Cover by Mike Gorman
MyMac Magazine #30, Oct 1997

On October 6 three years ago, I purchased my current computer, a Performa 636CD. The total cost was (US) $1811, which was very reasonable for a CPU, monitor, and software. This Macintosh continues to function efficiently, and I’m in no special hurry to replace it.

In 1994, owning a modest Performa made me a “low-end-Macintosh- user,” or LEMU. Serious Mac users had heavyweight Quadras, or the new 6100 or 7100 Power Macs, all of which were beyond my finances. I accumulated additional software and peripherals on an as-needed basis, always with an eye on the checkbook balance. In this respect, I probably am similar to many of you. My budget grudgingly accepted monthly expenditures for America Online (AOL), and then an Internet service provider (ISP). I certainly have received plenty of value from these online accounts.

Using the humble calculator desk accessory, I recently added up all my
computer-related expenditures during the past three years. The grand total is over $4,000, which averages approximately $4 per day. This dollar amount certifies me as a bona fide LEMU, don’t you think?

When I originally acquired the Performa, my e-pal, Paul Martin, advised that I would be very lucky to be using the same Mac in three years. Technological advancement is a mixed blessing for the humble computer purchaser on a limited budget.

In my case, $4 per day represents $1 – $2 per hour on an annualized basis. Notwithstanding crashes, freezes, bombs, error messages, and my never-ending learning curve, $2 per hour is an splendid price for using a Mac and participating on the Internet.

*****

Where do I go from here? It appears that my next Mac will come from Apple instead of Motorola or Power Computing. If I were purchasing a new computer today, I would be delighted with a 6500/300, plus a third-party 17″ monitor. In reality, though, a 6400/200 and a 15″ monitor would be terrific, at half the price for this LEMU. How many years should I expect from such a system? (Editor’s Note: John wrote this update as we went to press: It appears that both the 6400/200 and 6500/200 have been discontinued by Apple, however Apple has left us with the 6500/225 at a (very tempting) reduced price of only $1599.

In the meantime, armed with ClarisWorks, Netscape, OneClick, Norton
Utilities, and a hard-drive full of share/free/payware, I’m still getting my
money’s worth from the reliable Performa. I look forward to hearing from you, and reading your personal comments and experiences. Keep in touch, friends.

*****

(Postscript)

Today Paul Martin reminds me that:

*****

Thanks, Paul. I’m getting hungry. Let’s go catch some fish!

John Nemerovski (nemo@mymac.com)

Last month, I used humor to get my message out about the Macintosh. This month I’m going to try a more ‘in your face’ approach. As consumers, we tend to think in a certain way based upon our first influences. No matter how wrong those thoughts may be we stick with them until we are faced with one of two situations: Irrefutable evidence, or the more likely scenario, total embarrassment and humiliation. Since the latter of the two is not a good way to get people to like you, especially when it involves the separation of money, here are two commercials using the irrefutable evidence concept…

Macintosh Makes Reading
SCENE: Black screen appears, famous Apple ad voice, ” All these magazines and newspapers depend upon us to bring you the information you need.” Images of famous magazines flash across the screen in rapid fashion with newspaper banners interspersed in them. At the end, each appears in a checkerboard fashion across the screen for several seconds. The screen blackens, then the Apple logo appears with Steve Jobs new favorite phrase, “Think Differently”.

Famous Logos
SCENE: Black screen appears, famous Apple ad voice, “The following famous logos were all brought to you with the help of one company.” Images of famous logos from corporations and the entertainment industry flash across the screen. Then, the voice says, “Oh, and one more”. The Microsoft flag logo appears. The screen blackens, then the Apple logo appears with that new phrase, “Think Differently”.

Compared to last month, these are much more simplistic ads; however, the point is to get people thinking Apple is cool. As one article I read recently stated, “Apple is a lifestyle brand”. Unfortunately, as each week passes without any mass media blitz that thought weakens among consumers. I know Chiat/Day needs some time to get their ad team rolling, but didn’t they have some proposals ready when they bid for the contract?! We’re Waiting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Moment on the Soap Box (like I wasn’t already there!)
As sad as I was on one hand to hear of Power Computing’s exit from the market, I saw an immediate positive. Once again, Apple has gone outside of itself to find a better solution to its problems. Consider this: For a hundred million in stock, Apple gets a working system of direct sales based on the incredibly efficient Dell model (remember, Power’s president worked for Dell). Had the gang in Cupertino tried to develop their own version the costs would have been several times higher. Instead, Apple gets a lean, mean system with the bugs (theirs will always be glitches) already worked out.

Just some food for thought. Let me know what you think.

Mark Marcantonio (MarkMarc@aol.com)

DoubleScroll 2.2b3
Author: Edward Voas
Shareware: $10.00
http://www.amargosa.com

Many long time Macintosh users may know of a Control Panel called DoubleScroll, which places double arrows at the top and bottom of your scroll bars. But what many Mac users may not know is that DoubleScroll is now Mac OS 8 compatible and that a few new features have been added with the new release.

DoubleScroll lets you have double arrows at both ends, or only at the bottom right of your scroll bar, greatly limiting the amount of mouse movement required to scroll up and down in a window. In addition to the double arrows, DoubleScroll enables live scrolling and many modifier key shortcuts. Option-clicking the arrows will act as a page up/page down, Command-clicking the arrows will act as a home/end feature, and Shift-clicking in the elevator region of the scroll bar will automatically cause the thumb to jump to the location you clicked and start tracking from there.

DoubleScroll has a filter feature that will let you tell DoubleScroll which applications are incompatible with DoubleScroll, and which features to enable in them. DoubleScroll also supports on-the-fly preference changes (all changes are made active upon closure of the Control Panel, instead of on restart) and a scrolling throttle which lets you change the scrolling speed and the scrolling delay.

