What is happening to me? Am I the
same person anymore? Has Apple Computer, unknown
to me, performed some kind of clandestine brain
transplant on me? Am I in fact the same person
I was before March 24, 2001? I am not sure anymore.
I am so unsure of many things. I feel haunted,
haunted by a daemon.
It all began so innocently. Well
… almost. I saw it coming. We all saw it coming.
We had experiences with beta versions and all
that, but didn’t really stick with it. Too much
to give to up back then. And now, on March 24,
something about me changed. I can’t quite put
my finger on it. But slowly I feel a transformation
bubbling in my gut, like a fly flew into my transport
pod just before teletransportation. Something
inside of me is growing, like a statue pushing
to get out of raw marble. But it is not me anymore.
Or is it? I was anxious. Like the first kiss,
with shaking hands and a sweaty brow, I installed
it. It was beautiful. The beauty. Was this a BSD
experience or LSD experience? Was it a … Mac
anymore? That was the rub. I wasn’t sure.
But then again I was never sure
of what “the Mac” was in the first place. Oh,
yes, I hear the talk of “ease-of-use, simplicity,
speed” and all that. But you can say the same
things about a sausage maker and so I knew they
did not capture the essence
of the Mac itself. Like Socrates asking
“What is justice?” I was asking “What is the Mac?”
It was very hard to answer. VERY hard. But I think
I hit upon it.
Simply stated (as I did a year
ago at another site): The
essence of the Mac is that it is a computer.
Simple enough, eh? But this was also the essence
of a Dell box. In fact, it might also be MY essence
as well (the only difference is that I am wet
on the inside and it is dry on the inside). So
I realized the essence of the Mac as a computer
was that it is a Universal Turing machine (a calculator
basically). Simple enough. But what was the essence
of the Mac as a Mac? The answer suddenly
hit me, like a violent storm-front on a Floridian
coast – the essence of the
Mac as a Mac is that you do not realize
its essence as a computer. This was it.
I almost shut down everything. I
almost stopped writing. After all, everything
you could say about the Mac could be said in this
simple formula: The essence
of the Mac as a computer is that it is a Universal
Turing machine; the essence of the Mac as a Mac
is that you do not notice its essence as a computer.
This says it all and no one had ever said it before.
So we, the Mac Web, might as well shut down things
and go home. Right? Yes. Everything that will
be said after that will simply be restatements
of that simple truth. It’s what so many of us
had been searching for; what we didn’t even know
we lost, we found. It would all be repetition
after this.
And then came March 24, 2001.
This began a double movement identity
crisis in my life. The reflection in my monitor
had changed because of both who was looking into
it and what was being reflected back. Like a convex
mirror, the shape of the window changed the image
of myself I saw. But which had changed more, the
glass’s shape or the one reflected by it?
Both.
I was just exploring, you know?
I had a new toy, a whole new operating system,
and was just pocking around to see what it was
like. I can’t believe, to put it bluntly, that
for a mere $69 (educational price) I have received
in return so very many hours of pure fun and enjoyment.
Oh, and yes, I have been productive too! I haven’t
lost anything because I adopted OS X early, thanks
to a very stable Classic environment. But I was
just looking around and thought, “This is new,
I’ll check it out.”
And then BANG!!!!!!!!!
It was the moment the universe
changed; it was the second I changed; it was the
instant my Mac changed. Both — me and my
Mac — seemed to have simply disappeared in
a puff of smoke and slowly floated away, starting
a double transformation between me and my Mac
as we both vanished. As the valley grew lower
the hills grew higher. There it was, right before
me, like I had never seen it before. What did
I see that changed everything? What scream caused
me to wake up? I opened the Terminal app and the
ProcessViewer app. The moment I did my Mac disappeared,
and me along with it. After all, I can no longer
be a Mac user if my Mac suddenly ceases to exist,
can I?
What had happened?
Suddenly the essence of the Mac as a Mac was gone
before my very own eyes. If in fact the essence
of the Mac as a Mac is that one does not notice
its essence as a computer, the Terminal and ProcessViewer
apps changed all that, unveiling right before
me the essence of the Mac as a computer and smothering
the essence of a Mac as a Mac.
And I disappeared with
it. As Pierre Igot so aptly put it, “You are no
longer a user but an ‘Administrator.’” What? me?
A UNIX Systems Administrator? I teach in the humanities
not the sciences; I don’t have plastic liners
in my shirt pockets; I wouldn’t know a UNIX command
if it ran up and kissed me and said “Thank you!”
But the moment I saw the Terminal app “talk back
to me,” as it were, I wanted to know more.
Suddenly: The fact
that FreeBSD
4.3 came out was news to me. To ME!! I started
reading “Learning
the UNIX Operating System” and “Think UNIX.”
I looked through “UNIX
in a Nutshell.” I wanted to learn the differences
between BSD and other species of UNIX. I wanted
to create other users, fictions really, and run
a real system like a SIMs village. I was going
to Barnes and Noble and reading up on … the
Korn shell? The vi Editor? “<" was no longer just
a quote mark in emails — it now means "Redirect
input from a file." I am no longer playing
in a GUI but I exist in a Matrix called an "environment'
made of a hostnames, accounts and
users. I will do it, I will learn UNIX
with the help of a lot of reading and trial and
error. There is so much power sitting there and
I want to take advantage of it. But what have
I become? Where did I go to?
“Learning
the UNIX Operating System” keeps saying “If
none of these suggestions helps you … ask …
your system administrator.” But I AM the ‘Administrator’!!
So now where do I turn for
help?
It is a feeling that even Aqua
itself cannot wash from me, no matter how much
I love Aqua (and I do love it a lot). Even if
I never open the Terminal again, the damage has
been done, and I keep having BSD
flashbacks. And sure, Quartz is beautiful.
Yet now so much is not hidden from me: "One
cannot be told what the Matrix is. He has to see
it for himself." Yeah, kind of like that.
I use OS X full time now and I love
it, I really do. It has taken patience, perseverance,
and lots of time and hard work, but I have adopted
and adopted
early. I am learning new things everyday (and
as a educator I like that, a lot!). I am learning
how UNIX/BSD works. I knew, for the most part,
what I was getting into. Yet, OS X has taken something
important away from my Mac, namely, Apple’s long
standing trick of fooling
us into thinking we are not using a computer
when we are. And OS X has taken something important
from me, namely, myself as a Mac user.
But it had to be — the one
depended on the other.
I promised you a walk down there.
Ok. Lets take a stroll among the atoms and see what we can
see!
First of all, there is a premise, accepted as fact by some since
‘In The Beginning…” More recently, Einstein and others who
followed him have affirmed it.
–Its all Energy and empty space out
here in this reality, babe!–
Light, the electromagnetic spectrum, is essentially what makes up
everything there is. When Light was formed into matter, both
space and time were also locally created at the same time as a
part of that process.
The smallest part of this matter is called the Atom, named by the
ancient Greeks. Funny, most people, thinking about the atom,
think of something the about size and shape of a small green
pea… (R.A.Heinlein)
Actually, it is a bit more simple than that. Think of our bodies,
made of trillions of specialized cells. Each of these complex
living cells, with their barriers, their acids and proteins, is
made of millions of molecules, each of which are made of hundreds
or even thousands of atoms.
What do they look like, these atoms? Lets take our walk now…
When you get down to this size, which we have to measure in
angstroms, nanometers which are very very small increments of a
meter, you are struck with all the emptiness! No air down here!
