December 23, 2001

 
I got my first hands-on with Microsoft's Windows XP yesterday, and I'm happy to say that I think it's just more Windows crap. It's got the same kludgy Start menu at the bottom and still violates any number of design principles. In many ways XP feels like somebody's applied a nice paint job to Windows 95. I fiddled with a number of built-in control panels and such and wasn't very impressed.

And here I was worried that Microsoft might actually churn out an OS that was half-way decent. Silly me.

XP purports to be more stable than 95, 98, and Me, but that's hardly a difficult achievement. Those systems are widely regarded as utterly horrid from a stability perspective, and even Microsoft would be hard-pressed to do worse. XP didn't crash in the short time I used it, but that's not saying anything.

One spot where I think XP does very well is speed. It is a very snappy OS (when running on the latest hardware), and Apple would be well-advised to get a similar level of performance out of MacOS X before too long. In most ways—particularly the fit and finish—there is no comparision between the two: MacOS X is a significantly better operating system in everything I've tried except for speed, where XP wins hands-down. I'm betting this gap will narrow as Apple fine-tunes their OS.

Unfortunately, Microsoft continues their long-standing tradition of really not giving a damn about operating system security. Already a "serious vulnerability" (to use Microsoft's term) has been exposed in XP. This flaw potentially allows a malicious hacker to take complete control of a user's computer over the Internet. There hasn't been much note of it, but Windows 98 and Me systems may also be impacted if certain features have been enabled. Minimally, we're talking about 3 million Windows XP systems, and Microsoft isn't even willing to send out an email (at the behest of the FBI) to alert consumers.

Instead Microsoft has issued a free patch for download, but the FBI has termed this inadequate and has urged consumers and corporations to just disable XP's "universal plug-and-play" features entirely. Microsoft is opposed to this as it significantly reduces the usability of XP with a variety of high tech gizmos. Read the full story here, and see if you don't agree with me that these Microsoft guys are boneheads or evil-hearted or both.

In contrast to XP's problems, Apple MacOS X has been a notable example of how to do things right from a security perspective. That is to say, that all features which might enable security vulnerability have been turned off. It is possible to turn them on if a user feels comfortable with that, but by default the OS has things locked down. Microsoft really ought to get a clue, but until the government decides to regulate this sort of thing (and they should), consumers will continue getting hosed by those in Redmond.

Two things worth noting about Mac OS X: First, Apple is now the world-leader in providing UNIX operating systems. Second, Linux is dead as a desktop operating system and maybe, ultimately, as a server OS as well. MacOS X achieves the pretty graphical user interface that Linux never managed (last market share report showed Linux usage at .2 percent), and MacOS X Server continues to make strides. Given the UNIX core, OS X is already among the most stable operating systems on the market. This is why the X is starting to gain momentum as the geek OS of choice.

 December 12, 2001

 
Last night's CMUG meeting with Apple User Group Head Honcho Garr Reynolds provided a good overview of MacOS X 10.1. Reynolds did polling throughout the evening. "How many of you have switched to X? If not, why not? What's keeping you from upgrading?" Stuff like that.

The results were interesting. Of the roughly 100 people in attendance, I would guess that about 7 have upgraded to MacOS X. Reynolds second question—and he's taking extensive notes with him back to Cupertino on this one—"Why haven't you upgraded?" received a variety of responses. Most had to do with the lack of native applications. Roughly a dozen people are waiting for a native version of Adobe Photoshop, for example.

But the most interesting question and answer was this: "How many of you are planning to buy a Mac in the next 12 months and just move to MacOS X then?" The response was overwhelming. Probably 50-60 percent raised their hands, effectively saying, "Yep, that's how it will be for me." (I am among those.) If this informal straw poll is both accurate and representative, Apple will sell a lot of computers in the coming year and their worries about delivering a bulk of OS X-using customers to software developers will be solved.