The Summary
DoubleScroll has many features that I have wanted for a long time. Even though the Mac OS 8 finder has live scrolling, many applications and dialog boxes still don’t, which makes DoubleScroll essential to me. And if you are a fan of double arrows, then DoubleScroll is the way to go. I find myself disabling many good utilities because they are incompatible with only one of my applications, or because they simply don’t have enough options. DoubleScroll does not have any of these problems. DoubleScroll lets you take control of its features, instead of its features taking control of you.

Download Double Scroll 2.2

Sleeper 3.0
Company: St. Clair Software
Shareware: $25.00
http://www.stclairsw.com

Sleeper is another veteran Macintosh shareware program, and it has been greatly improved in version 3.0. Sleeper is a Control Panel that allows you to spin down your hard disks, power down your monitor, shut down your computer, activate a screen saver, and much more.

Sleepers’ main feature is disk sleep, which lets you spin down your hard disk(s). It is compatible with both internal and external, IDE and SCSI hard disks, and removable drives such as the Zip from Iomega. You can also power down your Energy Star-compatible monitor and shut down your computer when it is idle for a certain amount of time. There is also a screen saver that lets you set the delay time, brightness, and hot corners for dimming your monitor.

You can configure Sleeper to request a password upon wake up, and enable a hotkey or hotkey combination for each of its features. And what if your computer needs your attention while you are away? You will know because the LEDs (the lights on your keyboard for number, caps, and scroll lock) on your keyboard will flash.

The Summary
I have only scratched the surface when it comes to Sleeper’s many features. The only way to experience the true power and innovation of this Control Panel is to download it. I have not found one compatibility problem, and it is a true joy to configure and use. A first glance at the Control Panel may cause you to think that $25.00 is too much to pay for Sleeper, but once you discover how much you can really do with it, I think you will find that $25.00 is well worth it.

Download Sleeper 3.0

Better Edit Keys 1.1
Author: Alessandro Levi Montalcini
Shareware: $10.00
http://persoweb.francenet.fr/~alm

Better Edit Keys is a Control Panel that allows you to use the shift, option, and control keys with the arrows, delete, forward delete and clear keys in any standard text editing field, including basic text editors such as SimpleText. This makes it much easier to work with text without reaching for the mouse.

Better Edit Keys enables nine key combinations that are as follows:

A License to Kill
Of course, no discussion of the Mac’s future can be complete without
addressing the licensing issues. Mac journalists implored, begged, and
harassed Apple until the company finally agreed to license the operating
system. The Wall Street Journal even called Apple’s earlier failure to
license its operating system one of the great corporate blunders of our
century (similar to the recent Apple/Microsoft deal referenced above).
Unfortunately, by the time Apple got around to licensing, the timing was all wrong. Though some of the licensees have done remarkably well in shipping their own versions of Macintosh, they’ve done so at the expense of Apple’s market share. Instead of growing the market, companies like Power Computing, Motorola, and UMAX directly competed with Apple and seriously cut into Apple’s revenues. Again, in the short term, Apple should simply kill its present licensing system. In the long term, however, Microsoft could end up the biggest cloner of them all!

Mick O’Neil (mickoneil@mymac.com)

Backing up is the most important thing that can be done in any computer user’s life. Every file that you’ve had for years may not be on a backup disk. Take a look at your hard drive and imagine losing all of it. It’s a horrible thought, but it could happen.

I had never made backup disks of my information. For years, nothing ever happened to it. Some of these files were created on my old SE and transferred through each computer thereafter. As I had never lost any information from a crash, I never saw the need for backups. Then one day, that all changed.

I shut down the computer normally. Nothing strange had happened the whole day while I was using my computer. But the strangest thing happened the next day when I turned on the computer; a disk with a blinking question mark appeared on my screen. I have seen this before, so I put in the Mac OS system disk and went on my merry way.

Something was different this time, however. The hard disk icon did not appear on the desktop. Usually, when I restart with a system disk, the hard drive appears like normal and I continue working. So I ran Disk First Aid. It checked the hard drive and said that it could not repair the damage.

I realized I had two options. One was to reformat the hard drive right there. The other was to go get Norton Utilities. The former did not seem like a good idea, so I bought Norton Utilities. I ran the disk doctor and it had some horrible things to say about the disk. But it did whatever it could and told me to backup everything and reformat.

After I quit, the hard drive icon appeared on the desktop. I opened it and saw almost nothing. I opened the few folders that were there and realized that the repair did not get most of the files back. At least some of the things were there, so I closed the windows and went to get some disks to back up on to.

I came back with a whole bunch of disks that were not used and opened up the hard drive window again to take a better look around. Upon this second opening, the computer crashed. I still do not know why it did this, but it was the last time I ever opened that hard drive window again.

After the restart from the Norton disk, the hard drive was gone again. I ran Norton yet again, and even it was unable to repair the disk. I knew I had to reformat the drive. Before I did that, though, I knew I needed something better to back up on to than diskettes. I spent a couple days comparing all removable media devices. The best one seemed to be the Jaz drive from Iomega. I bought one and immediately reformatted the hard drive.

Using the unerase portion of Norton Utilities, I tried to get my files back. The problem here is that the normal file scan retrieved nothing. I did a file pattern scan, in which it finds types of files, and it gave me some files. Listed as Pict1, Pict2, etc., I became highly discouraged. I backed up the types of files that I thought might have important information in them. I also ran several text scans so I could get some of the more recent and more urgent files. A text scan searches the whole drive for the words you type in, returning files with a lot of garbage, but some text mixed in. I backed these up as well.

