.6—a nanokernal being the underlying code foundation for the OS—it's not surprising that their are a few problems here or there. From what I'm reading, it sounds as if there are fewer problems than their were with 8.5, and 8.6 appears to be more stable to boot. I'm certain I'll be upgrading as soon as the kinks are worked out (and why not since it's free).

I do want to predict here and now that Apple will turn Sonata, their next MacOS, into MacOS 9 and will charge full retail price for it. Because Sonata will include about 50 new features, it should be an excellent operating system and worthwhile upgrade. I suspect what Apple will say is that a user can run 8.0, 8.1, 8.5, 8.6 or Sonata under MacOS X and it'll just be a question of which features a person wants under the "Classic" program model. If you want more, buy and run Sonata. If you want less, 8.x is fine. Frankly, based on what I saw in the demo yesterday, I'm upgrading to Sonata when it's available in Fall of this year.

May 10, 1999—Worldwide Developers Conference
I attended a broadcast of the WWDC keynote this morning at the Apple campus. The 2 hour keynote, hosted mainly be iCEO Steve Jobs, offered some fascinating insights on the Apple roadmap for the platform over the next year as well as some really good status reports on current operations. Among the highlights:

May 8, 1999
Continuing my trend of reading Apple books, I concluded this evening Jim Carlton's Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders. It is, in short, a repetitive, poorly written book with a fascinating topic. Apple has, as a company, committed so many blunders over the years it would be hard for it not to be. Nonetheless, Carlton commits three grave sins here, any one of which is enough to keep me from recommending his book.

First, he bungles some technical details badly. I don't know, for example, where he got the idea that prior to the now defunct operating system beta known as "Copland" that the MacOS couldn't run more than one program at a time. It certainly could and it certainly can. On top of that, his claims that Windows 95 is superior in reliability to the MacOS simply do not reflect my experience, or, for that matter, the experience of anyone I know who has used both systems. Errors like these strongly make me wonder about his judgment, technical and otherwise.

Second, Carlton is a newspaper reporter. Why is this a hindrance? Well, 482 pages is a mighty long newspaper article, and that's almost entirely how this reads. Even worse, Carlton has the annoying tendency to insert himself into the storyline (he's a reporter for the Wall Street Journal) like his presence is in some way meaningful. Trust me, Jim, it's not.

Third, Carlton's Epilogue predictions (this is a 1997 book) turn out to be almost wholly off-the-mark. After spending much of the book in 20/20 hindsight mode, I'm thinking that perhaps now Carlton realizes that it's a lot easier to look back and commentate than it is to deal with an issue in the present or to predict the future. Either way, his end-of-book commentary isn't even close to on the mark just 2 years later, and one has to wonder just how well he knows Apple Computer despite reporting on it for years.

My advice? Read Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer, Inc. by Owen W. Linzmayer instead.

May 5, 1999
I just finished reading ex-Apple Evangelist Guy Kawasaki's The Macintosh Way, a 1990-era book about the Macintosh, Apple Computer, and how to evangelize in the computer industry. I wouldn't call it the greatest book in the world, but it's not terrible either and the Apple anecdotes are funny and interesting. Some of the jokes are pretty good too, like this one from page 180:

There's a fair amount of what seems to me to be obvious marketing advice, but Kawasaki's heart is in the right place, and for the right person, this could be an excellent book.

April 27, 1999
The dreaded PC-only CiH virus struck yesterday, doing significant damage to Boston College's computer center and about 240,000 PCs in South Korea. Actually, estimates of the damage in Korea ranges as high as 600,000 computers. Because this virus is of the "erase your hard drive" variety, those computers infected saw what I'll call "a large drop in performance."

And, as I never tire of saying, this is one of thousands of viruses which run only on PCs; any Macintoshes which come into contact with this virus are simply immune.

April 26, 1999
Hit-or-miss author Robert Cringely scores a hit in his analysis of Windows OS costs:

By contrast, Apple has released MacOS 7.5.5, 7.6.1, MacOS 8, MacOS 8.1, and MacOS 8.5.1 in the same time frame. Each of these operating system upgrades—while undeniably containing some bug fixes—added bundles of features as well. If you bought 7.5.5 for $90, then 7.6.1 was free. If you bought 8, then 8.1 was free. If you bought 8.5.1, then MacOS 8.6 will be free. Total cost: $270, and you've gotten 6 operating system for that price loaded with new features. Each of those systems has, if you're using a PowerPC machine, made your computer run faster too. You'll never hear that about a Windows OS.

