Start saving your nickels and dimes, ’cause this column is going to cost you.

Have you been to MacFixIt lately? Well, if you want to figure out what’s conflicting with that QuickTime extension on your Mom’s iMac, you’re going to have to pay.

Want the inside scoop from MacOS Rumors? Well if you “donate” to them, they’ll put you on their Sponsor’s e-mail list! Wow, donate? You mean rumors are now Tax Deductible?

Want to listen to the whole two hours of “The Mac Show”? Well pony up kids ’cause it’s going to cost you now.

Speaking of which, let’s all stand up right now and give Shawn King a standing ovation for walking away and starting “Your Mac Life” when push came to shove, he didn’t back down. Amen! Finally, someone has stood up against this disturbing trend of “pay for content” on the Mac Web.

I remember when I got my first Mac. Experienced Mac users used to help me F.O.C. (that’s free of charge) whenever I needed it. I remember when I had finally gained enough knowledge and experience to be able to pay that all back; I’d share it with new Mac users. I’d help people choose their first Macs. It was fun, it still is. I’m going over to my sister’s house to teach her how to use her Clip Art CDs on her new iMac. Helping is a part of what made the Mac different to me. It helped give it a soul.

When I finally got onto the Internet, I was thrilled to find that same Macintosh culture had translated onto the web with e-mail lists, web sites, and helpful people in chat rooms. All of those helpful things, because of the Mac community. Nobody charged for content, tips or help. What few sites I did find that charged weren’t Mac sites and I didn’t patronize them.

But now with the recent advent of these pay for content schemes, it has me wondering if the Mac Web is going to end up selling it’s soul. It just seems that it’s the antithesis of what the Mac community has always been about.

If you’ve ever seen the PBS special, Nerds 2.0: A Brief History of the Internet, there once was some much loftier goals for the Internet. Imagine, digitizing the entire Library of Congress. And that’s just the beginning. Imagine being able to read any book, ever written at any time of the day or night. Imagine being able to ‘check out’ any movie, magazine, etc. The web could have been so much more than just another heat island of a strip mall designed to easily separate a man from his wallet’s contents. I thought that the Mac Web had in fact come closer to the loftier goals than most others.

Don’t get me wrong. There is something wonderful about shopping at midnight in your pajamas. I love the convenience of comparison-shopping in my home without driving all over town. I just believe that the Internet can be more.

It just seems wrong to me to charge people in the Mac community for content. It’s like my trip over to my sister’s house after I wrap this column up. Should I charge her mileage and a one-hour minimum? If my friend at work gets a new Mac, should I whip out my business card and tell them ’bout my rates? No way!

I recently wrote Shawn King after listening to his new “Your Mac Life.” I wrote him and applauded him for his “courage and insanity” to stand up for what truly he believes. It’s that same courage and insanity that it takes each one of us to use a Mac in a Windows dominated world. Just goes to show you, Shawn King “gets it.” We’re all in this together.

I know that the bottom dropped out of Web advertising. Fewer businesses are paying and paying less for what ads that do get purchased. If you are on the web to make money then it seems to me that you have to hunker down and find a way to make it pay. Add more advertisements, add bigger ones, whatever it might take, or, scale back.

But asking people to pay for content with advertisements seems like PBS having donation drives and then interrupting Frontline in the middle of a show with a two minute commercial break complete with Jack in the Box commercials.

I hope charging for content is just a passing growing pain of the Mac web. It may be it’s a portent of things to come, I don’t know. There has to be a way to make the Web pay and I hope that everyone discovers it shortly. In the meantime, I’ve got to get going. I need to get over to my sister’s house and help her with her new iMac. What do you think, should I charge her for my visit?

Editors note: MyMac.com will never charge its readers a dime to read our content. As one of the longest running Mac websites on the internet today (second only to MacInTouch, I believe) we have stayed committed to our original goal: to provide good, fun, and educational content to Macintosh users free of charge.

Bob McCormick

The Lie

One of the oddest abilities of Man is the ability to believe a lie. No other creature has this dubious distinction. The current Lie of the decade is the one that every computer user is faced with, as they are deluged with all the propaganda and misinformation out there, and as they face their employers and every IT person who is promoting it. The Lie is everywhere, and few people there are who do not succumb to it.

