With the release of Mac OS X this past weekend, first impressions are coming in from all angles, especially from the My Mac Staff. Below we will be posting a dialogue of first impressions from staff members as we load the “worlds most advanced operating system.”

OS X: First Impressions: Adam
(Machine: PowerBook G3 “Firewire”/500/512MB/12GB)

First, I just need to say that Apple has really outdone themselves here, in
both good and bad ways. I love Mac OS X, I’m in it right now, but I can’t
make it my main system—yet. But I’m sure I’ll switch sooner or later. It’s
really excellent.

My system is a Pismo PowerBook G3/500/512MB/12GB. Mac OS X is pretty darn
fast on it, which is surprising to me. I thought I was going to need a G4
for sure. I’ll upgrade to a G4 eventually (my occupation demands it), but
for now, its nice to know I can run this OS without any problems.

Classic works! Moreover, it works really well. I can use all of my staple
applications, such as AOL IM, Word, Entourage, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc
without any problems. Quark 4.1 has a few minor problems but it is
functional. Also, I’m excited that classic prints just fine on my Epson
printer. I’ll have to wait and see how it performs with LPR/AppleTalk 10/100
printers. But all in all, I’m amazed by classic. I don’t think we, as Mac
users, could have asked for anything better to help in the transition.

OS X works really well also, but it’s missing two main features that I used
to love. One, the view options and almost all contextual menu items are
eliminated from the finder. You have to go back to the top menus to access
view options and get info. What’s with that?! That’s a step in the wrong
direction. I hope this is fixed with 10.1. Second, Spring Loaded Folders. I
really really miss them. I’m sure I can learn to live without them, but they
were really cool. Everything else is ok, and I am getting used to the Dock.
It’s pretty neat, and is becoming really functional. I like the ease of
application switching, and also the way popup folders in the dock work.

System Preferences are really nice, all integrated into one panel: the way
it should be. I’m also beginning to get used to the architecture of X, which
isn’t all that different from 9, at least from a UI/functionality
standpoint. I was able to replace my OS X internet explorer prefs with my
classic IE prefs just fine. Nice, really nice.

Like I said, this simply can’t be my main system yet. It’s not yet
functional enough for me. But, the future is definitely here, and I am ready
to embrace it. I am going to try to spend a certain amount of time every day
booted into X. Hopefully it will help ease the transition. But as far as
Quark upgrading the “industry standard” layout application to X
compatibility, I’m not holding my breath Thank god for classic!

-Adam

OS X: First Impressions: Bobby
(Machine: PowerBook G3 “Bronze”/400/192MB/12GB)

For any of you who have loaded OS X, I’d love to read your fist
impressions. Here are mine.

I loaded up OS X yesterday. I decided to rig a triple boot system.
I loaded a partition with both 9.1 and OS X. While leaving my OS
9.04 partition untouched.

The install while long, was very simple and easy. I just followed
the directions and pretty soon. TaDah! I was OS X booting.

Then all was lost. Actually not that bad. But it was so frustrating
to go from something as easy as the original Mac OS to something so
completely different.

First off, it’s gorgeous. Mac OS 9 and below aren’t any slouches
but they are somewhat bland in comparison. OS X bring the terms
elegant and beautiful to a whole new level.

The time I spent at the Apple event was good. It gave me the
equivalent of country road directions, “You go straight down this
road… when you see the coffee shop, turn right, then when the
road gets dark ’cause of the trees, you have to turn left then
right. If you pass the park, you’ve gone too far. But don’t worry,
you can’t miss it!”

Bouncing icons can be turned off. Though it is a nice visual clue.
But I turned my bouncing icons off to save CPU overhead. Navigating
using any of the formats provided, icon, list and the new column
view works great. It’s just that you don’t have any idea where you
are headed!

As far as speed…. well, that is a relative thing. Once the OS 9
environment loads, opening classic apps doesn’t take long at all.
Not much longer than in OS 9, sometimes it seems quicker.

But OS X itself seems sluggish. Kinda like it just woke up from a
binge the previous night. It moves, it can operate, but it seems
very, measured and deliberate, like it is feeling like at any
moment it could get dizzy and fall down…

And it does fall down. I had two strange instances.

1. When I went to ‘save as pdf’ a web page I was on (OmniWeb was my
browser) I went into an endless loop. No worries, I can kill that
process. I opened the force quit application, it was stuck behind
the print dialogue box from OmniWeb. Ooops. No worries, I could see
the OmniWeb process was already highlighted and I tried to kill it.
No good. I would have been stuck if it wasn’t for some playing
around I had done at the Apple Store.

I checked the console.log program and sure enough OmniWeb had a
obvious error in it. (I had no idea what it meant, but could tell
it was bad

I quickly opened the Process Monitor application, which shows you
all of the processes, and how much CPU time they are taking etc.
(though it doesn’t show you how many threads) and by double
clicking on the .OmniWeb process, I was able to kill it. Which is a
nice trick for anyone else that might have problems with an
Application that has freaked out.

2. The second odd problem I had was when my Screen saver went into
action. The screen saver is a way cool thing. I had my PowerBook
hooked up to an external monitor. The screen saver shows two
different pictures on each screen. Whoa!!! cool!

But when I tried to get back into OS X, it went into an endless
loop. Nothing I tried worked. I was simply stuck at the login
screen and endless looping. I even tried to “force quit” and
nothing ‘cept a bonafide “three finger salute” reboot would recover
from that one.

Overall, I’d give the OS a good grade on a G4 as I got to play
around on at the Apple Store. However, on my G3, it is just too
slow. Apps open slow, windows are slow to open and show their
contents sometimes.

This seems strange to me as there are still UNIX boxes running 133
risc processors at work that run just fine, even with a gui.
Granted, not nearly as advanced as OS X, but geeez!

I guess the worst thing and obviously, this is just a newbie
talking was being so lost within the OS. I mean we’re talking,
“we’re not in Kansas any more Toto!” lost.

The most depressing thing? My fonts won’t work with the new OS. I
tried loading them into the font folder… nothing. Won’t even show
up. Doesn’t matter if they are PS or true type. Now that is
depressing as I had read that current fonts would work in the OS.
Ooops. (and yes, I was placing them in the correct font folder.)

And if they do work on OS X. The help program certainly doesn’t
tell you jack about how to make them work! I guess that is also
another big let down. The Mac OS help, isn’t! More times than not,
it would get me pointed in the right direction but gave me no real
concrete help. That’s frustrating.

But will I keep working with it? Sure. Though all of my programs
are classic dependent, sooner or later they all will be OS X
compliant. So I’ll spend my time making sure I know how to do this
and that in the new OS. Slowly but surely I’ll get myself up to
speed and comfortable with the new OS.

And if you haven’t dived in, we’ll you’re not missing anything
until you get yourself a G4 and tons of RAM.

What were your experiences? I’d love to know.

All the best,

Bob

Adam Karneboge

As gestations go, this one was the lengthiest in the history of the Macintosh world. 15 months from the announcement of conception, to birth. I was in the audience at MacWorld San Francisco 2000 when the proud daddy, Steve Jobs, announced that we would soon have another little OS to feed in the near future. With the help of a giant screen, he showed us ultrasound pictures of what the little rascal would look like. And because almost everyone loves babies, the crowd oohed and ahhed at the child’s anticipated future antics.

It was a difficult pregnancy. The first projected release date was aborted and genetic code sent to all the wannabe developers to see what the problem was with the DNA. “Four arms! Six legs! No, no, let’s give it twelve eyes!” and the scientists were at it again…forming this love child from fantasies of one mighty superman Operating System that would be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap RAM hungry applications with a single bound.

And the months dragged on. Pundits and powerusers endlessly talked the anticipated birth to death on websites, messageboards, print magazines, and in chat rooms. But when it came to the reality of what this child was going to be like, it was no different from any other pregnancy. Would it look like mommy, daddy, or the postman?

Then again the announcement in January. This pregnancy had gone on long enough, and labor would be induced on March 24, 2001. Everyone who had a hand in fertilizing this youngster was anxiously awaiting this day in computer history. It was a relatively easy birth. The anticipated CD’s popped up on store shelves and in mailboxes all around the country, just as predicted. One could almost hear a collective sigh as cupholders on all the G3+ compliant computers were opened up to load the precious bundle. And then….

The baby stared crying. And pooping it’s britches. And because it was a hungry little bastard, it wanted more RAM.

I have been criticized by more than one person by stating my own personal truth. I don’t like babies. For most, babies symbolize the miracle of love, the preservation of the species, and hope for the future. And I can get down with that. What I mean when I say I don’t like babies is that I don’t like to be the one responsible for their care, comfort, and feeding. I was not born with a strong maternal instinct, and my feelings for little oh! ess ten are no different.

Oh sure, I’ll coo at it when you poke it’s little head out from under it’s 9.x blanket for me to admire. And I might just hold it for a minute when you show it to me on your powerful G4 with 512mb RAM machine, as long as it’s nursing quietly on a native application. And I’ll applaud with you when it begins to crawl and finally walk. But I really don’t want to spend any time at all with it until it’s big enough to toss a baseball around, and mow my lawn.

Yeah, little oh! ess ten is a cute little bugger. Cootchie cootchie coo. And it looks just like you! Now you take it. It’s wet, it’s hungry, and it needs a nap.

Beth Lock

Well it happened. I was told it would happen and I’ll be dammed if it didn’t. I was told to be prepared for when it happened and was given ample and repeated warnings about it happening. And finally after six plus years of using Macintosh computers it happened, I experienced my first major system failure.

I never had a major system failure with my Performa 550, (Unless you count the time I rolled it down a flight of stairs, but that was more like a computer crash, not a system failure), and my 2 year old iMac has been humming along admirably ever since the day it showed up on my doorstep. So in some respects I guess you could say I was lucky to have gone this long without any major problems. However, on the other hand, having gone so long without anything bad ever happening in my little at home computer world, I was, because of that good luck, not prepared. I should have been but I wasn’t.

When it happened the first thing that ran through my little procrastinating brain and out my mouth was, Oh shit, this can’t be happening, I’m not ready for this to happen. Why did it have to happen now? Why did it have to happen to me?

What had happened was a soft freeze of my monitor after I downloaded a piece of trial trucking software called, “Trucking Buddy.” Normally when I download software it always comes from one of the Mac download sites but this particular piece of software did not and consequently when it showed up on my desktop with the extension .exe attached to it I chuckled at my stupidity and proceeded to drag the file to the trash. In doing so I inadvertently double clicked the file and that’s when everything on the monitor froze except for the mouse. I waited a couple of minutes to see if my iMac would fix itself but when it didn’t I used the restart button. Upon restart I was greeted with a blinking question mark on top of a folder icon. This is when the Oh shit, etc. etc. came pouring out my face. I had never seen the blinking question mark before but somehow I instinctively knew it wasn’t a good sign. After a quick search through an old edition of David Pogue’s Mac Secrets my worse fears were confirmed, a blinking question mark on startup is not a good sign.