April 23, 1999
Today, a three-part rant on vile behavior from Microsoft and their applications:

First, as some of you may know, I use Microsoft Office 98 as required for business applications. Rest assured that I would not touch this software if it were not a necessity, and I am eagerly awaiting the day when I can pitch it all overboard and scrape its remnants from my hard drive. Is it better than Microsoft Office 4.2.1? Oh assuredly. One could hardly do worse, after all. But 98 has its own set of problems, not the least of which is that has conflicts which just about every other piece of software ever written, including the MacOS. Here's a few Office 98 troubleshooting pages, just in case anyone else is experiencing the joy of 98 use the way I am: Woody's Office Watch, Word 98 Bugs Page, MacFixIt's Troubleshooting Microsoft Office, and Scott's World's Special Report on Word 98.

Second, comes this report on the triumph of Microsoft Windows NT—as a marketing success as a product failure. I've been saying for as long as anyone cares to listen that Windows NT is (1) not scalable (i.e. if you try to support more than about a dozen computers it can't handle it); (2) not reliable; and (3) a terrible solution for mission-critical applications. In fact, as the report makes clear, many people who've tried NT come running back to UNIX with open arms. One wishes, apparently in vain, that something that Microsoft does could be founded in truth.

Finally, word from AVID, makers of high-end TV/broadcast production equipment, that they will abandon their 50,000 or so Macintosh customers and make their next generation of equipment run solely on Windows NT. One would think this behavior odd if not for the purchase of 15 percent of AVID by Microsoft and Intel about two years ago. I think we can guess who's calling the shots.

Mac-based AVID users are rightly quite upset about this abrupt departure from the Mac market, but ultimately, I think this will have less of an impact than people think. The fact is that big $15,000 proprietary editing systems like AVID's are headed the way of the dinosaur as video (and film) become democratized. With the recent advent of low-cost digital video cameras, Apple's high speed FireWire interface, and relatively low cost video editing solutions like Adobe Premiere and Adobe AfterEffects, there is relatively little need to buy an AVID system to achieve top-of-the-line results. And supposing I'm wrong, there's always AVID's competitor, Media 100, who many believe is superior anyway.

April 19, 1999
Apple today introduced QuickTime 4 and made available a free public beta of the software. The new version adds Internet audio and video streaming capability, plus other features. The "Pro" version is $29.95 and is a free upgrade for registered users of QuickTime 3 Pro.

Nobody knows what the future holds, but we can be sure that computer press pundits around the US are especially in the dark when they attempt to comment on the future of Apple. Us Mac evangelists have put up with these bozos for years, hearing them say one wrong thing after another. Now that Apple's in resurgence, you'd think that they would change their tune a little. Maybe not.

April 18, 1999
I downloaded a really cool shareware Launcher replacement utility today called "DragStrip." It's from Aladdin Systems, makers of StuffIt. In short, DragStrip gives you one-click desktop access to your applications, and represents, to my way of thinking, a very elegant solution to efficiently launching programs, files, or control strip modules.

Various Mac rumor web sites are reporting the MacOS 8.6 has gone "Golden Master" and will be shipping within the next few weeks. The free upgrade (did you hear that Microsoft? Free!) will feature an upgraded version of Sherlock, a new nano-kernel (the base software code of the operating system), and other features. Beta testers report rock-solid stability.

April 15, 1999
I attended an Adobe seminar this morning at the Apple Campus. The Adobe presenter, Eric Thomas, ran through ImageReady, ImageStyler, Premiere, AfterEffects, and GoLive 4.0. Although not earthshaking in any respect, it was a competent demo, and I found myself very impressed by the ease-of-use generated by the consistent Adobe User Interface. Simply stated, the tools in many Adobe products function the same way and the result is a dramatic slicing of the learning curve. I plan to upgrade to GoLive 4.0 within a week or two.

April 13, 1999
Apple announced second quarter profit of $135 million, topping analysts expectations. Marketshare for the first two months of fiscal 1999 was 11.3 percent, almost double of a year ago.

In addition, Apple formally announced revision D of the iMac. The latest iMac features a speed bump from 266-MHz to 333-MHz while retaining the same $1199 price point.

April 12, 1999
It is, I confess, just one more thing in a long line of "I can't believe Microsoft would do that"-kind of moments, but it's another dozy: PC hardware vendors like Dell, HP and Unisys have announced that they will preload Windows 2000 beta 3 onto their computers beginning this month. Consumers will get a coupon for the full operating system once it's available, but good Lord, who would believe it? They're shipping beta software to consumers. (And, pray tell, what is the point of calling something "beta" if it's shipping?)