What is the Lie? It is that Microsoft is the only business software supplier, and that the PC is the only business computer there is.

Amazing! Business computing today is like the final days of the Third Reich, or the last days of the Taliban, where everyone says “Everything is fine, fine!” and where no one dares to voice the truth of the situation.

The truth is that every user of Microsoft applications, its browser, and any version of Windows OS are working with a major handicap, which directly affects their business data productivity, security, and reliability.

Legion are the users who have lost time and data to their faulty MS software. Uncountable are the hours people have spent rebuilding their computers and hard drives and rewriting their files, because of Microsoft’s trashware. This is such a major problem in business that I think we could link the failing state of our economy directly to the failure of Microsoft’s applications and OS in business.

You and I, being Mac users, know the true condition of business computing, don’t we?

SO WHY DUMP ON APPLE?

The thing that surprises me, but shouldn’t, are all the latest high profile business articles dumping on Apple and the Mac. Why is it that the more successful and the more visible Apple and the Mac become to the business community, the more misinformed articles also appear?

There is a reason for these articles. People who use Windows and Microsoft applications have a need to support the Lie. Therefore, such well placed articles trashing the Mac and Apple Computer are vital and necessary to promote their belief in that lie. The truth about the Macintosh is a threat to the Lie.

Here are links to some of these misinformed articles concerning Apple Computer and the Macintosh. You can examine these for yourself to see how perverse the Lie is, and how many well known journalists and commentators are promoting it, at the expense of the truth about computers and computing. I think you will love the excellent replies by our own journalists too.

“Apple: At What Price Innovation?” By Scot Petersen of eWEEK
This article is full of misinformation, which totally ignores Apple’s innovation in software and in their new OS. A person reading this article would think the only claim to fame Apple has is in its pretty computer designs.

Charles Moore has an excellent article setting right the misconceptions and misinformation of Michael S. Malone, Editor at Large for Forbes ASAP, who suggests that Steve Jobs has become the Raymond Loewy of computer design, and that he is turning Apple into the Studebaker of PC makers.

“Irked!” by My Mac Columnist Bob McCormick. Bob cited this misinformed article in BUSINESS WEEK “Finally, a Chance for Apple to Flourish” Bob did a great job of showing where the misinformation was.

Peter Cohen of MacCentral has an excellent response to the misinformation from Business 2.0′s Eric Hellweg.

“The Best Revenge” By Robert X. Cringely. This article suggests that Steve Jobs does not care whether Apple gains market share, and it explains why. It also explains the thinking of both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and goes to length to dispel misinformation about the Mac.

WHY BELIEVE THE LIE?

When people buy into the idea of a lie, they think they do it for survival. These people are very conservative. They think their business depends on supporting the poor business decision they made in buying those Windows PCs in the first place. Once they go down that road, there is no turning back.

Perhaps others do not want to appear different, so they do what everyone else does. This means they use the PC and MS software by default. These business people are compared to Lemmings, and rightly so. Some managers in business are terrified of anything new. You probably know someone like this. They are far more comfortable believing the lie about Microsoft than boldly stepping out for a better computer. For them, the Lie is safe. They really don’t care if their computers work or not. They just want to be like everyone else. If this is true about them, how sound are their other business practices?

Some business managers really are clueless concerning computers. Computing is a new way of doing business for them, so they place all their trust in their highly paid IT personnel. After all, those IT people are employed to install and operate their networks, and to keep all their PCs running. Those people know what they are doing, right? If they say MS is the only computing software, why, it must be true! You know how those IT people will vote about their computer systems, right? How many of them would be without work if their company switched to Mac or Unix servers, and computers? About ninety per cent of them.

THE HEART OF THE LIE

We have talked before in this series about the failure of production in American business, and how Bill Gates and Microsoft have cost businesses trillions of dollars in lost revenue because of their shoddy and unsecure software. Yet most people will never do anything about it.

It runs counter to logic and good sense to ignore this problem, but people do, don’t they? It is more convenient for people in business to believe the Lie than to fix the problem or to look for a better computing solution. If you work in a business that uses the PC, and if your company is in lockstep with Microsoft and their propaganda, you understand what I mean.