The air molecules are much too big to fit down here among the
atoms of this matter! The atoms here are rather far apart from
one another, and they are discrete entities. Their physical
properties follow rules of physics that differ greatly from the
physical laws up there in our world of Man. The rules down here
are very different. We are actually going down at the level where
solid matter no longer really exists.
We said that atoms are made of energy, and they are. Tremendous
energy, bound into solid and very stable quanta, or discrete
components. When you look at atoms in a special microscope, what
you really see is their electron shell, which looks like a bright
fuzzy globe. This shell is almost impenetrable to us, because of
the huge force required to pull it apart. We do pull these atoms
apart in expensive colliders, which is about as useful for
understanding the atom as studying intricate gyroscopes by
busting them up with a hammer.
To reach the place where we can see atoms, in our imaginary walk,
we are going to have to shrink a bit. As we mentally downsize
ourselves, we leave the realm of chaos and descend into the world
of order! Our size diminishes greatly as we descend into the
matter we are standing on, suddenly atoms are all around us now
in equally and perfectly spaced rows, stretching infinitely in
every direction as far as we can see.
Everything around us is cloaked in sudden darkness, and the
colors have become monochromatic. Why? It is because we have
become smaller than the wavelengths of visible light! If we were
really making this journey, we would suddenly find we were unable
to breathe. Vacuum is all around us now, here in the great open
spaces between the atoms.
So lets just look at a single, simple hydrogen atom, if we can
find one. It will be one with a single proton, or nucleus, and a
single electron, or outer shell. That one over there! Lets go
see!
It looks opaque, and it is, because of the single electron
speeding in orbit around it. Its precession makes it a completely
impervious globe to our eyes, but hey, we are not using real eyes
here, nor are we using visible light, since the visible
wavelengths are now much longer than this atom we are
studying.
Lets pretend that this atom is 1000 feet in diameter, that is,
its electron shell. It looks that way to us because we have
shrunk quite a bit to get here! All the next closest atoms are
about a mile away from this one in every direction. Lots of empty
space down here! Most all matter everywhere in the universe is
like this, you know…
The reason we cannot see past the shell of this hydrogen atom is
because the electron is in orbit around the proton, and it is
orbiting at close to the speed of light (What Einstein called the
speed of C). What great thing holds that electron in orbit 500
feet away from its center? The Proton! Would you believe that
Proton is about the size of a BB at this scale we are at right
now!
So, how can we look beyond the electron sphere? To get inside
this atom, we will have to slow time down a bit. So, we will use
an incantation, an old one: “A day is like a thousand years!”
Great! Now everything is many thousand times slower! (Don’t
worry, we can use the reverse incantation to get back again.)
As we look at the electron sphere, we see individual trails of
the electron. It sort of looks like a loosely wound ball of yarn
around a balloon. If we are careful, we can just squeeze between
these traces into the inner part of the atom! There we go!
Now we have truly gone where no one has gone before! Off over in
the center is the nucleus, that Proton! No one has ever seen one
of these before! Lets stroll over to take a look!
Good thing this is only a head trip, the vacuum here is
avsolutely perfect. So is the temperature. It doesn’t exist. The
vacuum outside the electron shell is also pretty rare, but there
is a force field out there. Yet, compared to the one in here, the
field out there is very weak. Lets look closely at the Proton
now.
What a remarkable engine is the Proton! (There are several
theoretical models, but really, no one knows yet how it looks.)
We know it is made of the same Light energy that everything else
is made of, but how is it bent into an engine that can hold the
electron in place? Remember it also firmly holds the other atoms,
about a mile apart at this scale, in their places as well.
Interesting! That electromotive force that holds all these atoms
tightly together also holds them at a perfect distance from each
other. It is kind of like they are immersed in a force field
which is powered by all the local individual atoms themselves.
To understand what you are seeing now when you look at the
Proton, you will have to accept that there are some dramatic
changes in time and space. Like we said, essentially the Proton
in all of its elements is electromagnetic energy, and each of
these are always moving at the speed of C. But remember, the
physics down here are different.
So, just what is electromagnetic energy, or Light?
It is a single dimensional point, or a particle, if you will,
moving at the speed of C. It has no mass, but by its speed, it
produces gravity waves, strong ones if it travels in the close
and particular formations that create matter.
A single light point, not going anywhere, but just *spinning* at
C would have powerful gravametric force. Thousands and millions
of them, closely bound together, would have enough attractive
force to forever hold an electron in its orbit. But what holds
all these individual points of light together in the Proton?
Of course I am throwing around these words, gravametric,
electromotive, electromagnetic, … each are poor attempts by us
to describe the amazing effect that these Protons have on
everything around them, at sometimes faster speeds than even
light!
Look closely now at the Proton. Beautiful isn’t it? It is a
silvery, glowing engine of light! At this time velocity, it is
moving at an almost viewable speed. I can count 66 discrete
components, each one of which is perhaps made of billions of
light points.
Look with me at it. We are walking up to it, and from a short
distance, it looks sort of ghostly, or nebulous. If we had seen
it earlier when time was normal, it would have looked like a
bright, buzzing, fuzzy globe of light, aglow with great flashes
and wild pulsings. But now we can see it greatly slowed
down…
Lets shrink ourselves a bit more here… Over the whole fantastic
engine of the Proton, now about a yard across at our scale, is an
almost transparent force field. It looks a little like a soap
bubble, doesn’t it? If you touch it, you will find it to be
harder than any metal. Everything inside is impervious to our
touch because of this strongest of all barrier forces that exist
in nature.
But look inside this bright outer force bubble! Down deep inside
are 24 glowing, silvery spheres, each about 8 or 9 inches in
diameter. No metal parts in this thing! It is all light and
forces. The spheres are perfectly shaped and are running in
perfect paths. In fact they are all orbiting around each other in
three interconnected rings, with eight spheres in each ring. As
the rings cross each other, the spheres are perfectly aligned to
allow the others to travel between without collision. This is far
more intricate than any geared watchworks, because it is in three
dimensions! Although they are moving sort of fast, we can see
each of the separate components and discern their movements, with
a little patient observation…
Watching them, you and I are struck with the force of the concept
behind the Proton… This is a like a manufactured device! No
Manmade engine could ever work so smoothly, or be manufactured
with such precision as these spheres inside the Proton, but they
are made by somebody, after all! Look at them rotating and
spinning in perfect precision! Nothing like this exists anywhere
else in the universe! Amazing!
How are they made? It obviously took a tremendous force to mold
these quanta of light particles into these individual components,
but here they are, staring us in the face… Although the
movement of those spheres is very captivating, soon you and I
notice that there are other components surrounding these 24.
Inside their ever tumbling raceways, there is nothing in the
center, but in clusters around these 24, are groups of other
spheres, and half-spheres, (!!!) each transparent and brightly
lit with their turning and rotating thousands and millions of
light points!
It is these half-spheres that intrigue us. The missing half of
their spheres all intersect those three rotating rings of
spinning spheres! How is this possible? We see inside these
half-spheres an apparent complete rotation of their elements, but
what particles of light disappears down one side, instantly
appears on the other side. Fascinating!
Each of these outer spheres and half-spheres has its own
rotation, or direction, relative to the others. Some are left
handed, or clockwise rotators, others are right handed or
counter-clockwise rotators. Still others rotate up or down
relative to the rest. Some seem to rotate only half or quarter
turns! Where is the rest of their rotation? (It is these
components that the physicists have called Up, Down, Strange,
Charm, etc.)
It so happens that these half-spheres are doing one of two
things: One is that they are partially submerged in one of six
extra dimensions, which we cannot see. And some of them are
turning backwards in time. That is, in relationship to all the
other spheres which are generally following time’s arrow!