I had all of my trucking records that I would need to do my taxes this year on this hard drive. I couldn’t afford to lose this data, I just couldn’t! And before you ask, “What about your backup copy?” Let me just say, “Don’t ask!”

I almost panicked. My first thought was to unplug everything and roll the iMac down the stairs as I had done with my Performa. I remember doing that to my old 550 and recall how it worked fine afterwards. Just as I was about to let the iMac tumble down the stairs I came to my senses and remembered that nothing was wrong with the Performa when I dropped it down the stairs, so maybe that wasn’t such a good place to begin with my troubleshooting. I decided to save that work around for when all else failed.

I plugged the iMac back in and scrounged around my desk area till I found the Mac OS 9 disk and spent the next twenty minutes looking in my old Mac books trying to find out what keys to hold down in order to start up from the CD. After twenty minutes with my head in the book I raised it to give it a rest and noticed right there on the OS 9 CD laying in the CD-ROM tray where the words, “To start up from this CD, hold down the C key as the computer starts up.” I begin to think a ride down the stairs might be the way to go.

Okay, I start the son of a …, I start the iMac up from the CD and run Disk First Aid. Whoa! “Volume Bit Map needs minor repair. Volume Header needs minor repair. HFS wrapper partition is damaged.” And the worse one, “Mount check found serious errors.” Disk First Aid fixed all but that last one.

Luckily I was still able to get to my hard drive and my all-important trucking data. Also, my SuperDisk Drive was still able to mount, so I shoved a disk into the drive and copied all my important files to the disk and breathed a sigh of relief. Now if I had to erase the hard drive I would at least be able to keep the IRS happy and that’s an important part of my life. Trust me, those are the last people you’d want to piss off.

As it turned out I never had to erase the hard drive. All I had to do was reinstall the System software. I didn’t believe the Read Me literature when it told me the reinstall would keep a copy of my old System Folder so I could save all my preferences, added extensions, control panels and the like, so I made a copy of it myself and renamed it “Just in case”. But low and behold after the reinstall there it was, “Previous System Folder” right next to the new one. “Just in case” went into the trash and I moved all the stuff I wanted to keep from the old folder into the new one.

I’m back in business now. Disk First Aid gives me a consistent, “Hard Drive appears to be OK,” message every time I run it.

I can’t say for certain that double clicking on that stupid .exe file caused my problems but if I can blame my problems on something PC. I will.

As far as keeping updated backup copies of all my important files? Well, I suppose it’s a good idea, but really, what fun is life without a little risk involved, something to get the old adrenaline moving.

Okay, okay, so I did make backups for my important data but I didn’t make them easy to find. I labeled the disk, “Miscellaneous Computer Stuff.” So the next time something bad happens I can still experience the adrenal rush of not being able to find something that I’m pretty sure I have. This is how I add excitement to my life. Pretty sad, huh?

I think I’ll now go roll this machine down the stairs just to see how it holds up. If you don’t hear from me again, you’ll pretty much know the reason.

Pete Miner

This is the continuing story of what happened to the couple, Rosie and Rolf, who were introduced in my November 11/00 article,”Freckles.” Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Follow them in the ups and downs of that most cherished of rites – the honeymoon. It has been said that if you can survive the honeymoon, you can survive anything.

Freckles: The Honeymoon or
(The marriage was a success but the honeymoon flopped)

I knew on that New Year’s eve that Rosie was the girl for me. In fact, I’m sure I knew even before that night, but I guess I just couldn’t believe my luck. I had been a bachelor for 30 years and I had almost given up the thought of finding someone. On that fateful moment after the party, at the home of my best friend Moe and his wife Glorianna, we were together in a quiet moment and I uttered the fateful words, “Rosie, I think I love you.” In retrospect, it was a pretty damn stupid thing to say. Why think? I knew I loved her. It was that old commitment crap. Don’t appear too eager in case she has a laughing fit. Besides, I was pretty sure of her feelings for me even though she had plans to go to Europe that summer with another chum. Yet, clumsy profession of love aside, that was the moment that changed everything.

A few months later at Easter, I was staying the weekend at Rosie’s house in Bedford Falls. Let me hasten to add that the accommodations were most definitely separate. Rosie lived at home with her widowed mother of one year in a large two storey home. In my pocket was a piece of compressed carbon, called a diamond, clamped on to a white gold band. When I looked at it, the reflection rivaled the high beam head lamp of my Oldsmobile 88. Okay. I’m exaggerating, but I don’t buy diamonds on a regular basis and for me this was a big deal. Rosie’s home was always bustling with visitors. That day, an old friend of her mom’s dropped in for tea and they were sitting in the parlor chatting. I asked Rosie to come out to the kitchen and after some hemming and hawing, I pulled out the velvet covered box. No, I didn’t drop it into a half full champagne glass – that was not my style. I picked a classy place like her mom’s kitchen. I still wonder why she said yes. Rosie rushed back to tell her mom and show her the ring. During the commotion, the visiting friend looked at me sternly and said, “I hope you didn’t give her the ring in the kitchen. That’s bad luck.” I shook my head vehemently. “No, no, I lied.” Great start, I thought, bad luck and I lied, to boot.

From that point on, things got a touch – how shall I put it delicately? – crazy. Suddenly the most important things in the universe became the reception (where and how large?), the food (what to serve and how many courses?) and the guests (who and why?). Nothing else mattered, least of all Rosie and me. We realized, though, that in many ways, it was not only our special day but her family’s and mine. The last major hurtle was when I convinced my father that no way was his barber being invited. He was only miffed for a few weeks. I wisely chose to go to a different barber on the day of the wedding, as my Beatle hair cut needed some careful professional attention.

Our wedding party was made up of our personal friends. Normal, you say? Not in first generation Italian-Canadian marriages. Somewhere, in some backwater village in Italy, tradition expects that the bride/groom must have their sister/brother or some close relative in the wedding group. We chose to disregard that law. There. Did you hear it? There it goes again. An unmistakable “tsk, tsk”, still reverberating after more than 30 years.

The Church of St. Ann did not collapse upon us that day as the bridesmaids and ushers helped us celebrate the auspicious event. If others had their way, though, it should have because we seemed to have tweaked some noses with not only our non-traditional wedding party but also the outfits we wore. The bridesmaids wore pant suits with very wide flared legs that still gave the illusion of a traditional dress. The colour was a strawberry sherbet. To add some flair to the ushers’ tuxedos, I had the dress maker supply them with loose cravats of the same material. My cravat was white, befitting my station as the groom and matching the utter fear that showed on my face. At the most sacred moment of the vows, my legs shook noticeably. Mercifully, my voice was not affected.

The following hours were a blur of excitement, joy and a few tears. The reception was a great success. The seven course meal was delicious, my father’s home made wine was a hit and the orchestra (no disk jockey for us) played exactly what we requested. The hours passed so quickly that we suddenly found ourselves bundled into our car with family and well-wishers shouting and waving good-bye as we drove into the night.

Our honeymoon flight was leaving the next day. We were flying to Italy for three weeks and looking forward to being alone together. I remember we arrived at the airport early. So early that the flight was not even registered on the airport monitors. We checked our luggage through and headed for the lounge to relax and wait. To this day, there is still some confusion as to what exactly happened. My father’s theory was simple. He insisted that we were so “gaga” in love that we didn’t hear the flight called. I can vouch that, yes, we were in love and that, no, we did not hear a flight call. What I know for sure was that when we finally checked the monitor and found the departure gate, our plane was taxiing down the runway without us.

There is no feeling of desperation quite like the sight of the rump of a jet plane leaving you behind. To add a touch of tang to the pot, it was the Thanksgiving holiday weekend (second week in October in Canada). Traffic was heavy and seats booked solid (or overbooked, as we later discovered). We went on standby. Flight after flight departed, but Rosie and I were not on them. We almost decided to cancel the honeymoon trip. One thing stopped us – our luggage was on our original flight. At least those suitcases would have a honeymoon! Rosie asked if I had padlocked our luggage. Was that what those itty bitty locks and keys were for? At that moment they locks were in my trouser pocket.

The Air Canada plane with our luggage was on its way to New York. In New York we were to connect with an Alitalia flight to Milan. When finally we got a flight, the plane left Toronto for New York at the exact time our Alitalia flight was leaving New York for Milan. Another missed flight! In New York the Alitalia personnel were very helpful. They would put us on a midnight flight to London where we would change planes for our original destination, Milan. Not to worry. All would be fine.

We arrived in London. Nice airport. Nice washroom. We cleaned up. I shaved. We waited. At last we left London for Milan. We saw no London Bridge, no Buckingham Palace, no Soho. We were also exhausted. Surprisingly, though, we were coping quite well. Still, I felt somewhat responsible for our troubles. For instance, those padlocks, the itty bitty ones, were of no use in my pant pockets. God knew where the luggage was and if we would find the bags at all. If we did find them, would the suitcases be as empty as a bank account after the embezzler departed? Rosie was more pragmatic. You could always buy new clothes, she said, with a gleam in her eye.

The air approach to Milan is spectacular and scary. The aircraft dives into one of the many alpine valleys and suddenly huge mountains are whizzing by on each side of the plane. It’s not long until you feel the jolt as the wheels touch down on terra firma. Once in the airport, we found, to our dismay, that we were in the Linate Airport which is for inter-European flights. Linate was to the northeast of the city. The international flights use the Gallerate Airport on the opposite side of Milan, northwest of the city. Naturally, you cannot drive directly from one airport to the other because of the mountain valleys. One must go into Milan and back out the opposite side. Wearily, we climbed on a shuttle bus for the trip to downtown Milan. It was only a half hour’s drive and we were dropped off at the Airline Terminal in the heart of the city, not far from the ornate gothic Cathedral.

It looked like our luck was changing, for across the street from the Airline Terminal were all the rental car agencies. Although we had arranged to pick up our car at the airport, I thought it would be to our advantage to grab the car now. It was getting late and darkness was settling in when we finally drove out into the maze that is Milan. Of course, we got lost immediately. That’s when the light indicating low fuel started flashing. I quickly pulled into a curbside station – literally two pumps at the curb separated by a stand of oil cans. The chap was closing for the night and placing barriers around. After much cajoling on my part, he filled the tank to the brim as I insisted. He appeared amazed at my demand, as most of his customers, I learned later. would buy only a few litres at a time.

Into the night once more. I had asked for directions from the gas attendant, but after fifteen minutes we were hopelessly lost again. But luck was definitely with us because up ahead was a neon sign spelling out “Hotel” in hot pink neon. Luck again. They had a room. A double bed. Clean sheets. Heaven. We tumbled into bed exhausted. This honeymoon was not what I had expected.