Just try to mention to your boss that a Macintosh can do productive work better than your PC. Try telling them that Macintoshes can be easily networked with their PCs. Attempt to explain to them how many great software titles there are for the business Mac, and that your company can save thousands or millions of dollars if they switched to the more stable and productive Macintosh computer.

You know the result of your efforts, right? “My mind is made up, don’t show me the truth!”

HERE IS THE TRUTH

I think THIS is the major difference between Mac users and the users of computers running on Microsoft: People who use Macintoshes are perhaps are innately more honest about themselves and their world than their counterparts working on the dark side.

You can take this paradigm from the Macintosh itself. Macs are honest computers. Files go where you want them to. You can always find them again. That is never true of a PC running Windows. The size of any drive or file is always knowable on a Mac, whereas a Windows PC will actually lie to you about where a file is, or how big it is, or if it is deleted or not. And, of course, what you see on the screen is what you print.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

If you know the truth about the Mac, how stable and productive it is, and if you know how open and free its computing experience can be, then you need to promote the Mac as the best computer for your business. Do this so that your company can be more productive and a better competitor in your markets.

You have to be discrete when you speak for what is true. You should always be polite and gracious in your speech and in your actions. After all, these people are opposing themselves and their own best interests more than they are opposing you.

Remember that the best computer for your business may not always be a Mac. Yet a company who values its employees and their morale, and who is interested in extending their bottom line by making everyone more productive and protecting their data, the Macintosh running the OS X is a logical, and true choice for them.

Here are two final links that are the very best for promoting what is true about computing. First is Apple’s own site created to dispel all the misinformation about the Macintosh. The other is an excellent resource showing the Mac as the more productive and cost effective computer over a PC.

SPEAKING FOR THE TRUTH

Hey, the truth is out there. I know sometimes you might feel like Mulder or Scully as you promote the Mac, but the truth has to be put on the table for everyone to see. You might believe telling the truth is a lost cause, but it is not, by any means!

The truth is, Microsoft is now on the ropes, besieged by the Justice Department, by several states, and now by AOL/TimeWarner. Their illegal and immoral business practices are finally getting some justice, or at least some acknowledgment by the public. This will help wake up many business as they seek other, more secure and productive computers and platforms. They might even choose the Macintosh you suggested.

What is at stake is much more than Apple’s market share. What is at stake is our country’s success in competition in the business world, and the survival of our global economy. All of our businesses need to be more productive and more on the cutting edge of technology. You and I know they will never get there using Microsoft applications and the Windows OS. But they could get there using the Mac.

If you don’t already know it, the most successful and productive and cutting edge companies in America are all run on the Mac.

Now is the right time to speak up for the Mac so that people can know that there is a real and true alternative to their computing problems.

The true solution to professional business computing needs is a Macintosh. In fact, it always has been a better solution, so spread the word!

Roger Born

I was going to write about something darkly funny this time, but something has come up this week, and I feel the need to vent. It involves the near total collapse of our nations health care system. Sooner or later, it’s going to hit you where you live. I know, because that’s exactly what happened to me, here in Waltham, Massachusetts, this past week. I mean this literally. It has, quite simply, hit us Waltham residents like a scud missile. (And no, that’s not a reference to the urban myth about an Iraqi scud missile hitting the city of Lowell during the gulf war, and causing ten million dollars worth of improvements.)

First, let me explain that in my first forty-five years here, I have been blessed with good health. I’ve been getting annual physical checkups since I turned forty, and everything checks out ok. I’ve had a few minor problems though, such as suffering a “small ligament tear” during the height of bicycling season, two years ago, the occasional bout of winter time colds and flu. Big deal. So, what’s my problem, when there are so many with serious health issues? It’s this: The well-respected, much loved Deaconess-Waltham Hospital is going to close. Yes indeed, another local hospital, with a lot of patients who depend on it for their health care, is going to be shut down, by its parent corporation, Caregroup Health Systems.