After this, I installed Mac OS 8, then the rest of my software. I basically lost everything on my drive. In a way, it was a good thing, because I back up every night now. I urge everyone to do the same. You can get software that will back up everything automatically, or you can do it by hand. I use the Find File to search for everything with the modification date of today. Then I sort through the list of files and copy everything that is important onto the Jaz drive. The search brings a lot of applications, preferences, cache files, and a lot of invisible junk.

Backing up has to be the most important thing you can do. You are very lucky if you have not lost any files over the years.The investment is worth the anguish of losing important files. Now it doesn’t matter if my hard drive blows up, because everything is on the Jaz disk, waiting to be copied back to another hard drive.

Brian Koponen (briankop@idt.net

One in a series

I now own a PC…

Yes, you heard me right. Your beloved My Mac writer has actually purchased a PC and has it set up in his home, allowing all varieties of “PCism” to invade the area. A copy of Windows 95 and Microsoft Office now lie in my room… beckoning to me in the night. But I do not answer their calls. Instead, I stay here at my faithful, if slightly jealous, Macintosh.

Alas, let me explain. This hunk of pure Windows was practically forced upon us. In order to “keep up with technology,” a member of my family was moved from the office to home. Since the office was Windows-based, they would have nothing to do with Macs. Fortunately, they were fine with the idea of Virtual PC, as long as it was fast and reliable. Unfortunately, our Mac cannot support Virtual PC. Therefore, buying a PC was inevitable. At least we got it for a good price.

Don’t get me wrong, though. For a PC, this is an exceptional unit. It’s a Dell 200Mhz MMX machine complete with groovin’ speakers, a 4GB hard drive, a 56K modem, 32MB RAM, a 4MB 3D video card, and a load of other princely goodies (Dell systems have always impressed me… maybe it’s the 500+ ads they have in “PC World” each month).

It’s hard for me to come to terms with the fact that the PC is faster than my Mac. My loyal Performa 6200 tops out at 75MHz, 1MB VRAM, and a 1GB hard drive. Yes, it’s true, the Windows box is much speedier than my Mac. The hard drive is faster, the memory is faster, the modem is faster, it’s all faster. But note the keyword here is FASTER, not BETTER. I still prefer to do work on my Mac. I still prefer to play games on my Mac. I still prefer to do everything on my Mac. My Mac, while definitely a dinosaur in computer years, is still capable of giving me the power I need to get the job done. My Mac is easier to use, is more stable (much thanks to Mac OS 8), and is much more fun. But we’ve all known that for years. Let’s have a brief run-down of the current advantages and disadvantages of the Windows system.

Some disadvantages of the Windows system:

For those of you who don’t know, I do all of my computin’ on a Performa 550 that was manufactured in October of 1994. I bought it on New Years Day 1995, and its been a regular member of the Miner clan ever since. And although this inanimate member of the family was never formally given a name, it has informally come to be known as “the computer.”

Recently I’ve been thinking I might have been better off buying a Wintel PC instead of this lowly 68030 Mac I have sitting in front of me. Not because I’m unhappy with this machine, mind you; on the contrary, “the computer” does everything I need it to do and does it well. But had I purchased, let’s say, a 386 PC on that cold and wintry first day of 1995 instead of this Macintosh, I most likely would have been forced to upgrade to the much faster Pentium or even a Pentium II machine by now, keeping me on the cutting edge of this ever changing computer technology.

Why…?

Because had I bought a 386 PC and not this Macintosh, I’m sure the PC would have either broke down mechanically or softwareally confused itself to death running Windows and I’d be using it as a door stop or paperweight by now. In which case I’d have been forced to either give up computin’ or upgrade to the latest and greatest Pentium machine that all my PC friends seem to have.

But Nooooooo…, not me! I go out and purchase a low-end Macintosh (cuz I didn’t know nothing ’bout computers at the time!) that refuses to die no matter how much I abuse it. A machine, I am convinced, that will still be computing flawlessly, (albeit slowly) long after paleontologists dig up the fossilized pink furry remains of the Energizer Bunny and his drum.

Ya see, I can’t bring myself to “Keep up with the Jones’” when my Model-T runs just as good as their Cadillac; slower maybe, but still getting me from point A to point B without breaking down. Also, had I bought a PC instead of a Mac, I wouldn’t feel so guilty every time I think about replacing it. As I found out, PC users don’t bond with their computers like us Mac fools do.

Case in point:

I was talking to one of my PC friends who just went out and bought a Pentium powered computer recently. I asked her:

“What happened to the 386 you bought a couple years ago?”

She replied:

“Oh, that old thing! I couldn’t get it to run any of the new software they’re coming out with, plus it was making a funny noise every time I booted, so I threw it away.”

Can you believe it? She just tossed it out with no feelings of remorse or even a hint of guilt. She spoke as though her computer were only a machine, a tool to be cast away when it no longer lived up to her demands. What the hell’s up with that? Strange and heartless people, those PC users!

Sure, it would be nice to have all that megahertzal speed and mastodonal memory that comes in today’s computers, but for myself I need justification to ameliorate to one of the big boy Power Macs from my measly little Performa 550 with its itsy-bitsy 68030 processor running at the ridiculously low clock speed of 33MHz.

I mean, no matter how hard I try to convince myself that it’s time to upgrade to one of those fancy, high speed Power Macs, I cannot for the life of me justify the expense or even the need beyond telling myself; “It sure would be neat to have one!”, which really doesn’t qualify as justification, that is unless you have a couple thousand dollars laying around that you don’t know what to do with. In which case, “It sure would be neat to have one,” is more than enough justification. However, that isn’t the case with me, so I have to come up with more substantial reasoning as to why I absolutely, positively, have to have a Power Mac.