Next morning we were refreshed and ready to start our trip with vigour. We headed for the Gallerate Airport which was on the way to Lago Maggiore, one of the breathtaking alpine lakes in the north of Italy and our first honeymoon stopover. Everything was finally falling into place. We arrived. We rushed to the Alitalia counter. Boy, were they efficient. They told us they knew we had been rerouted to Linate Airport and they transferred our luggage there. Did we pick them up okay?

It was head-banging-on-the-counter time. In a daze, we wandered back to our rental car. How we managed to drive back to Milan, then northeast to Linate Airport and back to Milan and out to Gallerate Airport, I’ll never know. It must be the fierce determination of newlyweds to get the job done. In the final analysis, we found our two large, unlocked suitcases sitting in the middle of the arrivals concourse. Nothing was missing. Everything was in order. Relief! I’ll repeat that. Relief. There was no longer any reason for Rosie to have to spend hours or days looking at and buying haute couture ensembles in Milan.

The first official day of our European honeymoon started a few days late but in its original location of Stresa, an idyllic town on the shore of Lago Maggiore. Stresa is located on Lago Maggiore one of the six alpine lakes in the north of Italy. Stresa had appealed to me ever since I read Heminway’s “A Farewell to Arms.” Rosie and I would travel the shoreline of each of the lakes and then head south to Florence and Rome. But it was important to start off this honeymoon right. We had to make sure there were no more snafus. I never prearrange our hotel accommodation and have never run into difficulties. On entering the town we began to explore the small side streets that rose up the mountain side. We passed many small hotels as we meandered along. At one point we ran into a dead end. The hood of the car was steeply angled up. We were in the driveway of a small inn. We parked the car. Went in. Destiny. We had found our accommodation: The Hotel Paradiso. From our room we had a stunning vista through grape vines of Isola Bella (Beautiful Island) just off shore. We were the only guests that night. It was truly a memorable stay.

At the start of our marriage, we had triumphed over our first major trial – the adversities of air travel. We wondered how many such roadblocks we would encounter on the life road we had chosen to travel together? One discovery we made was that humour was a great equalizer and, if we would remember that in the future, we would make out fine. In the end, it turned out to be a very rewarding and invaluable lesson.

Ralph J. Luciani

Like many of you, I am a fan of the Star Wars films. When the first film came out in 1977, I was
seven years old. So I literally grew up on Star Wars. And I always thought it would be cool to be
able to be in a Star Wars film. (I still do!)

This brings me to a few weeks ago, when I went surfing some of the better Star Wars fan sites out
there. One of the best, theforce.net had been a major place for news before
the latest movie came out. Since then, I had not been back to the site much. But on this day, I
decided to take a look at some of the fan films they have showcased there. For those not in the
know, fan films are just that, films that Star Wars fan themselves have made, usually in QuickTime
format. Most are amateurish in nature, but most are better than I could do myself. Still, you could
tell these films, while entertaining at times, were far from the production level of the real things. And
I thought that would be the status quo for Star Wars fan films, until I watched Duality for the first
time.

Duality, by CrewOfTwo.com, sets a new standard of what a fan film can be. The acting is first rate,
but more incredibly, the special effects rival that of George Lucas’s own Industrial Light and Magic.
And, not surprisingly, it was ALL done on Macintosh computers.

After watching Duality a number of time, and showing it to not a few other people, I just knew I
had to contact the people responsible for this great film, and do an interview with them for
mymac.com. Happily, Mark Thomas and Dave Macomber, the creators of Duality,
readily agreed to the interview. (Which was conducted via email in mid-March 2001).

Before reading below, I highly recommend watching the film, which you can view here. You can watch the film in
QuickTime format of course. If you are on a low speed internet connection, I recommend viewing
the smaller QuickTime file in 320 and 47Mb in size
and for high speed broadband
connections, the 480 version. If you
simply don’t want to download such big files, and just want a taste of this fantastic six and a half
minute film, you can view either of the trailers, one 4.5Mb
in size or the longer trailer,
6.0MB.

Tim: Mark:, Dave, what can I say? I am blown away. Like I said in my preface to this interview, most fan films are shot using low quality equipment on home made sets. How did you pull off such a wonderful masterpiece without a HUGE bankroll?

Mark: We leveraged our computers and, like Charles Foster Kane, tried everything we could think of. A few years ago we discovered a well kept secret: many final shots in the Star Wars Special Edition and The Phantom Menace were accomplished using Macintoshes and Electric Image, so it became clear that the only thing separating us from them was experience. I also think blind optimism and na•vetŽ played a large role.

Dave: I’m of the opinion that the paradigm in Hollywood is going to be changing with respect to that kind of thing very soon. The amateur filmmaker has the ability to create some really high production value for relatively little money now. The biggest expenditure is time. If you’re willing to take the time, you can do just about anything.

Tim: Before getting into all the details of Duality, you also created a smaller movie, titled Duel. In that film, you shot in a desert and the only special effects were the light sabers. Was that your first foray into filmmaking? If so, was it more of a learning experience and what did you walk away from it with?

Mark: Our first movie was a short, stop-motion, Imperial Walkers vs. Snowspeeders movie shot on Super 8 film which we made in Jr. High with the help of college-age film student. I still have a print!

Dave: Duel came about by accident in a way. I own a martial arts school, and was contacted by an aspiring actor who was hoping to score an audition for the role of Anakin Skywalker in Episode II. It was his intention to gain some swordsmanship training from me and add a notation to his resume about it. I suggested to him that we do a demo-reel instead, so that they could SEE that he could use a Ôsaber, rather than just reading about it. Three weeks later, Duel was done, and on the web. Mark and I weren’t very satisfied with Duel from a film making point of view, however, as we’d had such a short period of time to work on it. Duality is the result of that dissatisfaction.

Mark: Duel can best be described as having been rushed. It began life as an attempt to create a sword fighting demo reel for an actor, Josh Waller, who was supposed to have an audition for the part of Anakin Skywalker in Episode II. We had three weeks from concept to completion, which meant that we had to get a camera, choreograph a duel, write a minimal script, create costumes, shoot the movie, edit the movie, and add effects all in those three weeks. Although there are countless flaws in Duel, it still works because it’s focused. Duel showed us that two guys with no experience really could make a movie if they set their mind to it.

Tim: The new film is titled Duality. Who came up with the name, and what is its significance?

Mark: I lobbied hard for that title!

Dave: Mark came up with the title. It refers to a few things: Duality is one of the major themes in Episode I, and it is with us as well, as the Master Sith (Darth Oz) has two apprentices. This is also our second fan-film. It also sounds kind of like Duel…

Mark: Duality was the title of a game, a first-person shooter that Dave and I were eagerly awaiting, but which got cancelled half-way through development. Not only did Duality sound cool as a title, it spelled out our movie’s theme, which literally is “duality” or “two-ness.” This theme manifests itself in our movie in a number of ways, the most obvious being that there are two Sith apprentices, and Darth Oz must choose between them (as is made clear in The Phantom Menace, there can only ever be twoÑa master and an apprentice). The theme of duality is apparent in a number of smaller ways as well. Oz appears only as a huge, frightening hologram to his apprentices, but is really flesh and blood. The halt droid is at first a mindless, robotic sentry, but later reveals itself to be a cynic.

Tim: Many people would kill me if I did not ask, but HOW did you create all those special effects? Let’s start with the beginning of Duality, and the ultra-cool modified tie-fighter type of ship. Who came up with the design, and what programs did you use to create the ship?

Dave: Mark and I made some sketches for the ship early on separately, and they ironically ended up being quite similar. I refined the ship’s design a bit, and handed it back to Mark, who finalized the design. I took that design and did a preliminary model in a 3D program that we later abandoned in favor Electric Image. Once we made the decision to go with EI, Mark did the final modeling chores on the ship.

Mark: We wanted the designs in Duality to be simultaneously futuristic and retro, so there is a lot of art deco on Korriban. We knew the ship should be reminiscent of a T.I.E., but we wanted it to be softer than that, less angular, more streamlinedÑas if its designer was not just an engineer, but an artist. Dave and I each sketched a version of this ship, and then I created an Illustrator schematic using elements from both sketches. The ship was modeled in Electric Image Modeler, and then textured and animated in the Electric Image Animator.

Tim: The fog effect in the canyon below the ship when it is landing is great. How difficult is it to make it look so realistic?

Dave: That was all Mark:’s doing…

Mark: That is my favorite effect in the whole movie because it is so convincing, and was so simple to accomplish. It’s just a still image of synthetic clouds made in Photoshop using Filter > Render > Clouds. This image was placed over the animation of the ship descending, made translucent, and then simply dragged across the animation from the top right corner to the bottom left corner.

Tim: The Halt Droid, which bars Lord Rive’s way at the beginning, is truly a work of art. How long did it take to create it?

Mark: The Halt Droid came together very quickly.

Dave: Again, that was mostly Mark. We passed some ideas back and forth (you can see one of the early designs in the storyboards here.

Mark: It was originally going to be a hand-shaped device that comes out of a hatch in the door and literally halts Rive the way a traffic cop would. Not wanting to deal with the complexities of animating such a thing, we simplified the design to the probe-like droid it is now. The actual model is pretty simple and was modeled in a single evening.

Tim: I noticed a huge similarity to the Halt Droid to the one that stopped C3PO and R2D2 in Return of the Jedi outsides Jabba’s palace. I know from your website that this is on purpose, but the sound/voice of the Droid is uncanny. Who made the sound, and is in the same “language” as the one in Return of the Jedi?

Mark: We stole the voice from Return of the Jedi too!

Dave: That sound, like most of the sounds that appear in Duality, was taken from the Return of the Jedi Laser Disk (we also sampled from Empire Strikes Back and Phantom Menace), and then altered so that it wasn’t EXACTLY the same.

Mark: We just changed around the order of a few words here and there, reversed a few words, and that was it. So the droid is technically speaking pig-Huttese, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since we’re on the planet Korriban, but an homage is an homage. We were after a specific feel, not total authenticity.

Tim: Unlike your first film, Duel, which was shot on location, Duality is shot exclusively using bluescreen technology, correct?

Dave: Yes. When we filmed Duel, we were subject to the environment Ð we were actually caught in a sandstorm that destroyed the video camera. We resolved early on to do Duality entirely with digitally created environments, partially because we wanted to avoid catastrophes like that, but also because we wanted to take the next step in making sure that the story was as firmly seated in the Star Wars universe as possible. We didn’t want anything to betray its earthly origins…

Mark: Correct. Every shot was filmed against bluescreen. Even the floor was blue.

Tim: Even the floor? Did you create your own bluescreen, or use one in a studio?

Dave: We rented a studio in Santa Barbara, Alamo Studios, and painted the whole cyclorama chroma-key blue.

Mark: Alamo Studios has a 30×30 foot photography cove which curves across two corners and also curves down to the floor. We painted the entire thing chroma-key blue for the shoot, and then painted it back to white after we were done filming. We had nearly 180 degrees of bluescreen.

Tim: How long did the actual filming take?