Some brief history is in order. The Deaconess-Waltham Hospital was founded officially in 1885. For most of its existence, it was simply known as “The Waltham Hospital”. This hospital is small, by modern hospital standards. It has 108 beds. But it boasts all the modern equipment and facilities that are commonly associated with huge hospitals, such as the behemoth Mass General. It has a state-of-the-art emergency room, which treats an average of 20,000 people annually. This emergency room is famous for it’s ability to see patients quickly, even when it gets swamped. I know this firsthand, as I have been treated there twice, once after a minor cycling accident ten years ago, (a woman with an obviously low I.Q. “doored” me) and once when a nasty flu virus caused me to faint on the floor at my job. The caring attitude and quality of care I received on both occasions makes me think that maybe these doctors and nurses and medical technicians should be wearing halo’s instead of green scrubs. My sister had her appendix removed there, and other family members have been treated there for a variety of oddities. So much for history. If you ask residents of the Waltham area, you’ll find plenty of tales, very similar to mine. Oh yes, 1200 people are employed there, making the Deaconess-Waltham hospital the city’s largest employer.

This community hospital has survived for more than one hundred years. It has sat there, on a hilltop, and seen two world wars, a great depression, and has been the place where generations of people have been born and have died. But, it cannot survive the “mismanaged health care” system that now exists. My question, simply, is why? How can this possibly be? At what point in time did our hospital system come under the control of bean counters, when it should be in the control of doctors and skilled hospital administrators? Something stinks, sort of like the Fleet Center Men’s room, after a big Bruins playoff game.

I live a short distance away from Deaconess-Waltham, on a road which is frequently used by the ambulance services to rescue people who have been in motor vehicle accidents on busy route 128. The ambulances go back and fourth, several times per evening, more frequently during holiday weekends in summer. I am wondering what will happen, when they no longer have the emergency room at Deaconess-Waltham. The next nearest facility is Newton-Wellesley, five miles distant. The staff, which runs that department, has already stated that on some occasions, they may not be able to handle the additional load. What’s next? The big hospitals in Boston are there, a half-hour distant by ambulance. Give additional time if the roads are snow-clogged, or it it’s “rush hour”, and there has been some sort of traffic anomaly which results in gridlock. That time could mean a lot, if someone is having a serious coronary arrest, or a bad diabetic episode.

And yes, they have big-city emergency departments, which frequently must “shut down”, and admit no more patients, because they get too overloaded. (And quality of care does indeed suffer, but that is something I cannot address here.)

So, what happens now? State law requires that ninety days of notice be given to the state health board, prior to closure. This has been done. A public hearing must also be held. It has been scheduled for February 11th, at 6 PM, at Waltham High School. I imagine that at that meeting, there will be a lot of grandstanding by local politicians. (There has been a lot of that already) But, I suspect that this is probably “it”. One must ponder what else is going to happen, and what has already happened. Doctor Alan Woodward, President of the medical staff of Emerson Hospital in Concord, told the Boston Globe that since he started practicing medicine in 1981, he has seen 40 community hospitals such as Deaconess-Waltham shut down. This is something that makes me feel that there is some sort of insidious, long-term plan at work. Paranoid? Crazy? Tell it to the parents of an eleven-year-old, who needs emergency room treatment and an overnight hospital stay because of a diabetic problem. Tell it to a police officer that has been stabbed while trying to break up a Friday night fight between two drunken white trashers. Tell it to a teenaged girl who was making progress with an eating disorder, but now must start all over with a new doctor, at a different hospital, because Deaconess-Waltham is being forced to close.

I think that when I am bicycling around town, I’ll take extra care to try not to get “doored”. (For those not aware, that’s when some careless person opens their car door, without checking for approaching cyclists. Arguably, one of the worst kinds of accidents which can befall a bike rider, especially since there is no defense for it.)

Watch your health.

Bruce Black

As memories of goodwill to men and the singing of Christmas carols fade from the hearts of the faithful let us turn our thoughts to a subject that is less sacred. My favourite topic is this realm is, of course, Microsoft – the Evil Empire, the Wicked Monopoly or the pearly Gates down under. But, as loathed as I am to admit it, the house of Bill has much that is holy – not blessed to be sure by definitely holy.

April 2, 2001
Microsoft is issuing a security patch for its Internet Explorer web browser, which could automatically open corrupted e-mail attachments without user intervention.

June 8, 2001
A computer virus that targets Web systems using Microsoft software packs a double punch. This time the worm is selective, attacking only Microsoft software and sending profane e-mail bombs to founder Bill Gates.