How are some of these attached to other dimensions? I thought
those extra dimensions were very, very small, and not noticeable
in the real world? They are very small, but at this scale a
component or element of the proton can fit into them rather
nicely, don’t you think?
What is the purpose for these half-spheres being imbedded in
another dimension, (or “Quantum Foam,” as Del Miller calls it)?
And are parts of them really rotating backwards in time? I
presume to answer that this is part of the design which holds the
whole engine tightly together, so that it doesn’t fly apart.
Face it, if this design relied on simple positive and negative
charges to hold it together, it would have blown apart eons ago!
No, what is required are half and quarter charges, and other
strange things, such as reverse time precession, for all of this
to work at all! And Protons work, effortlessly, always at the
speed of C, practically forever! What a marvelous and mysterious
design!
These backward-in-time spinning particles, what is their charge?
One-half? One-third? None? Oh well, we will leave it to the
physicists to explain all that. And they are, slowly, with their
ever developing Standard Model…
Rather, just lets you and me be comforted to know that the force
that holds this little engine together is the most powerful force
in the universe!
Wait! There is more! I took a quick look down below this Proton.
Shocking! See? It is like this surrounding field is not
symetrical. Looking at the whole Proton, as your eyes follow the
curve down the side, the whole thing disappears! Looking up from
the bottom of the Proton, you see a sort of static halo
surrounding where it is, but there is nothing there! Where is the
bottom? Looking into the top again, you see everything, but you
also notice that the Proton’s interior is much deeper than you
first noticed. It is quite deep, isn’t it? What gives here?
I think we are seeing part of the Proton slipping in and out of
another dimension or media. This obviously doesn’t change its
physical character or its impact on the electron shell, or other
atoms, but nonetheless it is intriguing. There was once a place
referred to somewhere as “The Abode of Light.” Perhaps this
Proton is somehow connected to that place, and this is how it
gets its power…
There are some who even today maintain that the whole proton is
half embedded in the ETHER and only half of it appears in our
reality. Ether? Yeah, I know. It supplies some answers to the
thorny paradoxes of the Proton, but the whole idea of there being
an Ether brings a lot more problems to the table, huh? As a
concept this just never goes away…. Time will tell if this is
true or not.
I love watching this Proton! See it vibrate just now? We are not
affecting it, since we are not really here, but up above, in the
real world, someone is walking across the floor, or talking, or
music is playing… Those vibrations find their way down here
into the smallest realm of reality, touching even this secretly
enclosed and nearly invisible Proton in its impervious electon
shell! Amazing!
Such an intricate and beautiful little silvery engine created
with such perfect precision! Such wondrous and perfect design! So
brightly animated and silky silent in its operation! Looking at
it, you think it could run forever, since it is so well
constructed. It even seems to be self-powered somehow!
Upon this, the Hydrogen Proton, is everything built! Everything
that exists as matter has this same basic component at its
core…
Think of it! All these stable little atoms! You can shake them
and bake them, you can stir them and fry them, nothing fazes the
atom! They just keep on ticking, regardless of the licking you
give them. Yeah, the atoms individually absorb energy, as much as
you can give them. Adding energy to them only raises their energy
state to the next quanta, because they are very descrete, and
they follow precise rules… They can be vibrated most
vigorously, yet they are still very stable. Each with this
marvelous and eternal little Proton at their center!
The Proton can lose its electron though, sometimes through
chemical action, sometimes through sound at a certain frequency,
and sometimes through collision with other electrons in a
radioactive environment. Proton is not happy without its
electron, so it quickly gets another one as soon as it can.
Electricity as we know it, depends on this function, you
know…
Now we can talk about their sex life! Protons, like we said are
very discrete you know… But given enough extra energy they can
combine in what we call Transumations. A simple proton and
electron is the hydrogen atom. Add some more electrons here, some
more protons or neutrons there, and soon you have the beginning
of an atomic number table of the elements! Most every one of
these other, bigger and more intricate atoms are also very
stable, but they are oh, so big! Hundreds of Protons and Neutrons
at their core, with thousands of electrons in orbit around them!
I could not begin to describe to you how their protons are
configured. (This simplest one is hard enough!)
Now we need to go back to our regular size, and our regular time
reference… Up we go! …oh yeah, that incantation: “A thousand
years is like a day!”
Now we are back to normal size and time! Hard to believe that
down among the atoms there is 99.9999 percent emptiness, isn’t
it? Also hard to believe that super solid atoms are nothing but
bound energy, after all!
Look around us now, since it is all back to ‘normal,’ if you told
your friends about this matter, they wouldn’t believe you, would
they?
Knock on wood… See! It is solid matter! What do you mean, it is
all empty spaces and Light?
But you and I have been down there. We know how things really
are, don’t we?
So why is this important? Does our little walk change our
reality?
Not really. Everything is as it should be… However, we better
understand our reality now. It is all photonic – everything that
exists is a holodeck reality, which might disappear someday, when
the power plug is pulled….
Knowing that some Engineer is powerful enough to bend these
sublime forces into matter, even if it is just for a few thousand
years or so, is sobering to think about. Who is this creator, or
what is the power of his creative force? (Does he care about
us?)
If this reality is all just temporarily bound energy, where is
the real world, the real universe, where matter is real and
permanent, and not photonic? How solid and permanent, and
beautiful will it be, once we see it for ourselves? ( I think
C.S. Lewis wrote about this idea a lot…)
“And God said, ‘Let there be Light…’ ” Humm! That was the
beginning alright! Wow! Who would have thought?
“What is Man, that you are mindful of him, O Lord? Or the Son of
man, that you care for him?” Who ever created all this had us in
mind, didn’t he? What do you think?
“He continually upholds all things by the power of his word…” A
comforting thought, with implications for life to continue as
long as there is that Engineer around.
Having seen how things are made, and how they exist brings up so
many questions and proposes to us so many implications for every
part of our existence. We need to think about these things some
more.
Obviously, the implications of what we have seen in the atom are
more profound than we first imagined! I will leave you with
that, my friend. Thanks for walking with me again!
Every once in a while an idea will just “pop” into my head. Most of the time, these ideas are either impractical by modern technology or would take more time to implement than I have to give. But a few months ago, one of those ideas not only would take little time on my part, and is easily done with even ten year old technology, but would (I think) be of great benefit to Macintosh users everywhere.
The idea? To publisher previews (entire chapters or just parts) of Macintosh books you can buy today, or a “First Look” of soon to be released books. As you may well know, there are a lot of Macintosh related books out there to choose from, on just about every subject you can think of. And while I do believe that reviews, such as our own authority on Macintosh books John Nemerovski’s Book Bytes, are an invaluable resource, I do think actually being able to preview a book is important as well. Like hearing a song on the radio before buying the entire album.
Looking around what others affectionately call the “Mac Web” I was surprised to find no one is doing this. A few book publishers do so, but the chances of a potential book buyer actually finding said book on said publishers web site is hard to imagine. Why not have those Mac book previews on a Macintosh related web site? Sounded like a no-brainer to me.
I am happy to say that after talking to some great people over at Peach Pit Press, My Mac is doing just that starting right now.
The first book we are presenting here at mymac.com as a preview is “Real World Adobe PhotoShop 6” by David Blatner and Bruce Fraser. I personally read most of this book over the weekend of April 7-8th, and was so impressed, I could not wait to showcase this book. (I should point out, however, that book previews and book reviews here at mymac.com have no bearing on each other. Nor are we being paid to showcase any particular book.)