In terms of X itself, the presentations was saw didn't deliver much new information. I will confess that I am moving much closer to installing X on Trinity, but that's at least in part because I have clients who will be wanting to upgrade within the next year, and obviously I need to get a handle on X and how it works before they do. The presentation highlighted some of the neat features, but given how many Classic applications I'd be forced to run, I'm not sure that an X upgrade makes sense for me from a usability perspective. Still, I definitely have to stay ahead of the curve on the MacOS, so I wouldn't be surprised if I did the deed within the next week or two. Or maybe I'll just wait for MacWorld SF 2002 and see what happens there.

 November 27, 2001

 
Yet another PC email virus is making the rounds. This one, BadTrans B, again only runs on PCs. Macs are, as usual, untouched.

Though I've written the goverment about it, I've not formally weighed in here on the proposed Justice Department v. Microsoft settlement. It will come as no suprise I'm sure that I think it's a thoroughly worthless agreement. The Bush Justice Department has punted, and, if approved, Microsoft will walk away having committed numerous blatantly illegal acts and having received no punishment. In essence, the agreement calls for Microsoft to not do (again) what they've already done, but it also leaves so many loopholes that Microsoft will be free to do whatever they want. It's a sham.

This was a politically motivated agreement, and my understanding is that the Bush White House politicos engineered the deal. Monopolies are bad for consumers, they're bad for industry, and they're bad for America.

My proposed solution: Fine Microsoft $30 billion, open source Internet Explorer and parts of Windows XP, and prohibit them from future monopolistic behavior—and tack on massives fines if they do wrong again. Trust me, this would solve the problem.

 November 26, 2001

 
Over the extended holiday weekend I picked up StarCraft, a Blizzard Entertainment title that was game of the year in 1997-98. I've not played it, but my understanding is that it's sort of like WarCraft II in space. Most notably, this StarCraft Battle Chest that I purchased included, StarCraft, the expansion StarCraft: Brood Wars, and two strategy guides—all for $8 at Best Buy.

 November 15, 2001

 
I installed Tales of the Sword Coast (TOSC), the Baldur's Gate expansion, and finished up the original Baldur's Gate game in short order. It was not nearly as challenging an endgame as I anticipated, but I do confess that by the time my party rolled around for a final battle sequence we were pretty much loaded for bear.

For continuity's sake, the Tales expansion takes place prior to the final battle sequence, so if you've finished the Baldur's Gate, well, you get to pretend that final battle never happened. Indeed, my understanding is that after you complete the Tales stuff, you can attempt the final battle against—only this time your opponents are much tougher.

So far I'm enjoying the new TOSC environment. There are a lot of little fixes here and there plus a bunch of new spells and monsters, but most importantly the experience point cap is raised to 161,000. New levels for everybody!

I bought Tales from Amazon.com for $19.95. That's $10 off the original list price.

 November 14, 2001

 
Apple released Airport 2.0 software and updated its $299 Airport Base Station. The software upgrade will take any Airport-card equipped Mac and add 128-bit WEP encryption, AOL compatibility, plus some other buzzword-heavy features which are irrelevant for most users. The Base Station adds an extra ethernet port, a built-in firewall, AOL compatibility, and 128-bit WEP encryption. The Base Station also now supports upto 50 simultaneous users.

For me, a guy who already uses Airport regularly (I'm on it now), this is more or less a non-event. After I see how the bugs shake out in the software, I probably will upgrade to 2.0 since it's a free download.

My old Base Station is hooked into an ethernet hub already, so the extra port wouldn't really matter. I run firewall software, so that's covered too (though I concede it's a nice addition). AOL compatibility is similarly a non-issue for me (and, I would be tempted to argue, all right-thinking individuals). The 128-bit WEP encryption sounds like an impressive improvement from the previous 40-bit WEP encryption, but WEP's been hacked as a scheme, so frankly you're not truly secure no matter how high the bit-rate of your encryption key. (Airport is based on the 802.11b wireless standard and that standard specifies WEP encryption so until the standard gets changed Apple's kind of stuck here. Nonetheless, for home users like myself this really isn't a big deal.) Finally, the bump up to the 50 user limit is so far beyond the capacity at which I will ever run my Base Station that it, too, is unimportant to me.

So, the bottom line is that Apple's made some good improvements to their Airport wireless networking system. If you're interested in putting your Mac on a wireless network or in creating a wireless network at your office or home, now is a great time to jump in. The technology is useful, fun, relatively affordable, and fairly easy to use.