I’ve tried telling myself that I need to upgrade for my business, but then, (when I think about it) there isn’t any kind of spreadsheet or record keeping that I could do on a Power Mac that I can’t do on “the computer.”

I tried convincing myself that since I write a column for the illustrious and world famous My Mac Magazine, I should have a nice big fat Power Mac to write on, but in reality I could be writing this stuff with a crayon and sending it to Tim via the U.S. Postal Service. He could then transcribe my musings onto his Power Mac, (or have his secretary do it) and you would still get my two cents worth of gibberish every month. Instead of “Miner Thoughts”, it would be called “The Crayola Chronicles.”

Now if I were Mike Gorman, the gifted cartoonist that does the My Mac cover art every month and a good deal of the artwork at My Mac Online’s Web site, I’d have ample justification to own a whole bunch of those megahertz that one gets in a PowerPC machine. But this is what Mike does for a living. He needs a computer full of memory and megahertzs’. I don’t think I do, although, “It sure would be neat to have one.”

Take Tim Robertson -please! He began publishing this rag on a teenie-weenie Performa 410 with only 4 megs of memory and a 40 megabyte hard drive. As the magazine got bigger and bigger, Tim’s hard drive began to shrink rapidly as he found himself compressing more and more of his personal stuff to make room for the magazine stuff that was pouring in. Not only was he running out of space to put his stuff, he was finding out that his machine just didn’t have the poop to keep up with his own ever increasing demands to make My Mac the premier electronic cyberspace fish wrap it has become. So Tim went out and jumped into the Power Mac fracas and came away with a Performa 6300. Now I don’t know if this was Tim’s only reason to upgrade to a Power Mac, but as far as I’m concerned, he had plenty of justification to do so. Just think, if Tim were still using his Performa 410, My Mac might only be a 4 or 5 page newsletter instead of the full blown magazine it is today.

I thought I had finally found my justification to upgrade to PowerPC when I got a letter from Apple Computer the other day reminding me that when I bought my Performa 550 I may have been wrongly led to believe that it could be upgraded to a Power Mac easily and inexpensively. And although it can be upgraded, it is neither easy nor inexpensive. So, out of the goodness of Apple’s heart, and with a little nudging from the Attorney General’s office, Apple has decided to give me a good deal on an upgrade. A sort of good faith gesture on their part, I guess.

They say they’ll send me all the parts I need to Power up my 550. Plus give me a coupon that will pay for the cost to have an Apple Authorized Techie do the installation. And all they want from me is $599.00. Wait, there’s more! For all my pain and suffering, they’ll throw in an extra 4 megs of RAM. Wow! Thank you Apple for lying to me and then providing me with more than enough justification to upgrade. If I’m ever going to do it, now’s the time, right?

Well… maybe, but is this what I really want, an old body with new guts? What if I decide two weeks after I do the upgrade that my monitor is too small? (This is a one-piece machine remember.) I’d be screwed and stuck with a Power Mac that has a too-small monitor. That would really irritate me. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hasty. Maybe this isn’t the justification I’ve been looking for. Oh man, what should I do? What should I do?

Sorry, I don’t mean to bore you with my indecision and inability to make a choice on something as simple as upgrading a stupid computer. After all, this ain’t a life or death choice I have to make here, is it? Of course it ain’t. So after thinking about it for the time it took me to proofread this weak column of mine, I’ve come to a decision.

I’ll continue to use my weaky-squeaky Performa 550 until it no longer does what I need it to do. I’ll procrastinate (I’m good at that) about ameliorating until I can no longer keep this Macintosh of mine together with bailing wire and spit, or until I die of old age, whichever comes first.

Yep! That’s what I’m gonna do.

Hey! Thanks for helping me finally make up my mind. I couldn’t have done it without ya!

Pete Miner (pete@mymac.com)

There I was, quietly dithering about a contribution for October’s “My Mac” when the bottom dropped out of the Apple Cart. Apple had apparently swallowed Power Computing whole and spit out the rest of the clones along with their licensing, their future and even their ready to ship, hot into the box, next generation Macs. I scrapped the column for this story – a story that wrote itself. So, is there a silver lining behind each cloud? Who knows. But I have finally learned how to spell ‘license’. Which reminds me, why a multiple choice ending? Maybe I’ve been a teacher too long.

Once there was this kid who wanted to be Captain. He was a dreamer, a schemer, a genius. And, as is the way of those who shift the world, he burned with a maniacal fire. Marbles were his passion. Not just any marbles. His marbles. He wanted to reshape the world as he remade the game. He would make the most marvelous marbles ever made. When kids called “Roundsters”, it would be his aggies that rolled across the ring; his shooters that brought ease and delight to sore knuckles. Someday his name would echo through the Marbles Hall of Fame.

At the same time, there was another kid who wanted to be King. He too was a schemer, a dreamer, a genius. He burned with the same passions and the same fires. But his goal was to own all marbles on the block; someday maybe, all the marbles in the world. And when the cry went out to “Knuckle down”, the world would knuckle down with Willy.

The first kid built a tree house high in the boughs of an apple tree. And there, with a few friends, he set out to change the world. He would be Captain of his fate, a Buccaneer on a Marble Sea. It was to be his life’s work. His calling. His destiny. (Did I say he was a bit of a fanatic with an ego the size of Alaska?). His marbles would be as fresh and clean and uncomplicated as the apples that overhung the clubhouse roof. And so he named them. Not Aggies, but Apples.