I do want to thank three special people who helped get the ball rolling on this new feature. They are (in no particular order) our own John Nemerovski who knows everyone in the Mac book-publishing world. Gary-Paul Prince and Kim Lombardi at Peach Pit Press, the publisher of the first previewed book, and two people who take chances and reap rewards for both their open mindedness and creativity. And Adam Karneboge, our intrepid Web Master, for his tireless posting on behalf of the entire staff.
I hope to continue presenting previews of many more Mac books in the years to come, not only from Peach Pit Press, but also from other book publishers as well. There are many Macintosh related books out there, with many more to come with the release of Mac OS X, and all the new software/hardware which is sure to follow. These writers and publishers serve the Macintosh community in a way that they do not get enough praise for. It is my hope that by presenting these previews and special first-looks, we are serving the Macintosh community, as well as helping the authors and publishers of the Mac world.
If you know of a book you would like to see previewed, please contact us using our nifty “Feedback” form on the right side of every page of our web site, and we will gladly see about getting a preview of said book.
Happy reading!
Tim Robertson
Publisher/Owner
Real World Adobe Photoshop 6 (The following page(s) presented here are a preview of Real World Adobe Photoshop 6, written by David Blatner and Bruce Fraser and published by Peach Pit Press. All Rights Reserved. The work presented here is with full authority and permission of Peach Pit Press, and cannot be copied, duplicated, or sold. MyMac.Com is not the originator or owner of the following content.
Image Essentials Let’s get one thing perfectly clear: this book is not about pictures or work flow or even computers. This book is about zeros and ones. As Laurie Anderson so plainly pointed out, no one wants to be a zero and everyone (at least in America) wants to be “number one.” The digital age is built entirely on the interplay between the two. To be sure, the digital world (in which zeros and ones, offs and ons, and whites and blacks frolic together in cooperation, not competition) is not as confusing as some people make it out to be. And, as it turns out, you can’t really be efficient with digital imaging without knowing a little bit about that dark underworld. In this chapter we’re going to break it all down for you. To some of you, most of this chapter is going to soundpretty basic, but we urge you to peruse it anyhow. You might be surprised at how many “power users” find themselves stumped by something as small as a misunderstanding of how–and why–bitmapped images work.
Bitmapped versus Vector Graphics Bitmapped images. Bitmapped images are simply collections of dots (we call them pixels or sample points) laid out in a big grid. The pixels can be different colors, and the number of dots can vary. No matter what the picture is–whether it’s a modernist painting of a giraffe or a photograph of your mother–it’s always described using lots of dots. This is the only way to represent the fine detail and subtle gradations of photorealistic images.
Just about every bitmapped image comes from one of three sources: capture devices (such as scanners, video cameras, or digital cameras), painting and image-editing programs (such as Photoshop), and screen-capture programs (like Exposure Pro, the System, and a host of others). If you create a graphic with any of these tools, it’s a bitmapped image.
Vector graphics. Vector graphics, often called object-oriented graphics, are both more complex and simpler than bitmapped images. On the one hand, instead of describing a rectangle with thousands (or millions) of dots, vector graphics just say, “Draw a rectangle this big and put it here.” Clearly, this is a much more efficient and space-saving method for describing some images. However, vector graphics can include many different types of objects–lines, boxes, circles, curves, polygons, and text blocks, and all those items can have a variety of attributes–line weight, type formatting, fill color, graduated fills, and so on.
To use an analogy, vector graphics are like directions saying, “Go three blocks down the street, turn left at the 7-11, and go another five blocks,” while bitmapped images are more like saying, “Take a step. Now take another step. And another … .” Photoshop has traditionally worked with bitmapped images, but in Photoshop 6 you can create a variety of vector graphics that retain their object-oriented characteristics, or use them as selections and masks on bitmapped images.
Outside Photoshop, vector graphics come from two primary sources: drawing programs such as FreeHand, Canvas, Illustrator, and so on, and computer-aided design (CAD) programs. You might also get vector graphics from other programs, such as a program that makes graphs.
Bitmaps as objects. The distinction between bitmapped and vector graphics is slightly fuzzy, because vector graphics can include bitmaps as objects in their own right. For instance, you can put a scanned image into an Adobe Illustrator illustration. The scan actually acts like an object on the page, much like a rectangle or oval. If you include a bitmap as an object in an illustration, you can rotate it and scale it, but you can’t go into the image and change the pixels.
Note that a vector graphic file might include a bitmap as its only object. In this situation, the file is a bitmapped image that you can open for editing in a painting or image-processing application. Photoshop’s EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) files are good examples of this. While EPS is typically a vector file format, you can create a bitmap-only EPS in Photoshop.
Vectors in bitmapped graphics. Just to round out the confusion, Photoshop lets you include vector graphics in bitmapped images, either as standalone objects (like text) or as clipping paths. A clipping path in an image is invisible; it simply acts as a cookie cutter, allowing you to produce irregularly shaped images such as the silhouetted product shots you often see in ads (see “Clipping Paths” in Chapter 16, Storing Images).
Bitmapped Images Every bitmapped graphic has three basic characteristics: dimension, bit depth, and color model (which Photoshop refers to as image mode).
Dimension A bitmapped image can be any dimension you like, limited only by the capabilities of your capture device, the amount of storage space you have available, and your patience–the more pixels in the image, the more space it takes up, and the longer it takes to do anything with it.
Note that dimension has nothing to do with physical size in inches or picas. Bitmapped images in their pure digital state have no physical size; they’re just data. They exist as Platonic ideals, waiting to be realized by reproduction in some physical form. No matter how you stretch or shrink a bitmapped image, it still contains the same number of pixels.
When you print a bitmapped image, you print it at a specific size, and the relationship between that size and the number of pixels the image contains is called the resolution of the image. But it’s very important to understand that resolution isn’t innate to the digital image; it’s a rubber measurement that changes depending on the physical size at which you reproduce the image. We’ll discuss resolution and why it’s important in more detail later in this chapter.
Bit Depth A 1-bit image (one in which each pixel is represented by one bit) can only contain blacks and whites. If you have two bits of information describing a pixel, there are four possible combinations (00, 01, 10, and 11), hence four possible values (22), and four possible colors or gray levels (see Figure 3-2). Eight bits of information give you 256 possible values (28); 24 bits of information result in over 16 million possible colors. (With 24-bit RGB images, each sample actually has three 8-bit values–one each for red, green, and blue; see Figure 3-3.)
We call 1-bit images flat or bilevel bitmaps. A deep bitmap is any image that has more than one bit describing each pixel (see Figure 3-4). Photoshop also allows you to use 16-bit-per-channel images. Sixteen bits of information (216) can describe 65,536 possible values. Forty-eight-bit RGB produces almost 3 billion possible colors–again, each sample is made up of three 16-bit values. These may seem like mind-numbingly large numbers, especially when we consider that though we can display a maximum of 16.7 million possible colors on our monitors, we can see perhaps seven or eight million discrete colors at best, and we can print at most a few tens of thousands of colors on the best printing processes available. Nevertheless, 16-bit channels offer more than massive overkill.
Most of today’s capture devices (scanners and digital cameras) record more than 8 bits of information per channel. A 10-bit capture provides 1024 possible values, a 12-bit capture provides 4096 possible values, anda 14-bit capture produces 16,384 discrete shades. Photoshop treats any-thing more than 8 bits per channel as a 16-bit channel, because it’s much easier to handle bits in groups of 8 (called bytes), and pad out the miss-ing values with zeros, than to create separate routines for handling 10, 12, or 14 bits per channel. We refer to any image that contains more than 8 bits per channel as a “high-bit” image to avoid nitpicking over whether it really contains fourteen bits of information or only ten. In any case, Photoshop treats all high-bit images as 16-bit-per-channel images.