If you've already got your Airport hardware, the software update is free and likely worthwhile, and the Base Station isn't so much of an improvement that you need to dump your old one. In all, a win for everybody.

 November 4, 2001

 
Been playing some Quake III: Arena with Dave and Dennis over the Internet lately, and man does it rock! We played a 3 vs. 5 capture the flag game, and what a great time. There are a lot of bots to make it challenging, but as the Navy would say that's also a target-rich environment. Soon we'll probably scale back the number of bots and up their skill level. On most maps, we're kicking the bots up a tree, and no matter how fun that is initially, it gets old after a while.

I've ordered Tales of the Sword Coast (TOSC), the expansion pack to Baldur's Gate. The price finally dropped from $29.95 to $19.95 at Amazon.com so I signed up myself right up. In Baldur's Gate I've hit the 89,000 experience point cap, so I effectively abandoned the game before finishing. TOSC will up the cap to something like 161,000—enough that I can finish the game with my characters getting all the skill levels they deserve. TOSC also adds four new areas of adventure. I consider Baldur's Gate the best single player game I've ever played.

 October 25, 2001

 
So Apple introduces the iPod, probably the coolest MP3 player on the planet. The verbage from the PR department goes like this: 1,000 songs on a device that's the size of a pack of cards. It plays MP3s, AIFFs, and WAVs, and will auto-sync with Apple's free iTunes 2 software. It's got 20 minute skip protection. And since it's a 5 GB ulta-portable hard drive, why not use it that way? In addition to music, you can also store regular Mac files on it. It connects via FireWire, so you can put 1,000 songs on the iPod in about 10 minutes. By contrast, most other MP3 players use USB (described as "slow as a slug on Valium") and would take about 5 hours to transfer a comparable number of songs. It also has the best, easiest-to-use interface of any MP3 player on the market. Even the non-techno-saavy can make this thing rock.

So what's not to like? Well, the $399 price tag is a little high. If this were the perfect beast, I could stomach that, but I think the mass market would much prefer something in the sub-$250 range. I could be wrong about that, and I hope I am. I'd love for Apple to sell a zillion of these for Christmas.

The deal killer for me, though, is the hard drive size. I need more than 5 GB of MP3 storage. I've got an MP3 collection of 3.5 GB, and that doesn't represent even half of the music I own. I've got a whole lot more rippin' and burnin' to do. Five GB will not get it done for me, and I suspect the same is true for a lot of music-loving Mac-heads.

So I'll be waiting for iPod version 2.0 where hopefully the hard drive size is larger and the price smaller. I'll see if I can get my hands on one once they start shipping in November. I'll let you know if playing with it changes my mind.

 October 18, 2001

 
Apple announced quarterly profits of $66 million (18 cents a share) + $1 million of investment income on revenue of $1.45 billion. Year-to-year gross margins increased to 30.1% from 25% thanks to lower component costs. Apple shipped 850,000 Macs in the quarter, including some 251,000 iBooks. Every retail store is profitable, but overhead expenses of rolling out the stores are expected to result in a small retail loss for the year. Apple retains $4.3 billion in cash and short-term securities.

Outlook for the next quarter is guarded given the economic uncertain surrounding the Christmas holiday shopping season. Initial guidance from Apple is to expect 10 cents a share on revenue of $1.4 billion.

Apple will introduce a new digital music device on October 23 which "isn't a Mac," according to the release received by journalists. Speculation is that it is a device which combines Apple's MP3 player iTunes with QuickTime away from the Mac, but which can sync to the computer to be updated. Perhaps it's a stereo component of some kind? Being Apple first non-Mac hardware foray in some time, this should be interesting. Personally, I'm hoping it will use Airport.

Apple has also revised the PowerBook and iBook lines in time for the holidays. The PowerBook G4 Titanium specs:

1. 550- or 667-MHz G4
2. 100- or 133-MHz system bus
3. 20-, 30-, or 40-GB hard drive
4. DVD-ROM or CD-RW drive
5. ATI Mobility Radeon video card with 16 MB RAM
6. 10/100/1000-BaseT ethernet
7. Priced at $2,199; $2,999; and $3,299 depending on configuration.