Dave: Principle photography took place over the course of three days, along with a one-half day pick-up shoot.

Mark: Three 12 hour days, plus a three hour pick-up shoot a few months later.

Tim: In a project like this, what is the first step besides writing the plot?

Mark: Coming up with a game plan.

Dave: Pre-planning played a significant role in making sure that we didn’t blow it when we got on set.

Mark: Before we even had a story, we knew we were going to shoot against bluescreen and render our sets digitally on the Mac. This meant that we had to keep the movie short, use a minimum number of sets, and keep the camera locked down as much as possible. We planned everything in great detail, and then stuck with the plan.

Dave: Each shot was carefully storyboarded beforehand, because we knew that consistency errors would be extremely easy to make while filming with no real set. We glued the storyboards to foam-core boards and brought them to the set, and drew big red “X’s” through them as we went along.

Tim: The special effects are what people notice first when watching Duality. Who specializes in what? Do you tag-team doing the CGI work?

Dave: It is kind of a tag-team affair, with both of us having a specialty. We both were responsible for the modeling (Mark did the ship, the temple exterior, the Halt-droid, and the combat platform, I did the landing platform, the hallway, the elevator tower, the interior walls of the temple, and the remote droids). Mark did most of the 3D animating (I only animated the remote droids) and all of the matte paintings. I was responsible for 2D effects, which included things like the compositing, the lightsabers, the lightning, the smoke effects, cutting Steve in half and so on…

Mark: I did most of the CGI workÑthe matte paintings, the sets, the shots of the ship, and the Halt Droid. Dave did the keying and compositing, the lightsaber glows, and put together the seekers sequence. He also did some modeling. I think that if we had been less focusedÑif we had jumped back and forth doing each other’s work, we would have wasted a lot of time stepping on each other’s toes. By keeping our duties separate we were able to focus on what we were doing, and I think the finished product is stronger for it.

Tim: How long did it take to create all the sets in Duality?

Mark: Months.

Dave: Time questions are always difficult to answer, because we’ve been maintaining “normal” life while we’ve been working on the project. Consequently, some days had five minutes of work, while others involved hours and hours…

Mark: The modeling was the easiest part. What took so much time was getting everything textured and lighted so that when it came time to rendering plates, it was a simple matter of moving the virtual camera and clicking render.

Tim: What were the principle programs used to create the effects, such as the sets, spacecraft, and light sabers?

Dave: Electric Image was our primary 3D package, and After Effects was our primary 2D package.

Mark: All of the CGI was created with Electric Image. The lightsabers were accomplished using a combination of Commotion (to track motion and create selection paths) and After Effects (where the actual glow was applied).

Tim: As actors, you both did a great job. You both seem very comfortable using light sabers. Was all the swordplay choreographed, or did you just “do it” when filming started? How long did it take to get to the point where you were comfortable filming it?

Mark: The swordplay was choreographed by Dave in the months leading up to the shoot, so by the time I had them in front of the cameras, it was, for me, a simple matter of saying “action” and letting them go at it. (I never actually wield a sword in Duality. I play Darth Oz, so I appear as a hologram through most of the movie and only appear briefly in the flesh, at the end.)

Dave: My cousin, Steven Muraoka, (who played Darth Blight, my opponent in the film), has been a student of mine for about eight years, and is a second-degree black belt. We worked on the choreography over the course of a few months to prepare for the shoot.

Tim: Kevin Jones is listed as Director of Photography. Was he more or less a director, or did you tell him what it was you wanted done, and he followed the script?

Dave: Kevin’s biggest contribution to Duality was the lighting and camera operation (he also owns the studio space we rented). Mark and I co-directed the film (most of it had been directed already in the storyboard phase, and Mark acted as on-set director for most of filming, as I was in front of the camera for much more time than he was).

Mark: I had to make sure that we followed our storyboards as closely as possible in order to ensure a smooth post-production. Kevin kept the cameras running and configured properly, and oversaw the lighting setups.

Tim: All told, how many hours did it take from start to finish to make Duality?

Mark: I can’t even fathom a guess!

Dave: More than I can guess, either!

Mark: Our level of daily activity gradually increased over a year’s time, with the most intense period beginning at the end of September when we shot our live action. We spent four months on post-production, working mostly in the evenings.

Tim: I am curious about the music in the film. It is very much in the genre of Star Wars, and sounds very familiar to me. Just by hearing it, I think “Star Wars.” Is the music original, or did it come from John Williams Star Wars score?

Dave: Again, we used music directly from the original films, edited so that certain music cues would hit important moments in the film.

Mark: That’s a single piece of music from The Phantom Menace soundtrack, edited to fit the action. I’ve always felt that Star Wars wouldn’t have been half the success it was without John Williams’s score backing it up. You can’t do Star Wars without John Williams.

Tim: Sound plays a huge roll in any film, and that is made apparent in Duality. The sound effects, from the Sith Terminator fly-by, the snap-hiss of the light sabers, the little exhausted noise the air-jets make on the Sith Terminator when it lands, the ghost-like voice of the emperor, and others, really make a difference. Who came up with the sounds? Are they all original creations, or taken from one of the movies?

Mark: As with the music, we used actual Star Wars sounds.

Dave: Almost all of the sounds were taken from the films, the primary exceptions being our voices and a few of the grunts that we give when being kicked and such.

Mark: We got some of them off the Internet from people who had gotten them off of Star Wars games, but we also sampled a huge number of sounds from the movies on laserdisc.

Tim: While I am sure George Lucas has been busy this last year filming the next installment to the Star Wars franchise, Episode II, I am curious if he has seen Duality and has commented on it?

Dave: No word yet, but we’d love to know. We do know that it HAS been seen at Skywalker Ranch, though…

Mark: We know that several people who work closely with him have and were apparently impressed. Mission accomplished!

Tim: The Emperors darkside lightning power at the end of the film is even better than those in Return of the Jedi. How difficult was it to not only recreate that effect, but also improve upon it?

Mark: Dave handled the lightning effect, so I’ll let him comment on it.

Dave: The toughest thing about the lightning was match-moving the bolts to Mark’s fingers, which involves key-framing and is very tedious. In addition, there were many layers of lightning to deal with, but much of the process was automated with After Effects plug-ins.

Tim: What Macintosh systems were used to create Duality?

Mark: Most of the work was done using several-years-old G3 and pre-G3 hardware, including a PowerBook and a Power Computing clone. Shortly before we shot our live action, we both upgraded to dual-processor G4 systems.

Dave: Mark and I are both running 500 MHz dual processor G4′s, each with 500 megs of RAM.

Tim: Why choose Macintosh when creating a film like this?

Dave: Is there another choice? Did I miss something?

Mark: We were Mac guys to start with, but a project such as this is hugely complicated, so the last thing you want to do is add to the complexity by using a computer or OS that is, in itself, another puzzle to solve. Macs are a lot simpler than other computers, so they get our of your way and allow you get your work done quicker. I should mention that Electric Image (which was, when we started working on Duality, a Mac-only application) is widely regarded for its rendering quality and speed. Because every shot in Duality is either partly CGI or all CGI, rendering speed and quality were of utmost importance. No other application could have come through for us the way Electric Image did.

Tim: For the next filmmaker who wants to follow your steps in creating a Star Wars fan film, or any other type of film, what suggestions would you give them?

Dave: Think Different. Really. I think that often people don’t grow, because they don’t try to do things that they don’t think they can do. With Duality, Mark: and I intentionally painted ourselves into a corner: we had no idea how we were going to do half of the effects in the film when we shot the footage. There’s nothing like a little pressure to inspire creativity. There were a ton of creative answers that came about (and a lot of learning going on) because we wrote the film without thinking about what we couldn’t do. Duality ended up being a kind of special-effects/film-making college for us, and the film itself is our thesis.

Mark: Our motto was “play it straight, keep it simple.” If I were to give this advice to another filmmaker I would add “stay focused.” Too many filmmakers lose their focus. No matter what happens, stick to your original concept and don’t give up. Do what you set out to do.

Tim: Any plans to follow up on another Duality type film?

Dave: Well, we both have several ideas for projects that we’d like to do, and the subject matter is quite varied. Whatever we decide on (and we have a very likely candidate right now), it will be an original story this time, and not a fan-film.

Mark: No immediate plans. We don’t know what our next project will be, but if it’s something we do by ourselves, it probably won’t be based on Star Wars.

Tim: Did you have any worries that by making such a terrific Star Wars film, you may be calling down the Lucas Legal on you? What sort of copyright woes do you have to worry about with a film like this?

Dave: Lucasfilm has thus far been very gracious about fan-films, more or less saying that they’re fine with them provided that nobody tries to make money directly from the film.

Mark: Lucasfilm is extremely tolerant of fan films. So long as you don’t sell your movie, you’re more or less free to do what you want. Just be sure to give credit where credit is due, and have respect for the source. We used to joke that we wanted Duality to be so good that Lucasfilm banned it!

Dave: This is in stark contrast to many other companies who have gone out and shut down fan-films based on their properties. In all honesty, I think that’s a terrible policy, because you are alienating your core audience Ð I mean, think about it! Who else would go through all that trouble besides a hard-core fan? I think that Lucasfilm’s position is very progressive and very cool.

Tim: Besides making great Star Wars inspired films, what do you both do full-time?

Dave: I have owned and operated a full-time martial arts school (Macomber Karate) for eleven years. I’m also a full-time husband and father.

Mark: I don’t really do anything full-time! I have an Internet-based font company that more or less runs itself, so I have a lot of free time for making movies, painting (I’m a landscape/portrait painter), and drinking coffee. I designed the fonts that will be included with the next version of the Final Draft screenwriting program.

Tim: VintageType has some really nice looking fonts, Mark. Did you create all the fonts there?

Mark: Vintage Type began as a shareware venture called Hot Metal Type on
AOL, long before the Internet got popular. Eventually Vintage Type grew into its own web site with automated commerce and product delivery systems handled by Digital River.

I created nearly all of the fonts. The tape label font family, Carbon 14, was designed by Joe Coniglio, and the Celtic fonts were created by my girlfriend, Susan Townsend.

For the most part, Vintage Type operates in the background and I don’t really have to think about it. The fonts I created for Final Draft were commissioned by them and will only be available in Final Draft’s software products.

Tim: Many thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. Any last parting thoughts?

Mark: Technology is amazing.

Dave: I said it before, and I’ll say it again: Think Different!

Tim Robertson

One does
not only wish to be understood when one writes;
one wishes just as much surely not to be
understood … all … select their audience when
they wish to communicate; and choosing that, one
at the same time erects barriers against “the
others.” All the more subtle laws of any style
have their origin at this point: they at the same
time keep away, create a distance, forbid “entrance,”
understanding, as said above — while they
open the ears of those whose ears are related
to ours.”

(Nietzsche — The Joyful Science.)