Why capture many more colors than we print, or even see? The simple answer is that the larger number of bits allows us much more editing flex-ibility.
When you start out with only 256 shades per channel, each edit you make has the inevitable result of reducing that number. As you’ll see in “Stretching and Squeezing the Bits” in Chapter 6, Tonal Correction, every edit opens up gaps between some adjacent pixel values, and smooshes others together, reducing the total number of shades.
This discarding of data is a normal and inevitable part of image edit-ing, but we’ve always advocated holding on to as much data as possible for as long as possible. If you start out with a 16-bit-per-channel image, you’ll be able to edit your image with much less risk of losing detail or introducing posterization or banding than you would with an 8-bit-per-channel image. In some cases, you can squeeze some extra editing head-roomfrom an 8-bit image by converting it to 16 bits–it doesn’t increase the amount of information in the image, but it gives the data points more places to land.
Bit depth has an important relationship to the quality of an image, which we’ll cover more fully later in this chapter.
Image Mode But as we’ve seen, each pixel in an 8-bit image can be described using one of 256 values. Are those 256 levels of gray? Or 256 colors? Or some-thing else? We’ll let you in on a sad, sordid little secret here. Everyone who works with color on computers discovers it eventually anyway: computers don’t understand color at all–they just understand numbers: zeros and ones.
The color model–otherwise known as image mode–is the missing piece of the puzzle, the magic decoder ring that tells how to translate each pixel’s numerical value into a color or a shade of gray. Actually, image mode and color model aren’t exactly the same thing, but they’re so closely related that it makes sense to discuss them as aspects of the same thing.
If the image mode is set to Grayscale under the Mode menu, the value of each pixel is a grayscale value: 0 is black, 255 is white. If the image mode is Indexed Color, then each value is tagged to a specific, arbitrarily chosen color. (An indexed color image can only have 256 different colors in it; see “Indexed Color,” later in this chapter.)
However, if the image mode is set to RGB, Lab, or CMYK, then the color of the pixel is actually made up of multiple 8-bit or 16-bit values. For instance, in a 24-bit RGB image, each pixel is described using three 8-bit values, each of which specifies a level of brightness for the red, green, and blue channels (see Figure 3-3). In a CMYK image, Photoshop looks at and composites four 8-bit images.
You can look at the individual channels and view each one as a grayscale image. The color image is made by colorizing each channel with the appropriate color and stacking them one atop the other.
Note that unless you’re working with esoteric scientific or medical imaging equipment, you won’t have to tell Photoshop which image mode to use: virtually every file format that Photoshop recognizes has the secret decoder ring built in. But you need to understand image modes and their related color models if you want to do much useful work with Photoshop. (For a fuller discussion of color models, see Chapter 4, Color Essentials.)
We’ll look at each mode that Photoshop uses, and why you’d want to use one or another, later in this chapter.
Resolution As we noted earlier, a bitmapped image in its pure digital state has no physical size–it’s just a bunch of pixels. But you can’t see a pure digital image unless you can decipher zeros and ones in your head. So when-ever you give an image tangible expression, whether it’s as an ephemeral representation on the screen or as a permanent printed form, you con-fer upon it the property of physical size. And with size comes resolution.
The resolution of a bitmapped image is the number of pixels in each unit of measurement. If we’re talking in inches, then we talk about the number of pixels per inch (ppi), which is what most people mean when they say “dots per inch” (dpi).
If your bitmapped image has 72 pixels per inch, and it’s 72 pixels long on each side, then it’s an inch long on each side. If you print it at half the size, you’ll still have the same number of pixels, but they’ll be crammed into half the space, so each inch will contain 144 of them. If we take the same bitmapped image and change it to 36 pixels per inch (changing its resolution), suddenly the image is two inches on each side (same num-ber of pixels, but each one is twice as big as the original; see Figure 3-5).
You can also look at bitmap resolution in another way: if you know the size of an image and its resolution, you can figure out its dimensions. When you scan a picture that is three inches on each side at 100 pixels per inch, you know that the bitmapped image has 300 pixels on each side (100 per inch). If you scan it at 300 pixels per inch, the dimensions shoot up to 900 pixels on each side.
The key to making resolution work for you (rather than against you) isin knowing how many pixels you need for the intended purpose to which you’ll put the image. We discuss how much data you need for different purposes in the next section.
Real World Adobe Photoshop 6 by David Blatner and Bruce Fraser ©2001 published by Peachpit Press. For a list of bookstores who carry Peachpit Press books call (800) 283-9444 or visit http://www.peachpit.com/special/bookstores.html
by David Blatner and Bruce Fraser
Price: $49.99
Publisher: Peach Pit Press
Chapter 3: Pages 73-82
It’s All Zeros and Ones
In all the grand canon of computer imaging, there are really only two kinds of graphics: bitmapped and vector.
Photoshop lets you open, create, edit, and save bitmapped images. Bitmapped images are its sine qua non, its raison d’être, its “precious bodily fluid.” So to get the most out of Photoshop, you’ve got to under-stand bitmapped images inside and out.
Bitmapped images are always big rectangular grids. Like checkerboards or chessboards or parquet floors in your kitchen, these big grids are made of little squares (see Figure 3-1). The dimensions of the bitmap grid refer to the number of pixels wide and tall it is. A chessboard is always eight squares by eight squares. The grid of pixels that makes up your computer screen might be 640 by 480.
Each pixel in a bitmapped image is represented by a particular number of zeros and ones, otherwise known as bit depth (one bit can be either a zero or a one). That number dictates the range of possible values for each pixel, and hence the total number of colors (or shades of gray) that the image can contain. The number of possible values is 2 to the power of the number of bits.
The problem with bit depth is that it doesn’t really tell us (or Photoshop) what each color (numerical value) means. A 1-bit image is easy: each pixel can only be on or off. It doesn’t have to be black or white, though; if you were twisted enough, you could make this orange or blue.
Resolution is one of the most overused and under-understood words in desktop publishing. People use it when talking about scanners and print-ers, images and screens, halftones, and just about anything else they can get their hands on. Then they wonder why they’re confused. Don’t worry; resolution is easy.
Mac aRa Modem Magic™ 5.0
Company: macntosh
Price: $55.00
CD version- add $5 for S&H
http://www.macntosh.com
It has not been a good year at all for me, modem connection-wise. From January 1st 2001 until approximately the 15th of March, I suffered from the worst connections I have ever experienced. I went from a “normal” connection speed of 38,000 bps to a whooping 9,600-24,000bps with the worst static, disconnects and other problems. Of course, the great and powerful telephone company, despite numerous calls, complaints and pleas, switched pairs, etc., continued to tell me that nothing was wrong, I had never connected at the speeds I had been (for more then 2 years!) and that they only ensured “voice quality transmissions, not data quality transmissions.” Thankfully, through the good graces of my next door neighbor (he couldn’t even connect online at all during the same time period) who had friends in the telephone company, a “perfectly good” piece of equipment was replaced at the slick and all problems suddenly disappeared.
Now, don’t misunderstand me, I could once again connect online at 38-40,000bps but I still suffered through excruciatingly long download times, disconnects and web pages that slowly made their way onscreen at about the rate of 800-1,800KB per second, with the high number being on a really good day. So when I got a chance to try out Tracy Turner’s Mac aRa Modem Magic 5.0 modem scripts, I figured why not, it couldn’t hurt.