A very good revision of the PowerBook line. The processor increases are substantive (up from 400- and 500-MHz), the extra hard drive space welcome (up from 10- and 20-GB), and the CD-RW drive option important. The new video card is much faster than the old one, and gigabit ethernet—a first for a portable—creates a "must-buy" scenario for some users. Pricing remains good. If there is a downside, it is only that Apple was unable to fit either a SuperDrive (a CD- and DVD-RW) or a Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) into the Titanium's 1" thickness. Long-term, that's a problem.

Apple provided a similar though not as dramatic revision to its iBook line:

1. 500- or 600-MHz G3 (formerly only 500-MHz)
2. 66- or 100-MHz system bus (formerly only 66-MHz)
3. 15-, 20-, or 30-GB hard drive (up from 10 GB)
4. 128 MB RAM now standard (an increase from 64 MB on low-end models)
5. Slight price reductions to $1,299; $1,499; $1,599; and $1,699.

This is a nice revision of the iBook line, but not nearly as substantive because, frankly, Apple's already selling these things as fast as it can make them. I've been "hands-on" with them a couple times (most recently for a couple hours yesterday, in fact), and I have no qualms in saying these are amongst the finest portables Apple's ever turned out.

 October 12, 2001

 
The rumor mill is rife with reports that Apple will be speed-bumping the PowerBook and iBook lines within the next two weeks. Anyone considering a purchase of either of these types of machines should probably hold off until then.

Those looking for a desktop machine might want to explore the $799 iMac, pretty much the best bargain Apple's ever offered. If you're an education customer, it's even better at $749. Here's the specs: 500-MHz G3, 64 MB RAM, 20 GB HD, 24x CD-ROM, 10/100 Base-T Ethernet, 56k modem, 2 USB, 2 FireWire, VGA video mirroring, Harman Kardon speakers, Pro keyboard and mouse, AirPort-ready, Mac OS 9 and X. Order from the Apple Store and you also get free shipping.

Now it's obvious that 64 MB RAM is insufficient, but RAM is cheap nowadays. Data Memory Systems has 256 MB of iMac RAM for $26.75. This is much cheaper than buying RAM through the Apple Store. Indeed, if a person is willing to install the RAM himself, he can save lots of money buying the least RAM possible from Apple and ordering it from a third-party. (For comparison Apple wants $140 for 256 MB of RAM.)

The only disadvantage I see to the above system is the slot-loading CD-ROM. If a person's got their heart set on a CD-RW or DVD-ROM drive, well, it might be worth the $200 it costs to jump to the $999 iMac. Otherwise, for about $825 you can get one killer machine. (That's $775 for you Ed customers.)

 October 10, 2001

 
We've had a couple of weeks now with Apple's MacOS X 10.1 and various clients and friends have been wondering about upgrading. For those currently running 10.04 upgrading is a no-brainer. Version 10.1 signficantly outshines 10.04 in all respects. Plus it's a free upgrade for 10.04 owners until the end of October. (After that point, it'll likely be $20 for the CD.)

For users of MacOS 9.x or earlier, I am still advising a wait-and-see approach. Though the X operating system is now plenty usable, there are very few native software packages available. Before upgrading, a person would be well-advised to make a checklist of frequently used software and wait until the majority of it is MacOS X-native. (Most non-native Mac software will still run, it just won't have any of the special features of X, and it's something of a hassle to use it.)

Personally, I run so many different applications that I need to wait longer. Of all the software I have, only Quicken and StuffIt Deluxe are X-native. Most of the scuttlebutt has developers scurrying madly to finish porting their products to X, so I've hopeful that by MacWorld SF 2002 in January, not only will the work be done, but Apple may have also released MacOS X 10.2. That will probably be the point at which I jump on-board.

Another reason to wait, as has long been the case, is that new operating system upgrades can be flawed. Most recently MacOS 9.2.1 was delivered, and the rumor mill on the net is that it causes disk corruption from using the Sleep command. This is unconfirmed last I read, but it serves as a good reminder: Take your time with operating system upgrades if you can!