Last week I noticed that many sites
were linking to a particular article. It aroused
my innate curiosity; and besides, the comments
associated with the links described it as “humorous
… insightful.” Well, I might learn something
and have a laugh, so I checked it out. I cannot
express the disappointment I felt when I finally
read the article, for it was neither humorous
nor insightful. Another notch down in Mac Web
journalism, I thought.

The obvious tip off (to me) that
this was not a serious piece was that the author
makes an evaluative ranking with no standards
for the ranking. I know, I know, it was not his
intent, as I will show. It appeared to
be satire, yet was not, and I will show why. But
as long as it was brought up (by me), I might
as well try to answer two questions since no one
else is asking them: On
what justified standards
should a web site be judged and ranked?
And, second question: What makes a story linkworthy?

In the course of this article I
will lay down challenge to Editors and surfers
alike. The answers to these questions are extremely
hard to get at. As a philosopher, though, that
is just the way I like it! So here are the challenges:

• What makes
  a good Mac Web site good?

And specifically to Editors I lay
down this challenge:

• What standards
  do you use for determining what to link to?
  What constitutes a “linkworthy”
  story?

The challenge is to answer both
without begging
the question.

Linkworthy?

[Before I say anything please understand
this: I know people will say I missed the point
of the article in question. One Editor at another
site does seem to have gotten the point but missed
the point gotten, when he called the article a
venting of "frustration" (see comments
below). But I think the article raises larger
issues — don't confuse the larger issues
with my reading of the article. These larger issues
need to be addressed even if this article never
existed. And, what is of supreme importance is
that I am proposing a reading of the SUBTEXT
of the article, not the TEXT. It is this subtext
(innuendo, if you will) I focus on, which few
read. The subtext is not clear though the text
may be, and the subtext suggests the real intent.]

The article in question was one
done at a site called MyMac.com. The title is
“Great Web Sites.” It was supposed to be a humorous
satire, I think. This is how everyone read it
anyway, if people did read it (and think about
it) before they linked to
it. It wasn’t clear at all to me what the
point was. For, it crossed lines of artistic satire
into personal attack (in fact, the article lacked
artistic merit all together). Yet there were clues
all over the place if one read closely enough.

The first thing that few noticed,
which showed something else was up, is that the
writer makes an evaluative
judgment of rank for no reason. As
I read I was expecting to find some kind of standard
upon which the “great web sites” were ranked,
even in an ostensibly satirical piece. But there
were none, not even assumed ones I could see (I
will propose some later — maybe). So what
was the point? It seems that the point
is many “great” web sites are going
away. We all know about MacWeek, after all. But
if one reads closely this cannot be the intention.
For the author goes into personal attacks and
this betrays his real intent — satire might
be biting, but it doesn’t break the skin when
truly artistic. The subtext is anger and bitterness,
or as one Editor put it, “frustration,”
which issued in personal attacks which have no
place on the Mac Web.

So let me give an example from
the article. But on behalf of journalistic integrity,
something few have on the Mac Web, let me set
the record straight: I have a personal interest
here, an interest to defend a friend, and a promise
to keep. I guess I am a loyal sort of guy. It
is only right that you know this. With that said
…

Mr. Robertson pokes fun at the deceased
MacOS daily site. MacOS daily was a site created
by one of the very first Mac webmasters ever to
appear on the scene, the one who in fact gave
Charles
W. Moore his start in writing on the Mac Web.
Mr. Robertson makes comments about how this person
was out to get rich, and so on. And alas the site
is gone and this person has disappeared. Mr. Robertson
seems proud of this fact, sadly enough. We are
left to believe this person has left the Mac Web
to live in Kierkegaardian
despair.

To fill in the record (fair and
balanced as always). Mr. Robertson has only met
this person twice (by his own count), and that
was briefly, something like “seeing him”
he told me. But I talk with this person, or at
least email with him, once a month, when our schedules
fit. At present, the one-time CEO of MacOS daily
is living a flourishing life (as Aristotle
uses the term) as a university student in
a beautiful part of the country, enjoying his
youth, discovering love, and majoring in Pre-law
and philosophy (!!). He is doing very well,
and lacks any bitterness. He is not sitting alone
at night, bitter because of what might have been,
or wishing for what was lost. And neither is he
writing attack pieces on others who are not in
a position to respond. He is not thinking he is
something when he is nothing. He doesn’t need
the web to believe he is someone important, someone
with a future. He’ll be fine.

The subtext of the piece was not
an idea or some original thought. It was frustration,
bitterness, and hate even, issuing in personal
attacks. I don’t care if it’s a Windows site or
a Mac site — it doesn’t belong on the Mac
Web and is thus not linkworthy. Those who promote
it are promoting these vices, some intentionally
and some unintentionally. Suppose too: Even if
it was true (which itis not)? Do we need to write
it? Dear readers: There are many stories that
could be told about editors on the Mac Web, but
some things are still sacrosanct to some.
Leave it alone — we don’t need to air our
dirty laundry in public, for once it starts it
will not stop, I assure you of that. It would
be a disaster for the mac web to move in the direction
of petty fights and mean innuendo. It would kill
the Mac Web. THAT is what I am concerned about.

Am I ranting? Yes. Moral indignation
it is called. Perfectly acceptable. After all,
there are rants, and then there are rants.

Forget about this article for a
second. Mr. Robertson is not that important to
my argument. Whenever anyone uses the term “great”
it is an evaluative term like “good” and “bad.”
But
evaluations are based, I would argue, on standards,
or at least paradigms of some kind, by
which the members of the
set being ranked are ordered. I
will assume this is the case though the emotivists
(those who believe that an evaluative judgment
like “Hitler was evil” expresses only their emotional
reaction to Hitler and not a fact about Hitler’s
character) will want to challenge this. Mr. Robertson
proposed none but he does unintentionally
raise the issue, which I am going to do here in
a fully intentional
way.

Now at this point you are supposed
to be saying, “You are taking this much too seriously,
philosophy boy. The ‘Net is a place were any ol’
Joe can post a rant, so lighten up dude. It was
all in fun.” To which I respond: No, the inverse
is the case — it seems everyone took this
piece as linkworthy (at least according to the
numbers of links I saw at various sites) when
in my estimation it was not. And besides, it was
not in fun — it included personal attacks
out of bitterness and frustration for some reason.
Need we link to articles that attack others in
unfair ways, dear Editors? Do you ask yourselves
this before you link? I am worried it was taken
seriously rather than perceived as another “ol’
Joe posting a rant,” for that is all it was, yet
the comments about the article suggested otherwise.

Life is short — what
are we doing with our lives here people? We’re
spending two minutes of our precious lives reading
these articles? People who just go out and attack
out of frustration when the other cannot respond?
What a waste. That two minutes is forever gone.
Are we better people for it? Nope. I was so disappointed.
We can do better than this dear Editors, readers,
and writers, if we harness the potential for good
the Web presents us with at this point in history.

The Problem of Standards:
The Challenge Stated — What Makes A Good
Mac Web Site Good?

I will look at the question of standards
for web sites here. I will address it more in
a part two of this article. For now I simply raise
the problem for your consideration

I am approaching this as a philosopher,
mind you, using a Socratic method of sorts trying
to figure the answer. So I will propose answers
and reject them in hopes of finding one against
which no objection can be raised. I don’t even
know if I will find any standards. In fact, if
there are no standards then the Mac Web is nothing
more than an assortment of people belching hot
electrons for their own entertainment value, and,
for a few, to earn a living; it becomes a vehicle
for assisting those who do not feel important
in our society to feel important in a subculture,
and nothing more (as if one’s self-worth can be
measured by his activity on the web
— the best people to be on the web are the
one’s who don’t need it). But it is much
more than this, isn’t it? Isn’t the Mac Web as
different as the company that inspires it? Or
have we fallen below Apple’s own standards?

First, we must get clear on the
following question: The standards are standards
for what? A Mac Web site obviously. But what about
such a site are we ranking? We need some property
that a site must possess and then set down conditions
for determining if in fact it possesses that property.
So what is this property? Quality? Too broad.
Content? Nope: That might be a standard in the
first place, and so we’d be begging
the question to adopt it. Usefulness? Nope
— another possible standard. Activity in
forums? Again, this might be a standard. It
is in fact very hard to say exactly what makes
a good Mac Web site good without begging
questions when it comes to stating the property
being evaluated by the standards in the first
place.

Let me illustrate. Joe says, “Site
X is a good web site.” Ask him, “Why?” He says
“Content.” Ask him why content makes a good site
good. He will say “Content is good.” Oops! We’ve
just argued in a circle. Now this applies to usefulness,
profitability, forum activity, news accuracy,
and all the others.

So I ask again, “What makes
a good Mac Web site good?” Obvious answer: Goodness.
Yes, but the point is what does “goodness” mean
when applied to a web site? I do not necessarily
mean moral goodness here, for “goodness”
is used in many ways, and things can be called
“good” without being morally good, e.g.,
my Powerbook is good but not morally good. I do
think that there is a moral element to
much we see on the web, obviously. But let me
get back to the point: Can someone answer “What
makes a good Mac Web site good?” in a noncircular
way? Or let me ask this: Does it even make sense
to say a web site has the property of goodness?
Isn’t that reserved for objects like works of
art, moral character, a life, and power tools?

Now we are seeing why the author
with whom I started this article didn’t propose
standards (other than it was an idiosyncratic
rant): It’s VERY hard to do, and takes a great
deal of thought. It is not a simple question of
business models and
all that either. We are on a level at which I
am questioning the very language we use, and so
the thoughts we think (since language and thought
seem to be the same — perhaps) about the
Mac Web. If one does not know what makes a good
web site good, he cannot form standards for determining
the goodness of a web site, can he? Or must we
live with such circularity?

At this point someone might rightly
say, “The goodness of a good Mac Web site is just
something you see, like you see the truth
of ’2+2=4′.” Maybe. But I have learned that when
this language is used it only shows one has not
thought hard enough. For it is reasonable to ask,
“What is it you see anyway? And how do
you know you are seeing it for what it is and
not dreaming or hallucinating?” That is what I
want to get at. To date, as far as I know, no
one has even attempted an answer to this.

So again, I lay down this challenge
to Editors and macsurfers alike:

• What makes
  a good Mac Web site good?

And specifically to Editors I lay
down this challenge:

• What standards
  do you use for determining what to link to?
  What constitutes a “linkworthy”
  story?

The challenge is to answer both
without begging
the question.

Are there standards? Are there
objective standards? I will address this in the
next article. But at this point my only concern
is to get you to think about it …

… for there is an awful
lot of the opposite going on out there.

Email David
Schultz

Every now and then, some writer will do a column on the best of the best Mac websites out there. So, with the recent shake-up in the Mac web as of late, I thought I would give you my own list of top 5 Mac websites.