Now this might be relatively stable beta software, but it's beta nonetheless, and geez, it's the operating system we're talking about here. It's not like if it doesn't work right you can just load up another program; if this goes down, you're really screwed (as Win95/98 users can attest).

So will this software—even though it's beta—be solid and reliable enough for day-to-day use? Microsoft has added a lot of features to try to make it so, but, says ZDNet's article: "As a result of such dramatic additions, Microsoft officials said they expect a number of applications that worked with Beta 2 to malfunction with Beta 3."

Believe it or not.

April 11, 1999
Confirmation has come through on the new Revision D iMacs. They'll be identical to the Revision C iMacs, except they will be 333-MHz instead of 266-MHz. Pricing remains the same.

April 7, 1999—Macintosh Business Expo
Day of the Macintosh Business Expo at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, an event attended by my friend Dave and I after a drive up from Salem.

And oh what a day it was. The keynote speaker was a QuickTime guy from Apple who utterly dazzled us with all the stuff that QuickTime 3 can do. Did anybody out there know that QuickTime 3 plays CD-I discs (that's CD-ROM Interactive) right off the bat? Anybody know that these are full screen, full motion? Heck with DVD, these puppies are available now and without adding extra components or peripherals.

The topper for the keynote was the amazing Star Wars trailer which was shown on big screen. Forget for a moment that this was just a QuickTime movie played on a little PowerBook connected to a projector. This was the most amazing movie trailer I've ever seen, and I'm already eager to get in line to see the show. (Opens May 19 Star Wars fans.)

After the keynote, Dave and I sat in on a presentation on MacOS X Server by Apple network guru Vin Capone. Fascinating stuff, and a great example of Apple technology really moving to the forefront. I don't know how it will do versus the dominant Window NT platform, but I'm willing to bet that it more than holds its own technologically.

We watched two Adobe demos and receive a wide-variety of information on all their products. The Adobe guy wasn't as fully informed as he could have been, but it was a useful show nonetheless.

The final presentation we took in was by a Canon rep on the various digital video cameras offered by his company (all of which have FireWire connectors for plugging into Apple's latest G3s). May I just say for the record that I really, really, really want a Canon XL1 camera.

In summary, the Expo was excellent. Not only did Dave and I learn a lot, but we also got free Apple t-shirts, Dilbert travel mugs, and assorted vendor giveaway. Total cost on the day? $5 for parking. Right on.

April 2, 1999
Just a note to my Mac friends in the Northwest: Portland's Oregon Convention Center plays host on April 7 to the Macintosh Business Expo, a free 9 AM to 5 PM event. Exhibitors include Apple, Adobe, Epson, LaCie, Microsoft, Newer Technology, HP, Sony, and others. If you plan on attending, drop me an email or look for me in the crowd. I'll be there!

March 24, 1999
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates' new book, Business @ the Speed of Thought, should be hitting bookstore shelves any day now. First impressions of the work from Charles Cooper, a ZDNet reviewer, who says, "Faced with the prospect of rereading this book, I would rather have my brains ripped out by a plastic fork." Maybe I'll give that one a pass.

March 21, 1999
One thing I failed to mention about Apple's recent release of MacOS X Server: It's open source. That means that, like Linux and Netscape Navigator, programmers from around the globe can download source code, modify it as they wish, and upload it to the greater community. It's a new and different business model and paradigm, and once again, Apple is taking the lead.

March 19, 1999
First word about Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 5 is this: You need 100 MB on your hard drive to install a web browser!?!

Rumors from the net:

  1. A new upgraded version of the iMac is due in April or early May. Supposedly the price will drop and the speed will increase from the fruit-flavored iMacs' $1200 and 266-MHz respectively. Possibility of a FireWire port being add also exists.
  2. MacOS 8.6 features a host of new improvements and is extraordinarily stable even in beta. This release, unlike the massive bug-ridden bug-fix that is Windows 98, is free to owners of MacOS 8.5.
  3. Apple's new consumer portable, code-named "p1," is due for an early May arrival.

This is already shaping up to be a great year for Apple and Macintosh users!

March 16, 1999
You know, some of these things out of Redmond are hard to believe even though you know it's Microsoft at the trigger. Case in point: Microsoft's much-maligned Windows 98 now appears like it will get not just a regular bug-fix "Service Pack" upgrade, but instead will be replaced by "Windows 98 Second Edition," essentially a substantial bug-fix rewrite of the operating system plus Internet Explorer 5. (Gotta find some way to distribute the thing.) Will Microsoft charge the poor saps who bought Window 98 "First Edition" again? What do you think? ZDNet Tech News has the gory details of this latest debacle in the making.