The AppleTree was on a roll. Oh, what a marble they made! It was round and smooth, pure silk in the hand. It even had a little smiley face to warm the player’s heart. But the heart of the marble itself, the magic that could make a marble player out of even you or me, was a bit of genius in the very core. It was this genius that made these marbles go where no marble had ever gone before, i.e., where the players hoped they’d go. For, unlike all marbles before them, they rolled smooth and true. This magic touch deep in the heart of the Apple was code-named ‘Roll on Mama!’ (aka ROM).

Soon after, as you walked the back alleys of America, you heard joyful cries of “Roll on Mama! Roll on!” Kids and grandparents and all the rest of us gathered round to watch the games. There lay the problem. For nothing that simple, that much fun, could be more than child’s play. Why, look how easily little kids could make them go. Grown ups, who had suffered through a painful rite of passage to master the old rules, were vocal in their contempt. “Kid stuff,” they sneered. “Toys!” They scoffed. “Not ready for the Big Leagues.”

Meanwhile, Willy too would change the world. His first marbles, I hasten to say, were far more like prickly pears than smooth round apples. They left thumbs raw and fingers swollen. It was a bloody miracle if they worked at all without long, painful training. But while the rest of us shied away from these pesky pricklies, the grown ups among us, especially those grown ups who felt most comfortable in a pinstriped suit with a too tight tie, were impressed. “No pain. No gain,” they nodded as they ordered boxes and boxes of pricklies for their subordinates. Well, you didn’t think they intended to play marbles. They played golf.

But Willy, definitely a part of the Big Leagues now and delighted to see the world beating a path to his cactus patch, wanted more. He too wanted marbles that lay smooth in the hand instead of leaving little blisters on every finger. Smooth was the way of the future. Willy took to hanging around the AppleTree in hopes that an occasional secret would fall at his feet. His persistence paid off. Eventually, he too developed rounder, smoother marbles though, as the prickly pear still lurked in the heart of each, little bumps and ridges peppered their surface. They felt, on the whole, more like oranges than apples. And so he named them. Oranges. Then, as if possessed by creative inspiration, he hurried off to patent the name (and all the secrets he’d acquired at the foot of the AppleTree) much to the surprise of orange eaters – and Apple users – everywhere.

But the name was not the only surprise in store for the users. Due to their bumpity nature – which was, of course, due to the prickly pear embedded in the core – Oranges had a distressing tendency to zig when they were meant to zag. And quite often, when asked to roll uphill or down, they simply went splat.The Apple users giggled and jeered at such poor marble marksmanship, expecting a large run on the Apple stores. Surely Apples would be invited into the Big Leagues now.

But that was the third surprise. Those same guys in tight ties that had sneered at the Apples smooth skins and friendly faces in the early days now extolled the approximation of simplicity in the unpredictable Oranges. And all those zigs for zags and sudden splats? “Just remember,” they said. “No pain. No gain.” The grown ups clung to their Oranges, warts and all.

And now our story takes a painful turn. Oranges became more and more plentiful in the marketplace while some stores stopped stocking Apples altogether. Schools naturally preferred the handy Apples as they caused fewer fights on the playground and, more to the point, fewer nervous collapses in the Teachers Lounge. Even Principals could get the hang of the friendly little gizmos. But, as Apple stock went down, tempers around the AppleTree went up. Egos flared. Politics ruled. And heads rolled. Suddenly, there was our kid, Captain of the team, kicked out of his own club! Chagrin. What next?

In Marbles, winner takes all. It’s that kind of a game. The Big Leagues played ‘for keeps’. But Oranges were sold on the open market while the AppleTree kept a firm grip on its stock of Apples. Although this meant better quality control – and higher profits – it was eventually clear that Apples were being buried under a flood of open market Oranges. And so, with much gnashing of teeth and spitting of seeds, the AppleTree decided to let a few select others into their league. For the first time outsiders too could make use of that apple magic with its little ‘Roll on Mama’ at the core. They even got to have a smiley face.

For a time everyone was on a roll. Enthusiasm soared among the players as newer and faster – and cheaper – marbles hit the shelves. A creative fervor was unleashed among Apple lovers and Apple makers everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except up in the boughs of the old AppleTree, far from the players below. For somewhere they had lost the vision. It was rumored they now preferred golf to marbles. (Their ties got in the way.) Market share plummeted. Politics ruled. Once more, heads rolled. And then, the world shifted again.

The Captain was back! Apple lovers held their breath. What next? Was this a return to vision, charisma, maybe even market share? They remembered the good old days when Apples ruled and marbles rolled. Then they remembered again. In the good old days, when the Captain held sway, there was only one rule. It had to be his way!

August, 1997. The marbles world shook and shifted and shook again. Apple lovers heads were spinning faster than the marbles in the ring. The Captain told an assembled crowd of marble makers and aficionados that winners didn’t have to take all. The rules had changed and old rivals were new friends. From now on they would play ‘for fair’. And to prove it, there was the King right there on the stage. Willy’s smile twenty feet in the air.

But fair for whom? Soon it was clear that nothing was clear. Apple lovers hung out on the Internet watching Marbles unravel with the same fascination with which they had once watched CNN as the Iron Curtain fell. Miss one day, you were a day late and a country short. Only now it wasn’t countries, just marbles. Not nearly so important – except that these were our marbles. Our future.

September came. Still we were bound to the Internet. The AppleTree ate one company for Labor Day’s lunch and left the others in limbo. They threw ‘Chirp’ out the window and put the rest of us behind the 8-Ball. The smiley faces went grim and then blank. And that was how our story stood at the end of the first week in September. What next? Where will we be by October when our story sees daylight? Only the Captain knows.