#5. MacWeek
MacWeek is a great resource of Macintosh information. In fact, they are…

Oh, wait, they closed shop. Okay, let’s start again,

#5. MacCentral. If you want hard-hitting news, MacCentral is THE place to get it. They DIG for their stories, rather than letting companies and PR firms simply email all their news to them. They also have some of the very best columnist in the Mac world today!

What’s that? The DO just wait for PR firms to give them all their news? And they went and fired all those great writers? Really?! Why would they do that? Well, gosh, this list is getting harder all the time. So, fine, I will start yet AGAIN!

#5. MacAddict. Now here is a website which knows how to have a great presence on the Internet. Now only do they write great columns and reviews, but they went out and picked up two of my favorite Mac writers, John Farr and sometimes My Mac contributor Rodney O’Lain. With gorgeous colors and original content, MacAddict is a step above the rest.

Opps, my fault. I forgot. For some reason that is beyond my feeble reckoning, they let both Rodney and John go, even though it was far and away the best content on their site. Most of their content is directed out to their little “MacAddict Network” clique, which they did not let me join. And they sport one of the worse color schemes I have ever seen. The magazine itself is good, though.

Man oh man; this is NOT an easy list to compile. (And I am sure it is winning me legions of new readers and the good will of the above-mentioned sites)

#5. Mac Living Daily. Opps. Wait. They are gone now as well. I thought they were supposed to be THE place for all the latest Mac information on the web. That is what their PR said.

#5. MacTimes. Sort of like MacCentral. They offer news, columns, and reviews… Oh, sorry. Now they offer to send you spam email. YIPPIE! SIGN ME UP! In fact, after I tried to leave their site, a NEW website popped up all by itself (Which we all love SO much) that reads, “Thanks for visiting our site! You’re very special to us, and as a reward, we’ve listed out the most popular sites as voted by our visitors”. Gee, thanks. I LOVE some of these “popular” sites SOMEONE voted for, such as “Get a FREE SUBSCRIPTION to American Baby Magazine!” at number five, and “Can’t figure out what gift to give someone? Give them a Visa GiftCard and let them choose.” Does my heart proud!

#5. Mac OS Daily. Now this guy has a plan! He talked and talked and talked last year at Macworld San Francisco about how he was going to rule the Mac landscape. How GREAT his site would be, but more importantly, how much MONEY he was going to make doing so. He even hired a good guy by the name of Dr. Tim Hillman, who is a fantastic writer. So, going on the Internet to check his progress, we see… Well, as Homer Simpson would say, ÔDOH!

#5. MacHome Journal. Decent magazine with a…gosh. The top item on their MacHome Interactive site is “November Gift Guide”. Either they are incredibly early, or four to five months stale. The 15th item from the top is “Mac OS 8.5 is the next big thing in Mac operating systems” Ouch.

A note to James Capparell, President of the magazine whom I met last year in San Francisco and really liked: let’s talk.

#5…. Okay, I think I made my point. (Not sure what my point is, but I am sure I have made it.) The Mac web is still a vibrant and active place. All silliness aside, no one web site is perfect, especially this one. But for every failed Mac OS Daily, who was “in it” for the money, there are a host of others out there WELL WORTH your looking into. A brief list of worth visiting Mac site include: The MacObserver, AppleLinks , Accelerate Your Mac! , ResExcellence , Low End Mac , Inside Mac Games , MacKiDo , Insanely Great Mac , Go2Mac , MacSurfer , TidBits , As The Apple Turns, and a HOST of others.

Yes, there is a LONG list of very worthwhile websites for you to visit to get your daily fill of Macintosh information. But from time to time, I am happy to point out the bad ones.

Tim Robertson

I have a confession to make. I read comic books. It’s not like I’m confessing to dealing drugs, or looking at porn on the Internet (cough-cough) but it is something that seems to be extremely unpopular with some folks. They hear you read comics, and they think you are of lesser intellect or something. But the truth is, comics are fantastic, and offers some of the best reading materiel out there today. I am not talking about Archie comics here, either. I am talking about Bone, Astro City, Preacher, 100 Bullets, Metropolitan, and other of that sort. Great reading and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Why bring this up at a Macintosh related website? Well, besides the fact that one of my life goals for years was to become a comic book writer (and one of the reasons I started My Mac back in 1995, to hone my writing ability) I am proud to introduce a new writer to the My Mac staff. His name is Dwayne McDuffie, and besides doing some product reviews here at mymac.com, Dwayne also happens to be a comic book (and now, Animated Series) creator and writer. You can learn more about Dwayne at his web site.

The (not long) story of how and why Dwayne is writing here at My Mac is a tale for another day. But it does bring home just how much the internet and a Macintosh can change your life, make far away people seem not so distant, and bring people with vast differences together over a common interest or goal. It can, and does for many people everyday, be a tool for commerce, a portal to a love life, and anything else you want it to be.

Who would have thought, back six or seven years ago, that the writer of my then favorite comic book, Icon, would one day actually be writing for a project I created (mymac.com) and that it would actually have nothing to do with Comic books. If you had told me that, I would have laughed at you then.

But thus is the power of the Internet. (And the lure of free products for reviewers!) People can pool their collective minds, and create something they never could have before. They can form new, close personal friendships with other people, and yet never meet each other face-to-face. They can communicate in real-time via a computer, from a world away, and trade pictures and sounds back and forth, just like we first saw in 1950′s science fiction stories.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine of many years was home on leave from the U.S. Air Force. He is a career military man now, and has been for over eleven years. He is currently stationed in Korea, some 8,000 miles from my house. Talking on the telephone is VERY expensive, and while I love the guy like a brother, I just can’t afford a $400 phone bill very often. So when he was home a few weeks ago, we got together, exchanged email addresses, AIM screen names, and Napster screen names. (Did you know you could use Napster to chat? True.) So now we “talk” at least two or three times a week over the Internet. It is very much like having my friend home again, something I miss very much.

There is much more to the Internet than the latest news. Or the latest Dot-Com IPO or collapse. The Internet is now a portal to your friends and loved ones. A way to meet peers you never would have before. Or, for me lately, a way to keep in touch with close friends and meet new ones.

What are YOU doing with the Internet?

Tim Robertson

Adobe Go Live 5.0
Company: Adobe
Price: $289.95
http://www.adobe.com

The Dilettante’s Corner

That’s right, I said dilettante. I don’t get a macho charge out of bragging about how difficult it is to run my system. I don’t much care what’s going on under the hood of my iBook. I use it to work and on occasion, play. My computers are tools, they’re supposed to accommodate me, not vise versa. That’s why, whenever possible, I use a Macintosh.

My usual work is writing TV cartoons, comic books and various opinion columns on mass media. At the kind invitation of the editors of this site, I’m going to use my space here to review software and other products that, in theory, will improve my Macintosh user experience. My reviews will be based on the principle that software should be intuitive, powerful and reasonably idiot-proof. I present myself as the benchmark idiot.

First up is Adobe GoLive 5.0, a web site creation and organizational tool that frankly, offers way more power than I need at this point, not that I’m complaining, mind you. About a year ago, I threw up a quick and dirty web site, mostly as a self-promotional tool but also as a central home for the answers to frequently asked questions about my publications. I copied HTML from other people’s sites and wrote the thing in Microsoft Word. This was far from the best way to go about this, but what did I know? When I got a copy of Claris Home Page, I thought I’d died and gone to Vegas with an unlimited expense account. As you might imagine, I’m pretty damned happy with GoLive.

I installed GoLive from a CD on my desktop machine (an ancient Power Mac 6500 with a G3 card) without incident. The program loads quickly and has an interface not unfamiliar to anyone who has ever used Photoshop. The quick start card had just about everything on it I needed to dive right in, but when I needed more detailed instructions, the manual provided clear and plentiful documentation.

Right out of the box, after playing with the tutorial for about 10 minutes, I imported my entire sprawling mess of a site into GoLive 5 and used its powerful organizational tools to begin taming things. I was able to create a clean template for my site design (as I did it myself, I use the term “design” loosely but you know what I mean). I then imported all my ragged old pages into my nice clean new layout. The “Grid” feature allowed a remarkable amount of control in terms of actually placing design elements where I wanted them. Who knew? Although I don’t use DHTML on my site, I experimented with it for the purposes of this review. GoLive 5 implements floating boxes and graphics. This offers amazing new possibilities in terms of the look and feel of your pages. Once the majority of the browsers in use out there can handle them cleanly, I intend to use them on my site (perhaps that time has already come, but I’d rather err on the side of caution).

A feature I’m particularly fond of is the “Site Window“, which offers a graphical representation of your entire site’s layout. This is especially useful if you want to make your site easier to navigate. Trust me, I did.

I cleaned up my page layouts, fixed my many broken hyperlinks (which the program found for me), compressed my bloated picture files, then re-uploaded my new and improved site in a matter of hours, counting my learning curve. While I was at it, I created some new picture files in Adobe Photoshop, then dropped them into existing pages, all without leaving GoLive. I’m not sure this is actually all that useful but it is pretty neat. A few days later, just for the hell of it, I added a bit of interactivity to the site, quickly creating rollovers for my navigation bar. Finally, I used the very handy feature that allowed me to get a look at how my page displayed under various browsers. Eventually, I was able to fine-tune my site layout to an acceptable compromise that looks pretty good under all of the major browsers. Mission accomplished.

Uploading my new and improved site was simple. It took less than a minute set up my FTP preferences and I was able to make the transfer without incident.

Adobe GoLive 5 passes Dwayne’s idiot-proof test for ease of use and flexibility with flying, web-safe colors. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the program’s more advanced features, so if you’re a power-user or a professional, I suggest you look at reviews from specialty publications before making a decision. For the rest of us, I’d highly recommend GoLive 5 for our web site creation and maintenance needs. Yes, it’s pricey but it’ll get the job done and then some.

Features Include:
WYSIWYG Cascading Style Sheets
Create and control floating layers.
Ready-to-use JavaScript Actions.
Upload or download individual Web pages or an entire Web site via FTP
Design, create, edit, and view an entire site or import existing sites.
360Code™ ensures integrity of all code including HTML, JavaScript, ASP, XML, and others.
Automatically check HTML syntax, including compatibility with different browsers.
Much more. See Adobe’s web site for complete feature list.

System Requirements:

Macintosh
Power Macintosh. Mac OS 8.6 or higher. 48MB of available RAM. 70MB free Hard Drive space.

PC
Intel Pentium 200 MHz (or faster) or compatible processor. Microsoft Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0 (or later) with Service Pack 3, or Windows 2000 operating system. 48 MB of available RAM for Windows 98. 64 MB of available RAM for Windows NT 4.0. 50MB free Hard Drive Space.

MyMac Rating: 4 out of 5

Product: SmartDisk’s
VST USB Flash Media Reader

A Personal Story: Testing Under Intense
Expo Conditions

Okay, here is the story.
We had everything we needed for our first MacWorld
Expo trip. Since I would be doing reports
“from the floor” as it were I had my Powerbook
but I needed a camera. So we went out and bought
an Olympus 460 digital camera. It has good image
quality but lacked a USB connection for my Powerbook.
But I needed to transfer files from its Flash
Media card. I could spend some money on a USB
adapter or even Olympus’ reader, but I had other
ideas. Namely, I had my eye, for some time, on
the SmartDisk’s VST USB Flash Media Reader.