Meanwhile, in the land of good operating systems, Apple is set to introduce Mac OS X Server, a state-of-the-art UNIX-based server system which is priced well below Windows NT. (Apple charges per server; NT charges per client.) Bringing UNIX' famed scalability and reliability to the Mac, one can only hope that the masses see the light and dump NT into the trash bin of history as a server system. Sorry if the sentence steps on any toes, but NT is simply not reliable, and in server operations reliability is everything. (NT 4 also isn't Y2K compliant, but what else is new?)

March 14, 1999
Windows NT 4 isn't Y2K-ready; Windows 2000 (aka NT 5) isn't out of beta. Where does this leave the customer? Find out in Windows 2000, Users Zilch.

And lest you think Microsoft has changed its evil ways, guess who's been covertly collecting user information via the web? MS Admits to Privacy Blunder details most of the latest tale of unbelievable arrogance. (Microsoft calls this collecting of registration info "a bug." Told you it was unbelievable.) See also Microsoft Admits to Privacy Problem for further info. Here's a quick paragraph from that TechWeb story:

Macintosh users are safe from this Windows 98-induced privacy violation, but if you use Microsoft Office 98 for Macintosh, you've got a similar set of problems to worry about. Apparently, Office 98 documents have secret embedded ID numbers which can be used for tracking purposes. A patch to fix this "bug" when MS makes it available, should be found at MacTopia, Microsoft's Mac site.

February 23, 1999
While Microsoft manager Dan Rosen was busy destroying his credibility (well, what was left of it after yesterday) on the witness stand again today, I was thoroughly engaged with Intuit's marvelous MacInTax Deluxe 98. Let me just say that I was completely taken by this product. This was the easiest tax year I've ever had. Total time from beginning to end was 4 hours, and that includes the time I spent to run out to Office Depot to pick up more laser printer paper and to CompuTown to buy the MacInTax State add-on. This was a fun 4 hours! How often do you say that about taxes?

In short, my return was so headache-free that I will undoubtedly do it the exact same way again next year. Unless you've got a tax return so stupifyingly complex that you need a CPA, MacInTax is a great software solution. Highly recommended.

February 22, 1999
I've not provided much coverage of the Department of Justice vs. Microsoft antitrust trial up to this point, but I'm happy to report now that it appears the government (led by hired hand attorney David Boies) is busy nailing the final corners down on Microsoft's coffin. In short, Microsoft has been exposed as arrogant, lying, cheating, and pretty much any other negative adjective you'd care to use. This is a hugely important and high profile case, and it's utterly amazing that Microsoft and their witnesses have been so heavily thrashed. It's only the future of the company hinging on the result, after all.

Today saw Boies wipe the board with Dan Rosen, Microsoft's general manager of new technology. Here's the Reuters lead:

Asked later why he stopped in mid-sentence to end his questioning of Rosen, Boies offered this response:

Taken in isolation, one witness' problems—even ones that are this serious—could be brushed aside. Unfortunately, the entire trial has gone this way for them. In my opinion, they've lost every witness who has come to the stand—including every one of their own witnesses. Honestly, they might have been better off if they had offered no defense at all.

February 16, 1999
Hewlett-Packard has released an updated set of printer drivers which are compatible with MacOS 8.5. It's a bulky download at a couple megs, but not out of range for anyone with a 28.8k modem or faster. This officially fixes one of my two remaining MacOS 8.5 compatibility issues (though I've been using Apple laser printer drivers just fine in the meantime). The only problem left is Adobe's Type Manager and Type Reunion duo which continue to be flaky enough that I avoid Type Reunion entirely. My understanding is that a new version of the software package is due out this summer.

Because I'm a power-using kinda guy—I run tons of extensions and different programs concurrently—I suffer more crashes than most. Sometimes this is due to a change in system software; the old HP printer drivers, for example, which worked under MacOS 8.5 crashed hard under 8.5.

Sometimes, however, the crash problems are specifically related to a program. In the case of GoLive (now Adobe) CyberStudio 3.1.1, we're talking about bug-central when it comes to issues like stability. No program has as consistently or as randomly brought my work to a screeching halt as CyberStudio has. If this weren't the best, most comprehensive, most powerful piece of WYSIWYG-style HTML software on the market, I'd never touch it. As it stands, though, my web site is far more advanced than it ever was when I was using Adobe PageMill.