Four Possible Endings to Our Tale
A MacMultipleChoice Test:
Select the one that suits you best

FIRST: How Sweet Revenge
The Captain … kicked out of his own club! What Anger! What Shame! What a need to be avenged! And avenged he would be with the same charmed egotism that helped build those marvelous marbles from scratch. It would take an insatiable determination and a truly focused fanaticism. But hey – isn’t that what our kid is all about? So, after years of dreaming and scheming, he ingratiated himself back into the club. And then, like a Trojan Horse at the gates, he looted and burned that clubhouse – lock, stock and AppleTree. Not, though, until he had traded his most valuable secrets with his old friend and nemesis, Willy. Then he picked up his marbles and went home.

NEXT: A Conspiracy of One
The Entrepreneur … kicked out of his own club! What Anger! What Shame! What a need to be avenged! And avenged he would be with the same driving egotism that helped build those marvelous marbles from the start. It would take an insatiable determination and a truly focused fanaticism. But hey – isn’t that what our kid is all about? So, after years of scheming and dreaming, he infiltrated himself back into the club. And then, like a midnight raider in his own barn, he burned that clubhouse down – lock and stock. Remember, his stock was long since sold. The AppleTree, now scorched but standing, was ready for the plucking. And when the ashes cleared, he bought that old tree back and there he built the Next Clubhouse.

THEN: Fruit Compote
In this, the best of all possible worlds, Apples and Oranges live on forever. And there is a chicken in every pot and a MacWin on every desk. And Santa comes twice a year. Ho Ho.

THEN AGAIN:
Maybe we should just … Let it BE.

Susan Howerter (susan@mymac.com

Hello out there to all you My Mac readers! I’m back after my one month college-adjustment-leave-of-absence. In that time, I have learned a couple of valuable lessons:

1. You don’t have as much free time in college as you think you do.
2. Homework always takes longer than you think it will.
3. College football is tougher, more demanding, and more time-consuming than high school football.
4. Always be careful about what you write when you send something to your publisher, because you never know when it might see print.

I couldn’t resist that last one; I had fully expected to not see my column at all in the last issue. And of all the things to see reprinted, that letter to Tim was the one I least expected! After that, I’m glad to have some fresh material to publish, and I don’t plan on missing too many more months in the near future!

Seriously, this month I will tell you the story I had meant to last month, but some unforeseen circumstances made it impossible for me to do so. Here we go!

Upgrading a Downgrade
For the last two and a half years, I have enjoyed using my family’s Macintosh LC 575. While not outstanding, it’s a pretty decent system – CD-ROM drive, ’040 processor, 250 megabyte hard drive. But as I prepared to go to college this summer, my family made it very clear I was not going to take their computer with me. So, what was I to do?

It was suggested to me by a number of people that I should buy a used or refurbished Power Mac. Weighing my options, and my pocketbook (since I have now officially entered the ranks of the starving college student, that is an increasingly important factor!), I decided that the best I could do would be to buy a first-generation Power Mac, such as a 6100 or, at best, a 7100.

Then, my dad had a good idea – my family’s first computer, an original LC, has been sitting dormant in the basement for a couple of years. Why not take that along with me?

While I initially thought taking that glorified word processor with me would be a waste of desk space, the option became more attractive to me after some careful thinking. If I went with the used Power Mac, I would be buying a computer that I would want to replace in a few years, anyway. A 6100 won’t run Rhapsody, and its 66 MHz 601 processor is incredibly outdated by today’s standards. On the other hand, if I used the LC, I would also have a computer that I would want to replace in a few years, but at a fraction of the cost. After seeing the situation in that light, I readily accepted the LC. I had a computer of my very own.

Time out for a quick sidebar: I love the LC’s pizza box design. That, coupled with its small-but-cute 12 inch RGB monitor, makes for a nice system with a small footprint on the desk. Very attractive looking, in my mind, and one of the best desktop designs I’ve ever seen. Everything is pretty easy to get to inside, also. Why did Apple stop making these? It sure looks a heckuva lot better than the relatively UGLY LC 575 I’m used to. OK, back to the regularly scheduled program…

I would have to spend a little dough to make the LC useful, however. The first thing I needed to do was increase the RAM. The most the LC can have is 10 megabytes, which meant buying two 4 Meg SIMMS in addition to the standard 2 Megs. I searched around for the best prices, and settled on choosing Coast to Coast Memory. I was very pleased with the company. They were polite and helpful while taking my order over the phone, delivery was prompt, and the memory is trouble-free. All RAM they sell also carries a great warranty. Their web site is http://www.18004MEMORY.com
, which just so happens to be their phone number as well.

Now that I could handle running more than SimpleText on my machine, I needed storage space. The LC’s 40 meg internal hard drive was much too small for me, but I didn’t want to waste the money on a big one or two gigabyte drive. Once again, I took to the web to find the best deals. MacResQ turned out to be the company I settled on. They offer tons of used and refurbished equipment: complete systems, hard drives, printers, and more. I picked up a 170 megabyte internal Quantum drive for around fifty bucks, and it fits my needs nicely. This was the first time I had ever placed an order over the Internet, and I had no problems at all with the transaction. You can check out MacResQ for yourself at http://www.macresq.com
.

I’ve got the memory and the storage space. Now, I had one problem – the 16 MHz 68020 processor in the LC was glacially slow. I couldn’t believe I actually used this computer every day for over three years before my family purchased the LC 575. Something had to be done about that.

The search for the proper accelerator was a tricky one. I didn’t want to choose one that was too “low-end,” because it wouldn’t be worth the investment. However, I didn’t want to choose one that was too expensive, either, because then I’d come close to spending so much money that I just as well have bought that used 6100.