Because we have
reviewed SmartDisk’s VST products before,
I made an inquiry with them about a review unit.
The PR person said to meet her on the Expo floor.
You know, bigwig power lunch meeting and all that!!
Ahem … so SmartDisk’s VST booth was our first
stop. After all, I had the Powerbook, the camera,
but no way to make them talk with each other.
I could take all the pictures I wanted to but
they’d never see the light of day on the site
without a reader. The contact promptly gave me
a review unit (how is that for service!!). Would
it work right then there? It better.

We walked over to
a corner of the show hall and sat down on the
floor. As the crowds passed, some looking down
at us wondering what we were doing sitting on
the floor (yes, along with about a 100 others
resting their feet!), I opened SmartDisk’s VST
FlashMedia Reader right there, installed the
sofware from the enclosed CD, rebooted, and
attached the drive to the Powerbook. I put my
pic-stuffed Flash card in it, and, in flash
(sorry, couldn’t resist), the disk showed right
up on the desktop with all my pics nice and
secure. I just dragged them to a directory on
the Powerbook, opened them in Photoshop for
a little cleaning, and using AirPort in the
Press Room got the keynote pictures to my Expo
editor.

The Flash Media drive
shows right up on your desktop, like any other
disk.

During the next
three days at the Expo this little media reader
was put through some hard paces. I took a lot
of pictures and did a lot of transfers. I could
not imagine a more stressful workout for this
little media reader, and it passed with flying
colors! SmartDisk’s VST Flash Reader saved me
when I was without a solution at the Expo, and
the ease of use and reliability of the product
was a godsend at a critical time for me.

Spoking the Digital Hub

As portable digital
devices become even more ubiquitous we will
need reliable, fast FlashMedia and Compact Flash
Media readers. We’ll have a lot of files being
transferred between all kinds of devices. As
we realize Steve Jobs’ vision of a “digital
hub” we’ll need a way to connect the spokes.
With iTunes and DiskBurner, and a Rio MP3 Player
in hand, we’ll be transferring MP3s all the
time. Digital cameras are becoming less expensive
and better. we will be taking a lot of pics
and will need to get them to our Macs. With
a Mac as a hub, SmartDisk’s VST Flash Media
Reader is a device which will help us spoke
it.

The
Media Reader reads SmartMedia and Compact Flash
(type I and II) cards. You use these cards with
digital cameras, PDA’s, and MP3 players. Cameras
and MP3 players have the largest files to deal
with. But even with a USB connection this little
drive performs very well. Its simple drag-n-drop,
just like a small floppy. We have only an 8 MB
card to use, but even with a nearly full 8 MB
the Media Reader transfers files very quickly.
SmartMedia transfer rates are 475KB/sec (Read,
max), 353KB/sec (Write, max). Compact Flash transfer
rates are 746 KB/Sec (Read, max), and 624KB/sec
(Write, max). While not quite up to USB rates
these speeds are sufficient for most user’s purposes.

SmartDisk’s VST brand
is becoming known for its flashy designs, and
the Flash Media Reader is no different. The
triangular, almost non-Euclidean (if you can
imagine that!), design is a nice change from
flat drives. It sits vertically on the desktop
without taking up a lot room, and weighs a mere
6 oz. At first, for me being new to Flash media,
it got a bit confusing putting in a media card,
making sure it is inserted right, but once you
get used to what’s up and down the cards snap
right in. A glowing green LED tells you the
card is being read. We have the black, metalic
model which looks nice next to a Palm IIIc dock
or attached to a Pismo.

And
there is an extra Mac users get with this drive:
iView MultiMedia. In case you do not know
what it is (I have registered and used it for
years), it is media cataloging application. (The
same streamlined version that comes with this
drive also comes with Toast Deluxe.) It reads
TIFF, PNG, JPG, GIF, and many other kinds of media
types, inclusing sound files. You can export a
folder of pics as html and iView will write the
code for a nice slide show or thumbnail gallery
for you as well. It’s perfect for digital camera
users who will use this drive for lots of pictures
— it can become confusing which picture is which
(especially since the Olympus camera I have uses
nonstandard naming schemes for the files). Well,
iView MultiMedia will catalog them through simple
drag-n-drop and you can see your pictures thumbed
in a nice catalog. This little extra really makes
the SmartDisk’s VST Flash Media Reader even more
useful. You get a demo version of the streamlined
products on the CD. You can register a single
version for $25. I suggest you do — it’s a nice
program, and an OS X version is on the way.

Note: If you go to
the iView
page you will see the newest incarnation
of this media cataloging app — iView Media
Pro. The version that came with the Flash Reader
has been replaced by this new version which
is jam packed with features. We plan do to a
separate review of this new application soon.

I have tested the
Flash Media Reader on a G4 (AGP), connecting
the drive to both the USB ports on the G4 and
through a KeySpan 4 Port USB Hub with no problems.
I have also used it with a Pismo with the same
results. There have been no software conflicts,
and the install only puts a single “VST Flash
Media” 88k extension in your System Folder which
keeps conflicts and hassles to a minimum. After
working with literally hundreds of pictures
with this drive I can say that not one conflict
or corrupt file has showed up. Solid indeed.
I have used to transfer pics from the camera
as well as MP3 files.

There are two models
of the drive (see the first picture at the top
of this article): The black like we have, and
a blue-ice one with a "color kit"
to match all your fruity iMacs (sorry, no Flower
Power yet!).

SmartDisk’s VST
division has done it again with a simple plug-n-play
device that will help Mac users realize Steve
Jobs’ vision of a “digital hub.” After all,
a digital camera, PDA, and an MP3 player are
spokes of that hub, and now we have a simple,
reliable and stylish way to implement them thanks
to SmartDisk’s VST Reader. The digital hub is
becoming a reality.

Email David
Schultz

Get to the Back of the Bus – Mac Segregation

I am having a very unusual computing experience here and now. I
loaned my old reliable Mac 8500 to my son to do an animation, and
then my trusty Mac 7100 went south on me late last week. Horrors!
I have not been without a Mac for a number of years.

This situation would be a great excuse to go out and buy that
iMac I want, but for now it is not to be. -So here I am sitting
(ahem…) at a borrowed Windoze PC to write on, and to check
my email. In the process I am finding out a few minor revelations
about being a Mac user.

I rarely use Microsoft products on my Mac. This is because MS is
the Windows software company. But a few MS products were once
necessary to me, and once used, there is no way to migrate now to
another software application. Therefore, on my Mac I use Internet
Explorer since Netscape Navigator and iCab have trouble staying
aloft when I go on line. I understand this is probably because I
use older Macintoshes. IE is not my first choice, but it is
stable enough, and used on a Mac is not bad for a browser.
(shhhh!) The same situation goes with my email. I use Outlook
Express. I would prefer another, but with my thousands of email
files that no other email client can open, I am stuck.

It is not a revelation to me that I am stuck right now, without
my Macintosh. The revelation is the realization that I am
continually being sent to the back of the bus by this whole
computer culture thing, and by Microsoft in particular.

You understand the concept of being sent to the back of the bus?
Second class people are required to sit there. People not good
enough to sit in the front. This of course comes from a group of
people who elected themselves first class citizens, and for whom
there are no laws written (or enforced) to keep them from
practicing their segregation.

Perhaps it is because as a country we now have (for the most
part) gotten rid of racial segregation and prejudice. People
around us still seem to need to practice these things somehow, so
they do it to all us Mac users, -and quite effectively too.

For instance:

You want parts and service, or software for your old Mac? Get to
the back of the bus! You got to pay more for all that, provided
you can even find a service center that will touch a Mac.

You want a local dial up account for your Mac? Get to the back of
the bus! You will have to wait a longer time to get on line, have
more disconnects, and pay a premium to your local ISP because
they “don’t support Macs here.”

BTW, don’t bother asking for their tech support either. Get to
the back of the bus!

If you happen to work on a PC temporarily you will see more of
this.

Try logging on to a Mac site, or a Mac email account from
Windows. Get to the back of the bus! All you will get for your
trouble is the message “Page cannot be displayed.” Apple, and Mac
sites, it seems, are for second class citizens. Therefore, don’t
go there on a PC.

You want more examples?

I used to work as an illustrator and animator. My resume, and my
portfolio was required to contain some work done on a PC if I
wanted to get work. What,s worse, many temp agencies and
employers are PC only houses, and they will not even consider a
potential employee who has the word “Mac” in his resume. Years
ago, I used to proudly put “I don’t do windows!” on my resume,
but I could not do that more recently. Instead I had to advertise
up front that I could work across multiple platforms.

Therefore, as an artist, using a Mac made me a second class
employee, if I were employed at some places. Get to the back of
the bus!

Oh, there are a few great places to work where Macs are the Thing
to use. There are even a few wonderful companies who do not
practice this brainless segregation. To them, Macs are tools to
use for certain jobs, and PCs are for another. This is an oft
overlooked and even secret part of what makes these companies so
productive. PCs can’t do graphics very well, and they are not
cost effective or productive. So, PC only graphics companies
often lose contracts because of missed deadlines and/or poor
presentation performance. Companies that use Macs almost never
have these kinds of problems.

Want to find these great companies? Look at the more profitable
graphics companies and art houses. They are around. But for the
most of corporate America, you had better leave your Mac skills
off your resume. Get to the back of the bus!

You want more?

You go to college, and you want to use the computer lab so that
you can type and print some of your assignments. What? No Macs
here? All there are on campus are PCs? Get to the back of the
bus!

Try getting an online account at most any bank. Got to have a PC,
and only a PC. Get to the back of the bus!

Want to pay your utility bills online? Sorry, got to have a PC.
Get to the back of the bus!

Want to apply for a particular credit card online? Get a PC. Get
to the back of the bus!

You want to see that movie clip at a particular site? Got to have
Real Player or the MS Player version for PCs. No Quicktime here.
You are out of luck. Get to the back of the bus!

Music downloads? Cool MP3 players? Not all of them work on a Mac.
You just got downgraded, my friend. Get to the back of the bus!

How about games, both on line and for single players? You already
know the story. You use a Mac. Get to the back of the bus!

You want to take a friend to a computer store to help him see all
the cool Macs? He or she will probably wonder why you have to go
over to a dark corner somewhere in the store, and face a pitiful
display of equipment and software, poorly displayed and
neglected. How many of you have experienced this? Get to the back
of the bus, you second class Mac user, you! Your friend will
likely buy a PC and be in Windows hell forever.

(Thank you, Bill Gates!)

There are many other things like this, but you get the point,
don’t you?