Another thing I've found interesting is that the crashes under MacOS 8.5 typically don't require a reboot. That's insanity and heresy, I know. That's stupid and living on the edge. But I'm here to tell you that, unlike previous MacOS versions, I'm frequently able to continue my work after a crash without a reboot. I can even launch new applications (or even the same one that just crashed (i.e. CyberStudio, and, okay, well, sometimes Navigator 4.08)) and run things just fine. I'm not advocating this behavior for anyone, and ultimately of course I do reboot. I just think that the growing reliability and stability of the MacOS is worth noting.

Especially with MacOS 8.6 less than 90 days away.

February 11, 1999
Report today from ComputerWare, one of Apple's biggest retailers, is that both the new fruity flavored iMacs and the blue-and-white G3s are selling quite well. No word on how the PowerBooks are doing, but Apple is supposedly introducing some new ones next month.

February 5, 1999
Believe it or not, Japan is Apple's second largest market. What news out of the Orient these days? Well, according to the Evangelist (a Mac advocacy mailing list), Apple has a 37% marketshare in Japan, and iMacs are selling like chopsticks. (I'm assuming here that the Japanese buy a lot of chopsticks.) Apple is now the #1 computer retailer in Japan.

February 3, 1999
Added a link to "The Mac Junkie," a nifty new Mac site.

January 26, 1999
Need some quick ammo to convince a friend that Macintosh is the way to go? Here's 10 solid reasons.

January 14, 1999
Apple announced profits of $152 million on $1.7 billion in sales. Excluding a one-time gain, the company earned $123 million, or .$78 per diluted share. That's not the only good news:

  1. The company now has $2.6 billion in cash or short-term securities.
  2. Apple sold 944,000 computers during the quarter. About 519,000 of those were iMacs. Those sales represent a unit growth of 49 percent, well ahead of the industry average of 12 percent.
  3. Average system price—in large part because of iMac sales—is now $1776, down from $2400 a year ago.
  4. The company's 28.2 percent gross margins were the highest in four years.
  5. Apple's sold 1 million copies of MacOS 8.5 for a revenue of about $45 million.
  6. The company has inventory turn around at 2 days, the best in the industry. They plan to move up to about 4 to 6 days to insure adequate product in the channel.

January 12, 1999
Just when you thought it was safe to use a PC again comes this report from ZDNet Tech News. In short, every PC in the United States has a bug that will go off April 1, 2001:

Microsoft, true to form, says this is no big deal. But I'll give you one guess which computer platform—in additional to being Y2K compliant from the very beginning—does not have this problem.

Just any case I'm not making myself clear, here's 10 good reasons to hate Microsoft. I know I do, and I even like a few of their products.

One Microsoft thing I hate in particular is called ActiveX. This is essentially OLE (object linking and embedding) renamed, but its web implementation has been an utter disaster. Read "ActiveX: Or how to put nuclear bombs in web pages" to see what I mean. In the off chance you use Microsoft Internet Explorer for your web browsing, make sure that all ActiveX functions are disabled in your preferences!

January 8, 1999—MacWorld SF '99
There's more news flying out of this year's MacWorld than jets out of San Jose International. I'll be updating this list over the course of the next few days as news comes in, but already, we're seeing some whoppers:

January 6, 1999
I've decided to start using Connectix' RAM Doubler again. As noted in my "Year in Review" piece of a couple days ago, I'd been bumping up against Zeke's 80 MB RAM limit for a while now. I know that might seem astounding to some of you, but when I do web design, I typically want to keep open Adobe ImageReady, GoLive CyberStudio, and Netscape Navigator. That's at least 65 MB of RAM right there, and when you run a system folder full of extensions and control panels like I do, well, you can understand why I was having problems.

Thankfully, Connectix' RAM Doubler 8.01 (the upgrade from RAM Doubler 2 was free) is superb. In my limited two-day testing, I've not run into a single problem and system responsiveness even seems improved. In fact, it's very much like a free 80 MB RAM upgrade.

I've been playing the Tomb Raider II demo over the course of the last several days. Although it's a pretty tiny demo, I will say that I think it's the best single player game I've ever played—topping even Quake in that respect. (QuakeWorld still holds top honors for multi-player fun.) Current purchase price is $50, so it's not something I'll be doing anytime soon, but it sure looks like a great game.

January 5, 1999—MacWorld
All the Mac news is currently being posted to the Main page; I'll move it to MacAdvocacy once MacWorld concludes.

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