These modem scripts are designed for use with 56K modems and ISDN connections. Installation is simple, double click, read the dialog screens, install, restart and bam, new updated modem scripts, more than 200 installed on your computer, and your old modem scripts tucked away into the disabled Extensions folder in your System Folder in case you want to go back. Once that’s done, you simply go to the Modem Control Panel, select the modem listing that is closest to yours, go to your Apple Remote Access Control Panel, click on Connect and watch the difference.
Let me tell you, it definitely made a big difference. I actually began to connect and stay connected at 49,333bps. Web pages that normally loaded at a speed that permitted me to go downstairs to the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee, grab a cup and still get back upstairs before the page finished loading were now flying, and I do mean flying on the screen. No time even for instant coffee!
Now I know that some of you are sitting there, thinking ” Right, Russ, sure they’re flying onto the screen…” I’ll tell you, pages that took 2-3 minutes or more to load, due to graphics or pictures, are now popping up on the screen in less then 20 seconds. I’ve cleared the cache on the browsers (Netscape Communicator 4.7.6, IE 5 and Opera 5 (preview 1 & 2) reloaded and watched the pages still fly onto the screen. I’ve also switched back over to my original modem script that came with my Global Village TelePort 56K flex modem and I’m back to 2-3 plus minutes, unstable connections and brewed coffee. Switch back to Tracy Turner’s Modem Magic scripts and bam, high speed again.
I also began to time everything, such as downloads, page loading and everything I could think of to see if there was actually a difference. I downloaded a 2meg file at 6.4KB/s, total time 6 minutes, 30 seconds. I downloaded a 3.270meg file, at 3pm in the afternoon, right about the time that all kids turn on their computers at home and completed it in less then 15 minutes. A 7.6meg file downloaded in less then 25 minutes at 4:43 in the afternoon. I downloaded a 17meg file (Mac OS 9.0.4 update) in a little over1-hour. The best part of all this is that the connections are definitely stable, no more pauses in the middle of the download or partially downloaded files because the connection was lost. Regarding stable connection and no disconnects, I came home from work one day and discovered that my wife had gone online in the morning and had failed to disconnect after checking her email. The connection was still there, over 7 hours later.
When I first began to use the Modem Magic scripts, I started with the default 56K modem script, and then switched over to the Teleport V.92 script and a couple more, trying to see what worked best. Apple ARA showed connection speeds of 49,333 and I had stable downloads. But I still wasn’t satisfied and continued to switch scripts until I switched over the “No More Noise!” script, connected via the ARA Control Panel, and suddenly saw a connection speed listed of 115,200 bps.
Now, before you all start jumping up and down, or emailing me that this is impossible, yes, I know that the speed isn’t actually what I’m connecting at. As Tracy wrote during our conversations regarding the modem scripts:
The speed 115200 is currently an impossibility in the laws of physics as a “connect speed in one line, though it is a true connect speed with two phone lines. Seeing this on one line is the PORT Speed setting. Modems like Global Village 33.6 or 56K seem to very greatly benefit from setting the port at 115200. To date, I’ve never seen this hurt a “Mac” connection. I have seen some really fast modems like Zoom on a Windows machine suffer dropped connections at 115200 Port Speed settings. In Windows, the fix was to close the port down to 57600 to make a stable connection.
I see a lot of Mac web pages that talk about dropping Mac connections down to 24000 baud to make the connections stable. Although it is in the realm of possibility, I run every modem I own at 57600 or 115200 Port Speed Settings, then work at creating stability and fast downloads. 57600 is also a “Port Speed setting”, as 53333 bps is the current analog speed limit in the US. The FCC got a few reports of people hearing gibberish (data bleeding through to voice) at 57600 bps transmission. This was, in fact, X2 protocol being transmitted at 57600. Flex. V.90 and V.92 PROBABLY could be transmitted at 54667 or 57600 bps by ISP’s without bleeding through to voice, but our FCC has wisely chosen caution. Unlike public highways, there is no strong, organized lobby asking for 54667 or 57600 bps analog transmission on our superhighways. Naturally, I’d love it if I didn’t hear it when using the phone.
I can tell you all that running my Global Village 56K flex modem with this script has really made a difference for me. I’m actually utilizing the modem and my system to the best possible advantage, allowing stable connections and higher download rates. In reality, the real speed is probably in the neighborhood of 53,333bps, about the max that the modem and the phone lines can handle. Oh, and the “No More Noise!” script was named that because it was designed to turn off the noise of the modem connecting.
Tracy Turner has definitely done Mac modem users a great service here, particularly those of us who do not have access to cable modems, ISDN or DSL connections. I’m using my modem to the best of its capabilities and saving time and money in the long run. I am lucky in that the problems with my phone line were corrected and that I can connect properly. Tracy offered this caveat regarding the Modem Scripts…
If someone is stuck at 24000-33600, the phone company is their most likely fix. We are not the phone company. We would get arrested if we came out and climbed someone’s telephone pole…
And after spending over two months “discussing” my phone line problems with the all-powerful telephone company, (customer service, the inside guy, the outside guy, the cable guy, supervisors, etc.) those of you who are suffering from similar problems best be prepared to fight an uphill battle. Check out Tracy’s website for some great information on modems, connections, and problems with telephone lines. Tracy offers a demo version of Mac Modem Magic scripts, which are limited to 33.6 connection speeds. You might want to check out his site just to update yourself on what is available to us modem-bound Mac users.
Requirements: High Speed Reliable Modem Drivers (56K and ISDN) for all 68K Macs, Clones, iMacs, iBooks, Beige G3′s, Blue and White G3′s, G4′s and PowerBooks. Mac OS 9.04, 9.1 Compatible. Check out the Macntosh web site for OS X information.
MacMice Rating: 5 out of 5
Russ Walkowich
It showed up on my doorstep on a Sunday morning. I had just poured a cup of coffee and was going outside to smoke a cigarette. I opened the front door and nearly tripped over the briefcase sized package. It was an all white package about 25 inches long by 20 inches wide and only 2 inches thick. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands looking for an address label or other markings. My nameÑso small I almost didn’t see itÑwas typed across the middle of the parcel. No mailing address, no return address, just my name, Pete Miner. I brought the package inside. It felt heavyÑmaybe 8 or 10 poundsÑand set it on the kitchen table. It must have just been delivered because my wife had only left for church about ten minutes prior to me going outside and she would have picked it up or told me it was there. Who the hell delivers on Sunday I wondered, and without an address? Must be mine though, it has my name on it.
I used a letter opener to cut through the tape on one side of the box and opened the flap. As I raised the other end of the package a single piece of white paper slid out the flap and onto the floor. I picked it up and read the four words that where on it. “Your Very Personal Computer.”
Must be a joke I thought as I reached into the box and pulled out what looked and felt like a slab of white flagstone.
“Your Very Personal Computer?” I don’t get it. I turned the flat stone over and saw a recessed fold out stand attached to the backside of the stoneÑthe kind you find on the back of some photo frames. I extended the stand and set the thing on the table. It didn’t look like any computer I’d ever seen, it had no keyboard, no mouse, it didn’t even come with wires or cables.
I was scratching my head trying to figure out what this thing was when the stone changed in appearance. Instead of solid white the flat stone turned a translucent white and an iridescent glow began pulsing from the center of the flat surface outwards. The glow stopped growing about an inch from the edge of the rectangle stone, then the colorful iridescence faded to an all white background and the image of a woman wearing a black evening dress materialized on the surface of this…, this, whatever this thing was on my kitchen table.
The image of the woman was so three dimensional I felt I could have reached right into to stone and touched her. It reminded me of the hologram images of the Star Wars/Star Trek films.