I do not know about you, but I am very tired of being treated
like a second class computer user. Somehow even in America, where
such things should not exist, they do for Mac users, and no one
sees it. These things also exist for every Linux and Amiga user,
don’t they? (Thanks for the reminder, Eolake.)

What should you and I do?

I do not have all the answers, and no particular group seems to
have a real answer either. But those of us who evangelize the Mac
to everyone else are not going to shut up, and we are not going
away. Computer apartheid cannot last forever.

How big is this issue? Not very. I understand that it is not like
my basic freedoms given to me by this country are being
threatened here. I chose to use the Mac after all, so I am really
to blame for my own problems. I can accept that.

I also understand that it does not matter to anyone but another
Mac user that I use a superior Mac computer, with a more advanced
and stable operating system than any of those who use PCs.

Nor do most people care that my Mac is virus free, or that my
software and hardware is much more easily installed, or even that
my Mac computer crashes less often and less tragically than
for anyone who uses their PC.

My Mac IS more stable, and more USEFUL than any PC could ever be!
The Mac is also much more productive, and it even comes with an
innate sense of freedom that is unique in the computer world.

It doesn’t even matter to anyone that my colorful Mac computer is
more elegant and esthetically pleasing than some mindless gray
box PC could ever be.

We live in a WinTel world, like it or not.

None of these great things about the Mac matter to the legions of
PC users,

- and therefore, all the self-important PC users do not matter to
me.

So in some situations, when a PC user tells me to get to the back
of the bus, I just grin, and go my way.

I still have my Mac.

Nobody, telling me to get to the back of the bus, is going to
take my Macintosh’s most excellent and joyful computing
experience away from me!

So be proud of what you got!

-and be well,

Roger

Roger Born

Ott-Lite Vision Saver
Estimated Price: $199.95 list
Environmental Lighting Concepts, Inc.
http://www.ott-lite.com
(web site under construction; use their email address, fax, or toll-free phone numbers instead, listed on the home page)

Tucked away in a small corner booth at January’s Macworld Expo a display that stopped me in my tracks as I dashed wildly through the exhibition halls. I had seen a few tiny teaser advertisements in Macintosh print publications, so when I glimpsed the table full of Ott-Lite Vision Saver lamps my dormant curiosity ignited.

The Ott-Lites are sleek, elegant, stylized, classy, expensive, and do the job with flair (but no glare). I hope the company web site is completed soon, because no print description or boring spec sheet can render the beauty and refinement of these table and floor lamps.

Ranging from penguin-like 13 Watt Portable Lamps to 18 Watt Floor and Desk units, these gems are gorgeous. Don’t be fooled by the low wattage numbers. My graphite color 18 Watt Clamp-On Desk Ott-Lite provides more desktop illumination than the halogen bulbs overhead in my office ceiling.

The “sunny Spring day” quality of the special bulbs is relaxing to the eyes. I now look forward to working at my desk after dark here in sunny Arizona, because of the quality of light coming from this lamp.

The “crane” design allows me to position and rotate the lamp hardware and bulb in an infinite range of positions. I’m currently using the sturdy Clamp-On mounting to free some desk space, but the heavy Desk Top base is included in the price, and is a breeze to set up and operate.

Ott-Lite provides detailed instructions with every package. Phone support and corporate accounts are available.

The company calls their products the “Ultimate Computer Accessories.” In my situation the light is actually too bright to use here on the desk with my iMac unless I bend it away from the computer’s screen. Give me a little more quality time with the lamp and I’m sure I will come up with a satisfactory location and configuration for my Ott-Lite.

Low wattage means low heat. Equivalent to a standard harsh 100w bulb, Ott-Lite’s 18 Watt tube bulb is safely warm, not hot to the touch, and is rated to last 10,000 hours. Accessories and bulbs for my Crane and their other lamps are available.

How do you try before you buy? Call the company and ask where to preview the lineup in your neighborhood. I personally recommend Ott-Lites. They are attractive and good value, just like your Macintosh.

MacMice Rating: 5 out of 5

My Ott-Lite contact advises that:

The 13 watt task lamp with magnifier is available at Radio Shack Stores, and your crane lamp can be purchased through the Office Depot Catalog or website. Also Amazon.com carries them.

John Nemerovski

MacWeek gets the Axe

What can I say? MacWeek, one of the oldest and proudest Macintosh publications ever, has closed its doors. And the Macintosh world is the sorrier for it. Or are we?

Some History
When I first started reading MacWeek, it was a weekly trade print publication. It was, and retains the title even today, the best Mac related publication ever. It had reviews, columns, investigative reporting, an excellent layout, and best of all, a pro-Mac approach. It was written for the professional user, which I was slowly becoming at that time. (I publish My Mac in my spare time, but I am an Information Technology Manager in a Macintosh studio full time.) MacWeek, in many ways, helped me make the transition from Mac user to Mac professional.

MacWeek was also a free publication. I believe you could subscribe to it, though it would cost you over $100 a year. But it was free to qualified Macintosh processionals. So when I started reading it, I had to lie about what I did for a living to get the free subscription. Bad Tim, bad! But like I said, MacWeek helped me become who I am today, and for that, I thank all the staff of that fine magazine who came before.

It was a sad day back in 1997 when Ziff Davis and International Data Group (IDG) joined Mac publishing forces. It was really the end of the golden age of Mac print magazines. The joint venture, forevermore called “Mac Publishing, L.L.C” seemed a great move at the time. But it quickly turned, for me at least, to be the harbinger of bad things to come. Their first move, stop publishing my favorite magazine, MacUser. Many Mac users today don’t even remember MacUser, but it was far and away the best Mac magazine out there. (MacUser, like I said, was a weekly trade publication, not a magazine.) In closing down MacUser, Mac Publishing, L.L.C was trying to consolidate the two publications by rolling what was then MacUser into Macworld magazine. The first two issues of the new MacUser/Macworld were great, and seemed to really be two magazines in one. It had all that I loved from both! But quickly, within a few months, it went downhill. Macworld became more and more like the Macworld of old, and everything I loved so much about MacUser was fading from sight.

Ziff Davis was the owner of both MacUser and MacWeek. At the same time of the Macintosh publications merger with International Data Group (IDG) and their decision to axe MacUser, they also stopped publishing MacWeek as a trade, and moved it to web-only publication. This, I knew, was the end of MacWeek. And while it may have lasted from 1998 to 2001, a run of close to four years, the web edition of MacWeek was never the same as the print version. It was not even close. It had, at most, 10% of the content that the print MacWeek had, but more importantly, it was lost in the avalanche of other Macintosh websites at the time, such as MacCentral, MacTimes (RIP), MacObserver, and many other Mac news sites. Gone was the main source of revenue for MacWeek, its countless pages of advertising, which was as important to the Macintosh professional as was the news and reviews section of the magazine. (How else does one fine other Mac vendors?) By moving to an online publication only, MacWeek lost it ability to garner advertising as it had in print. Now it had to compete with many other Mac websites for the same piece of the advertising pie, a piece which was (and still is) growing smaller every day. As a weekly trade print publication, with an established number of subscribers, MacWeek had a chance to grow. As a web only publication, they lost that.

Andy Gore wrote a fine farewell to the publication, which you can read here. It was touching for someone like me, who read both the online and print versions of MacWeek, and recognized some of those long forgotten names of contributors.

It is a sad day to see MacWeek go. But is it really?

MacWeek had long since lost its prestige as a publication in most Mac users eyes. They were little different than many other Mac websites, and in fact worse than some. Their daily news section was taken away from them when Mac Publishing, L.L.C purchased MacCentral away in 1999 from its creator, Stan Flack. (Stan took a position in Mac Publishing, L.L.C after the purchase, however. You can read an interview with Stan I conducted before the sale. Sure, they still had news, but nothing like the hard-hitting investigative reporting of the past. In fact, much of the “news” at MacWeek was nothing more than regurgitated press releases, which is the norm; it seems, for what most Mac web sites call “news” today. (This web site is NOT a news site, which is why you don’t read press releases here) You could also count on reading at least five to ten reviews in each issue of MacWeek in print, but web edition? Few and, sorry to say, far between.

So perhaps it is not so bad to see MacWeek closing its doors. It was not as good as it had been. That was not the fault of the people who worked for MacWeek in the last few years, such as Stephen Beale , Wes George, John C. Welch, David K. Every, Tony Smith, and others. I think that MacWeek was hamstrung from the fact that they were owned by Mac Publishing, L.L.C, a company who tends to buy it best competition (MacCentral) and water down its hard hitting journalism (MacWeek).

Farewell, MacWeek. Some of us will miss you, and have for four years now.

Tim Robertson

Eliminator GamePad Pro
Company: Gravis
Price: $29.99
http://www.gravis.com

For hardcore games, owning a joystick or a PlayStation type controller is a must. Some games are just a lot easier to control using a game controller than a mouse/keyboard. Gravis, now a part of the Kensington Technology Group, has been making award winning game controllers for the Macintosh longer than any other vendor. And their long development for the platform shows in the Eliminator GamePad Pro.

The Eliminator GamePad Pro connects to your Mac via the USB port. It is plug and play in the true sense of the word. There is no software to install; you just plug the unit into your USB port. In fact, I plugged the Eliminator GamePad Pro into both the built-in USB port as well as a USB hub, and the unit performed flawlessly every time.

The Eliminator GamePad Pro uses Apple’s own InputSprocket technology. When you plug it in, the Mac will automatically see the GamePad. The catch? Whatever game your playing must also use Inputsprockets, otherwise you will not be able to use the Eliminator GamePad Pro.

I tested the unit with a number of different games, all of which used InputSprocket. Only Rune, which uses the Apple technology, had problems with the Eliminator GamePad Pro. Diablo, as an example, had no problem using the GamePad.

I used to hate the game controller for the old Nintendo game system, while I loved the ones for the Sony PlayStation. I did not think anyone would make a more comfortable and intuitive controller than that, but the Eliminator GamePad Pro has taken the lead in both comfort and usability. The Eliminator GamePad Pro works, works well, and is easy on the thumbs and palms.

The GamePad hosts ten buttons, all of which you can assign different functions via InputSprockets. It also has a small button titled “Precision” right in the middle of the GamePad, which theoretically make the D-pad much more precise. I saw no real diffrence when pushing this button, but this may be more useful to a flight-sim game, which I did not test the unit with.

Gravis is so confident in this product it also supports a 3-Year warranty and free technical support. With good reason, I think. The unit works well, feels very durable, and is well crafted.

If you are thinking of buying a game controller for your Mac or PC, the Eliminator GamePad Pro is a great choice. And at $29.99, the price makes it more so.

Requirements
Macintosh
Mac OS 9 or later. USB port. InputSprocket games only.

PC
IBM PC or compatible with USB port. Windows® 95, 98, ME, or 2000 Hard drive with 15MB available. CD-ROM drive (2X or faster) for installation.

MacMice Rating: 4 out of 5

Tim Robertson