Several companies offer a dazzling array of accelerator cards that fit into the PDS slot of the LC, and most work for all of the LC series – I, II, or III. The choices in processors, external cache, extra SIMM slots, and FPUs make for an almost endless list of possible configurations. I settled on the ThunderCache, a 33 MHz 68030 processor upgrade with 32K of external cache, for only a hundred bucks, from MicroMac Technology (http://www.micromac.com
). The folks at MicroMac were wonderful, especially their tech support. They were very helpful when I ran into some installation problems, and when it turned out that the accelerator was defective, they were very good about taking it back and sending me a brand new one. The ThunderCache is supposed to increase the LC’s speed by 170%, possibly up to 220%, and although I haven’t done any formal testing, the machine does feel twice as fast. At least it can keep up with my typing.

Some of you out there may remember when I got a 33.6 modem, and tossed aside my old 14.4. The same goes for when my family bought a color printer; our old monochrome StyleWriter got thrown in a closet somewhere. Those two peripherals are now integral parts of my dorm room desktop system.

Finally, I needed to get the software installed onto my hard drive. This looked to be a little tricky, since a lot of software comes on CD-ROM now. Thank God for the Zip drive!!! I now have a complete copy of the System software installer CD-ROM on a Zip disk, and another disk full of essential software such as ClarisWorks, Eudora, Netscape, and many shareware titles.

So, for only slightly over $200, I transformed a 16 MHz 68020 with 4 megabytes of RAM and a 40 meg hard drive into a 33 MHz 68030 with 10 megs of RAM and a 170 meg hard drive, complete with modem and printer. I’m ably running System 7.5.5, and can use 2.0 versions of Netscape or Explorer without a problem. What seemed like a pathetically outdated, unusable system turned into a pathetically outdated, perfectly good and useful system. Granted, I was lucky to have so much used equipment lying around in my home, but a little research showed I could have gotten everything for slightly under five hundred bucks, which is a good deal in my mind.

The moral of the story could be that there’s a lot of life left in those old computers that have been left for junk. The moral of the story could be that you don’t need the most powerful Mac around to be efficient and happy with your computing experience. The moral of the story could be that there are a lot of good deals to be found on the Internet and through smaller outlets, rather than ordering through catalogs or buying at your local computer superstore. Those could all be good morals. Take your pick.

I’ll stick with my own personal moral: taking the time to type out a personal story that will be read by thousands of people, and that has absolutely nothing to do with the price of rice in China, is a lot more fun than doing that half-completed General Chemistry assignment sitting on top of my monitor. (Editor’s Note- back to homework now, Mike!)

So, if you’re still with me, thanks for indulging me and reading about my new computing environment. I would have loved to keep going and talk about my troubles getting onto the campus network, coping with the nearly 100% Windows-based campus computer labs, and so forth, but I’ll save that for next month. There’s a lot of good fodder for stories in this… I’ve got my monthly column covered for well into 1998 now! (Just kidding. No one could possible stand reading about this old LC every month for the next six months, not even me!)

I’d also love to has over the recent goings-on at Apple, the clone situation, and so forth, but I’m not feeling that serious right now, and I’ll leave that to the other thousand writers out there. So, until next month, happy Macintosh computing!

Mike Wallinga (mlwall@mtcnet.net)

The following is an actual letter from a friend of mine, unedited except for his name.

Date: Wed, Sep 10, 1997 6:51 PM CST
From: [A Friend]
Subj: Re: Jokes from Jim
To: JimMoravec

Jim, sorry I have not answered your mail. Damn puter was down again,for almost a week. I must have a virus or sumpin. Got it fixed once then went down again last night. Just got everything back to normal a few minutes ago.
Thought I had better say “hi” in case it goes down again. I have found
several strange files in my auto exec which I have not seen before.Things
like “Ghostme”. I know this stuff didn’t come with the ‘puter.

Well,better try to get all my mail answered.

Thank God for tape back-ups.

me

Like so many other people who have been Wintel users for awhile, my friend endures major computer problems and software malfunctions on a regular basis. Mind you, these are not minor issues; in fact, he regularly drops completely out of sight while he’s forced to pay some ‘expert’ to fix his limping machine. As you have just read, he really doesn’t have a handle on the cause of his woes, and is forced to operate as if his electricity were supplied by a 30 year old generator with a bad carburetor and a couple of scored cylinders.

What was it about this particular letter that so unsettled me? Perhaps it
was the tenor of it – hastily written as if on a sinking ship – that got me
thinking again about the fate of those people using Wintel boxes. For some reason, this letter has me asking more questions than ever.

Why, Why, Why?
Why do so many people put up with his kinds of problems? His machine and software isn’t ancient; why should he have to endure so many glitches? And why do so many Wintel people not only endure such problems but continue to endure such problems? Why do these same people, incredibly, make excuses for their machines?

When you visit any computer store, why are the people waiting in line for a service technician almost always carrying some non-descript Wintel box in their arms? Why is it so difficult to talk to some people about a far easier way to do one’s computing? Do they somehow believe that a slavish devotion to an awkward operating system is something akin to loyalty? How do we reason with people who continue to defend their flawed rationale in the face of reality and the facts?

Indeed, isn’t this the very problem we Macintosh people are really facing,
wherein potential customers are so brain-washed about Wintel machines that they can no longer reason effectively? Even when we prove to them – using their own magazines and testers – that their machines are less reliable from a hardware perspective, clunkier and less efficient from the software perspective, slower, and now even often more expensive, they still will not yield ground. Why? Why? Why?