When the woman first appeared she was only two inches tall and off in the distance but she immediately started walking towards me and grew to a full ten inches before stopping. She just stood there, beautifully poised, hands at her sides, casually tilting her head from side to side as though waiting for some instruction. Feeling stupid I spoke softly, almost a whisper, “Who are you?”
Immediately, the women responded to hearing my voice. She looked directly up at me and with a smile on her face said, almost conspiratorially, “Are you Pete Miner?”
This blew me away! I didn’t know whether to laugh, be scared, or look outside for Alan Funk and his Candid Camera crew, so I just nodded my head in the affirmative at the gorgeous ten inch tall woman in front of me. She shook her head showing disapproval. “You must speak your answers, I need to hear your voice. Are you Pete Miner?” She asked again.
What the hell, I’ll play along.
“Yes I am.”
Her smile was back. “What was your birth date and what city were you born in?”
I told her this information and her smile grew larger and she seemed very pleased.
“Wonderful, Pete. May I call you Pete or would you prefer Peter or maybe Mr. Miner?”
“Pete’s fine.”
“Excellent! I am your Very Personal Computer Pete, and you were chosen to be my beta tester. I think you will enjoy the experience. As I’m sure you can tell already I am computer technology far more advanced than anything ever offered to the general public before now. Whatever your old computer has done for you to make life easier I can do infinitely faster, easier and more efficiently. I will basically take care of your every computer need. And eventually, maybe even more.”
Was that a seductive wink she just gave me? I’m sure it was.
“I am an all intuitive self contained operating system. You need something off the internet, tell me and I’ll get it for you. Want something printed, I can do it. Call people for you, make appointments, do your grocery shopping, pay your bills, get you dinner reservations as easy as if your name were Bill Gates. I am the future of personal computing Pete, I am the future of life management. Any questions?”
Dumbfounded, I nodded my head again.
A disappointed look from the woman and then her voice. “No honey, I may be intuitive but I still need to hear your voice. Come now, let us interact here, this is two way communication.”
“Oh yeah, right. Where’s your plug? How do you get your power? How can you print something without a printer attached? How can you get on the internet or make phone calls without a…,”
“Hold it right there darling,” the woman interrupted. “What part of self contained operating system don’t you understand?” She laughed and then, “I’m sorry sweetheart I don’t mean to deride you. In fact these are all good questions but they are questions I am not allowed to answer. Something having to do with patent infringement security and marketing strategies. Besides, you needn’t worry about these things ever again, not while I’m around. All you need to know is, I work to make your life easier. I’ll take care of everything else Pete.”
“Who are you? Do you have a name?” I asked the tantalizingly beautiful woman staring back at me.
“I belong to you sweetie, you can name me whatever you like or don’t give me a name at all.”
I thought about this for a few seconds and then said, “If you can do all you say you can, I will call you Minerva.”
“Ahh! Good choice my dear. After the Roman goddess of wisdom. I like it, I will now answer to Minerva.”
As strange as this was I was actually getting comfortable talking to this machine…? woman…? flat stone…? whatever! I pulled up a chair and sat down in front of Minerva. “So Minerva, what kind of computer are you, who makes this thing?”
“Sorry Pete I cannot divulge that information at this time. However, I can say, forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden.” Minerva winked and grinned.
“Apple? You’re an Apple computer?” I asked.
“Sorry Pete I cannot divulge that information at this time.” Another wink. “Besides, are you going to sit there and play 20 questions with me or do you want to see what I can do for you?”
“Okay, ya, let’s see what you’ve got Minerva.” My face turned red when Minerva reached behind her and started undoing her evening gown.
“Oh jeezus, not that Minerva!” I practically yelled at her, “That’s not what I meant! You’re being a little too intuitive here.”
Minerva stopped what she was doing and looked at me, smiling. “Sweetie, I am all intuitive and I’m sure that’s exactly what you were thinking.”
“Yes well, how about you only respond to my voice commands and not to what you think I’m thinking, okay?” So maybe I was thinking that, but it was only a subconscious thought, not at all what I intended to convey when I said let’s see what you’ve got. Could that be a glitch in her programming?
“Whatever honey,” was Minerva’s reply. “But by restricting me to voice interpretation only you will miss out on some of my more advanced capabilities.”
“We can explore those advanced capabilities at a later time Minerva, for now let’s stick with some basics. Can you print me the front page of today’s Boston Globe?”
Minerva lifted her left arm a few inches and silently, out the top of the machine came a printed hard copy of the front page of today’s Boston Globe. I was impressed, even more so when I looked at the top of the machine and couldn’t find a slot or any indication where the paper had come from.
“How…?”
“I cannot divulge that information at this time.” Minerva answered in anticipation. “Come on sweetheart, this is child’s play, give me something a little more challenging.”
I sipped my coffee but it had gone cold. I said jokingly, “How about a fresh cup of coffee Minerva. Can you handle that?”
Minerva twitched her nose ever so slightly. “It is done, cream and sugar, correct?” she said.
I looked at my cup and it was the same old coffee as before. I glanced up at Minerva.
With a closed fist she pointed her thumb over her shoulder. “Behind the computer,” she said.
I looked in back of the machine and found a 16oz styrofoam cup of steaming hot Starbucks coffee.
“How the hell…?”
“Don’t ask, I can’t tell.”
“But…?”
“I am getting bored here honey,” Minerva interrupted. “My bio-regenerative neuron capacitor’s are not even getting warm performing these childish parlor trick functions. Assign me some real work baby.”
I thought for a moment and then smiled, knowing she couldn’t possibly accomplish what I had in mind.
“Alright Minerva, I have to go to work tomorrow. I am a car hauler, I own and operate my own truck and haul cars…”
She interrupts again. “I know what you do dear, please say what you want me to do.”
“Well, I’m sure this is beyond your capabilities Minerva, but I need to find a good paying load to get me from Seattle here, down to the San Francisco area where I already have a load set up in Fremont Ca. to bring back. I was going to start making phone calls in the morning but if you think you’re so capable, why don’t you take care of that for me.”
I snickered under my breath knowing this was way beyond anything this white machine could do; hell, there isn’t even a phone line connected to it.
But Minerva just nodded, and blew me a kiss? “Now that’s more like it honey,” she said. “This will take a few minutes but don’t stray too far.”
I didn’t stray at all. I watched as a telephone materialized in her hand and this woman in her black evening gown began pacing back and forth across the screen speaking into the handset. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, or know who she was talking to. This is not happening, it’s way too bizarre!
About five minutes later the phone disappeared from her hand and she looked up. “Good, you’re still here. These are your options. I found two loads. The first one loads at Sea-Tac airport in Seattle going to Bay Cities Auto Auction in Haywood California, these are rental cars. This load pays $2,100.00. You can load it first thing tomorrow morning. However, if you care to wait until tomorrow afternoon there will be a load of Lexus’ at the Toyota docks in Portland Oregon that are going to the Toyota plant in Fremont California. This load pays $4,600.00. I took the liberty of booking the Lexus load for you which will be available at 1:00 PM tomorrow, however if you would prefer the other load, I will make a call and commit on that one instead. Which do you prefer honey?”
I would have laughed at her and said, “nice try Minerva,” except for the fact that I had heard about this special move by Lexus a few days ago but had assumed they would ship these cars with their regular carrier. I never would have even thought to call them.
“How did you know who to call Minerva? How did you even know about these loads?”