The Answer to ‘Why’
I say, perhaps it’s time we face the facts and get it over with: THERE IS NO REASONING WITH THESE PEOPLE. Ever. There IS no answer to ‘why’. If we were on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, Spock would turn to us and declare flatly, “It is, quite simply, illogical”. Sadly, we must realize that trying to talk to these people in an intelligent way about the Macintosh is simply a complete waste of time and breath. Worse, it is illogical. It is as fruitless and illogical as trying to reason with a Tribble about reproduction and family planning. And like Spock presenting Captain Kirk with the reality of some serious predicament the crew has found themselves in, we must also coldly face this reality: that for some strange reason, there is a segment of the world’s population that is ‘imprinted’ with the Wintel way of life, and like a duckling following a poodle because it was the first thing it saw after breaking out of its shell, these people now think Microsoft is their mama. Like nature’s realities, it’s just that simple – and pathetic.

There are certain realities in life that we all accept; the thousands of
personal choices and circumstances whose unique blend becomes the persona of an individual. We all have our own little histories that mold us, but when we view the ‘fringes’ of society, we see people whose lifestyles and choices – some made beyond their consent – have brought them to a place in life that no ‘normal’ person would want to be, and yet, perhaps even because of these choices, those people now defend their lifestyles. Psychologically, it’s probably the only thing they can do.

We have read and heard of the prison inmate who has lived fifty out of his seventy years behind bars and knows nothing else (or better), and now
actually prefers the ugly drabness of prison life. Or the otherwise intelligent person who drops out of society to live – and die – with others who believe without question that a spaceship is coming to take them away to a better life. Or the ‘old guard’ communist who will argue the benefits of communism from a squalid one-room apartment outside Moscow, his faded pictures of Stalin and Lenin forever watching over him. For so many reasons: fate, temperament, personal choices, brainwashing – whatever – there’s just no ‘getting through’ to these people.

Unfortunately, there is a certain percentage of the computing population that must be recognized as ‘imprinted’, and ‘converting’ these people is therefore nearly impossible. Like that old-timer in Russia, they just stare out of their cracked and dusty windows, forever convinced their way is best.

Dealing with the Opposition
Then how best to deal with these people? Is it e-mail diatribes, expertly
argued? Will a barrage of Mac tidbits and facts do the trick? What about
jokes and cartoons? Nope. All that fun stuff is an utter waste of time.
People have tried all of the above (and more) for years, only to come to the same conclusion: Wintel people are brain-locked and will refuse to change, so please don’t bother them with mere facts. In fact, I have never heard of anyone ever ‘winning’ a convert over as the result of Mac evangelism. Oh, I’m sure there must be a few out of the millions of Mac people, but I personally haven’t met any. My guess is the number of ‘converts’ must be a paltry few, something around 1% of all Mac users. And that’s being optimistic.

In any case, Macintosh evangelism, although the right thing to do officially, is best reserved as an Apple Corporate affair – an official
attempt at disseminating facts for those interested in learning about the Macintosh. But trying to get Wintel types to visit that particular Apple site is like trying to convince the plumbing union’s bowling team to give up their only night out to visit the women’s history seminar on the fourth floor of the public library. They may know it’s there, they may even know it would be good for them, but don’t bother to waste your breath ‘cuz they ain’t goin’, pal. And however much fun Mac Web sites are for Mac people, the fact is they are really just preachin’ to the choir.

Instead, I suggest we accept reality and immediately stop trying to convert
people. I suggest we start right now. That’s right, all Mac people should
stop wasting their time and energies and simply concern themselves with
moving ahead to the future of fun, convenient, and effortless computing.
Mark your calendars. Take note of the time. As of NOW we shouldn’t waste any more time fruitlessly cajoling others to switch to a Mac when they’re already pre-programmed against it. Eventually, a few of them will see the light on their own and may finally become Mac users. That must remain our small consolation.

While this means that Macintosh evangelism is most profitably directed to new users untainted by the the Wintel syndrome, it also dictates a gentle
persuasion. There is no need for shouting or exhortation; for some reason, people either are ‘Mac people’ or they’re not. Our efforts should be in educating the newest users to the benefits of the Macintosh, and then not to lose our perspective when about 90% of them turn away. No, there’s no way to logically come to grips with that fact other than to blame fate, psychology or maybe even genetics.

In other words, we must recognize that there will always be more weeds than flowers in the meadows.

Reality TV
When one watches enough cable TV nature shows, eventually even the most sedate urbanite learns that in the world of nature, ‘natural selection’ is a harsh reality. And like a gentle gazelle that stumbles into a pride of lions, Wintel people now stumble into the future of computing. As they wait for their promised minor incremental update of Windows to arrive in a year or so, chances are some strange, new virus will do them in. We needn’t weep for them; it’s just nature and natural selection at work.

And just as the gazelle herd instinctively knows it’s their fate to be eaten by everything higher on the food chain that can catch them, the Wintel herd has learned to accept expensive hardware shutdowns and software lockups. Hey, they even budget for it! Deep down, they know that if some deadly virus doesn’t get their hard drive, odds are something else will. And really deep down, they all know what the year 2000 holds in store for them. Like watching lions pull down their bleating prey, we might shudder when their end comes, but we’re relieved to be able to shut off the nature program and turn on our friendly Macs.

With the pressure of Mac evangelism now off my mind, I can truly say I feel greatly relieved. I just couldn’t carry the fate of my Wintel friends with me all the time; it was simply too much for me. Now that I’ve finally recognized the inevitability of their ‘Wintelness’, I’ve also found that I can enjoy my Macintosh and my computing experience much more, relieved through my personal epiphany of the constant need to answer, argue, defend, and convert. Now, when my Wintel friends have problems of the most Microsoft kind, I just smile and change the subject.

I can’t tell you how much better I feel…

Jim Moravec