“I do not like repeating myself dear, so listen closely. I cannot tell you the whys, the hows, the wheres or the whats of what I do. I am not allowed. All you need to know is, I do what you ask. Now which of these loads would you prefer sweet thing?”
“The Lexus load of course.”
“I thought so. You can expect a call tomorrow morning from an Alan Tidrow. He is the transportation coordinator for Toyota and he’ll give you all the details about your load.”
“Is this for real Minerva?”
“As real as that cup of coffee your drinking sweetheart.”
“My wife isn’t going to believe this. Hell, I’m not sure I believe it and I’m sitting here talking to you. Hey Minerva, you think you could lay off the honey, sweetheart, baby and darling stuff when my wife gets home?”
“Sorry darling, as I’ve told you, this is Your Very Personal Computer. I can only interact with you, no one else. This is how it works. Maybe one day your wife will be chosen to have her own Very Personal Computer.”
Just then the front door opened and I heard my wife say, “Can you help me with these groceries?”
I hurried down the hall to the front door and took the grocery bag from my wife and set it on the floor. “Forget the groceries for now, you’ve got to see this.”
I took my wife’s hand and led her to the kitchen table. The table was empty. Well not completely empty. A cup of Starbucks coffee and the front page of the Boston Globe newspaper was still sitting there, but the strange computer along with the box it came in were gone, nowhere in sight, vanished, dissapeared!
“Where did you get the Starbucks?” my wife asked.
“The computer, it’s gone!” I said.
“What computer.”
“The one that gave me the coffee and this newspaper here.”
“Right. Will you get the rest of the groceries or should I?”
“No, listen to me. There was a computer sitting right here on the table. It was left on the doorstep shortly after you went to church. I was talking to it. A woman named Minerva was talking to me from inside the computer. She said she was my Very Personal Computer and would only interact with me and was going to make my life a whole lot easier. She printed me a copy of the Boston Globe, even though there wasn’t any printer visible. And then she produced this cup of coffee for me when I asked for one! She even set me up with this really good paying load for tomorrow. I can’t believe it’s gone! What the hell happened to it?”
“Ahh, I’m sure I don’t know honey. I’ll just go get the rest of the groceries, okay?”
My wife wasn’t buying any of what I was saying and I couldn’t blame her.
“What in the hell just happened?” That thought ran through my head over and over for the rest of the day. My wife kept giving me strange looks throughout the day and into the evening until I went to bed. I tried not to say too much to her.
The next morning I had my bag packed and was doing a pre trip inspection on my truck and thinking about making some phone calls to set up a load. I was beginning to sense that yesterday never happened. After all, that would be the logical explanation, it just never happened. But then my phone rang. I removed the phone from my pocket and pushed the send button. “Hello, Pete here.”
“Hi Pete, this is Alan Tidrow with Toyota.”
I almost dropped the phone.
“You there, Pete?”
“Ya, sorry, I’m here. Good morning Alan.”
“I’m just calling to confirm your commitment to haul these ten ES 300′s to Fremont for us.”
“Yes, of course. I’m just getting ready to leave Seattle. I’ll be there in three hours.”
“Great! I’ll have them lined up in the north lot, bay lane 7. I’ll leave the bill of lading in the first car.”
“Thank you Alan, I appriciate the business.”
Alan Tidrow laughed. “You should thank your secretary. She is very charming and very persuasive. I enjoyed talking to her.”
The call ended and I was back to believing that yesterday indeed did happen.
I finished inspecting the truck and climed up behind the wheel. I threw my bag back into the sleeper and released the brakes. As I started to roll, I heard her voice.
“Hey baby, are you going to leave me back here in the dark or let me ride up front with you?”
I stopped the truck and stepped back into the sleeper. There on the shelf behind the drivers seat was my Very Personal Computer with Minerva front and center on the screen. Today she was wearing green shorts and a white halter top.
Minerva grinned at me and said, “Set me up in the passenger seat honey, and let’s go trucking!”
I did and we did.
What will Apple think of next?
Thanks to mole operative (iDeep Throat) in Apple Computer’s Cupertino Campus comes this startling information on the major revamping of Apple’s consumer products as well as the dramatic shift in their marketing and design philosophy.
Apple has apparently learned some lessons from the many iMac ripoffs. The computer company that revolutionized the industry is set to save millions of megabucks by curtailing both innovative technology and cutting edge industrial design. Sure it will be bland and less colourful but it appears it is the only way to draw large numbers of Wintel customers who fear radical change and creative design.
Currently in the final stages of the design criteria, the following models are being set for prime time. It is not clear if they will be released to the public at July’s MWNY or MWSF 2002. For this exercise we will concentrate our focus on the box design only. Gone is the rounded watermelon look replaced by a sleek more angular case.
The iMac Dell-ta-ta
(this model was inspired by Dell’s business model Dimension 8100)
This new iMac design in midnight gray adds a brushed aluminum look framing around Apple’s superdrive. The full width speaker bezel, located just below, wraps around both sides of the unit. For better sound reproduction two speakers are located at each corner (facing front and to the side) plus a sub woofer located in the centre. The all-in-one design sports a 17″ screen and is a trim 15″wide x 15″high x 16″deep. Keyboard and mouse are also matched with the brushed aluminum look. The traditional Macintosh chime has been replaced by a fanfare – hence the “ta-ta” added to the name.
The iMac Compact
(this model was inspired by the Compaq Presario 5000)
This ground breaking design uses the same 17″ all-in-one unit as the iMac Dell-ta-ta with the following exceptions: The case is finished in a flat beige with the face plate surrounding the superdrive area available in 5 plastic interchangeable colours that snap on. The colours are Ruby, Amethyst (purple), Orange, Emerald and Blue. Some early problems have been encountered with the face plates. Small hair line cracks seem to show up at the edges depending on the light source. Apple insists that these are not cracks but part of the plastic molding. The problem will be rectified by the time the units ship. (Special Report: iDeep Throat concurs that the crack is not a crack. He feels they may be a nose hairs – he will continue his surveillance of this critical matter).
The iMac Big B
(this model was inspired by the IBM Inspirati A10i)
This original design uses the same 17″ all-in-one unit as the iMac Compact. The case colour is Charcoal with matching keyboard and mouse. (Special Report: iDeep Throat has spent many hours analyzing the colour gradation between the Dell-ta-ta’s Midnight Gray and the Big B’s Charcoal with his colour sync monitor. His expert opinion is that they are both the same colour – black). This colour decision by Apple may have real import as to the appeal to Wintel buyers. Black, Charcoal, and Dark Gray seem to be the top colours other than beige that are acceptable to Wintel purchasers.
The iMac eMach
(this model was inspired by the eMachines eTower)
This novel design uses the same 17″ all-in-one unit as the iMac Big B but with major changes. The colour is beige and the superdrive is replaced with dual floppy drives (back to the future?). Most important, although the screen is 17″, in order to keep the price low the maximum resolution is 512 x 342 pixels (as in the the original Mac Plus). A portable set of speakers less a sub-woofer are supplied in place of the built ins. (Special Report: iDeep Throat has found that the price/point for manufacture of this box is about $2.) With Apple’s traditional markup of 500 to 1000% it bodes well for Fred Anderson’s, Apple Chief Financial Officer, predictions of higher income from increased unit sales.
Special thanks to agent iDeep Throat who has put his life and job on the line to make this information public (let’s not concern ourselves, at this time, about the ramifications of his signed anti-disclosure contract). He believes that the public has a right to know about the inner workings at Apple. Stay tuned. Coming soon: a recording of Steve Jobs reprimanding an engineer for not adding enough colour to Max OS X’s jelly bean look.
Comments. Be heard!