June 20, 2001
Windows Servers, XP Beta, Reveal New Security Flaws A new threat of infection in an old wound at Microsoft has again forced the software giant to issue patches for server software used on millions of Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 systems, as well as the beta version of the company’s new Windows XP operating system.

Oct. 19, 2001
Microsoft has yet to find a security hole it doesn’t like, and Windows XP is no exception. In this case, the raw sockets feature can allow creators of denial of service (DoS) attacks untold levels of new power in their quest to bring the Internet to its knees. More

Oct. 22, 2001
Experts cite XP’s remote desktop functionality as the biggest potential security hole in Windows XP. By allowing a help desk individual to take over the desktop, there could be security exposures where hackers could slip in and take control of the machine if it is not handled and installed properly.

Oct. 22, 2001
Within hours of the operating system’s launch on October 25, malicious coders in Asia began distributing a software program over the Internet. The program allows users to bypass Microsoft’s Product Activation technology, which is designed to prevent users from installing a copy of Windows XP on multiple computers

Dec. 20 2001
Microsoft may have touted Windows XP as the most secure operating system it has made, but a security hole was discovered that could leave some people’s systems open to malicious attack. “This is pretty much the worst default vulnerability in any Windows operating system,” a security expert said.

Dec. 24, 2001
Less than two months after releasing Windows XP — dubbed its most secure operating system ever — Microsoft said it had detected a second serious security hole in the software. The company is issuing a patch for Windows XP, Windows ME and Windows 98 systems for what Scott Culp, manager of Microsoft’s Security Response Center, said is a “very serious vulnerability.”

Dec. 27, 2001
The FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center says there are two security vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Windows XP software that are susceptible to hackers

Jan. 14, 2002
Engineers are working to fix a glitch in a Microsoft Web server that has prevented Windows XP users from downloading software updates, including a patch for a security hole.

Jan. 15, 2002
Network and System Security
Reference books, online seminars, firewalls etc.

After web publication of Bill Gates recent internal Microsoft e-mail on security he was asked about holes in various Windows products. During the questioning period, MSN facilities failed. However, before the connection was terminated it was believed that Mr. Gates was heard to ask, ÒWhat security holes?Ó

ÓDuring the question period he was also critical of Department of Justice officials who he characterized as being blinded in their frenzy to bring his company down. At one point he was thought to have said ÒWhat’s good enough for Microsoft is good enough for the country.Ó What country he was speaking of was not immediately clear.

From the files of the Byte Me! Network where Truth is suspect if it is a lie!

Ralph J. Luciani

Right now, Apple owns less than 5% of the computer market place in new computer sales. (Ever notice they never measure installed user base, those with older computers still in use? Apple would be WAY over 5% if they measured that one.) Many writers on the Mac web write columns and articles on what Apple could/should do to increase that number. Apple never reads those articles, of course, nor do they (Apple) really care what opinion we hold on the matter. But every week, on at least one Mac centric website, some writer is telling us how Apple can get a larger market share.

OS X on Intel machines
Windows on Mac natively
Get rid of the Motorola partnership
Much more advertising

And the list goes on.

I, however, don’t care about any of the above. Like any other Mac user, I do try to get people to buy Mac when they come to me for computer buying advice. I know how great it is, and I know they would love a Mac, too, if they only gave it a chance. But I know my efforts are pretty much wasted.

Question. WHY do we want to see the market share of Mac’s grow? Is it because we really love these machines, and want our fellow computer users to know and understand the real joy of computing? If that is the case, why do so many Mac users argue with die-hard PC users? There is no chance the Mac user will ever convince the PC user to switch, and the opposite is also true.

So what do we care? Is it a defensive action on our part as Mac users, to try and justify to ourselves the purchase decision we made when we paid money for a computer most other computer users do not use?

Whatever the case may be, I am actually quite happy with my Mac. I am also quite happy with the market share the Macintosh holds. One of the reasons I like the Mac so much is its superior design and function. I like having tools (programs) not every one else has. I like showing an iMovie I made to a PC using friend, to see their eyes light up, only to find out they cannot do that with their PC, that you need a Mac to do it with. And that the software used to create the film is actually free!

If everyone had a Corvette, would it still be as special as it is? If you owned one, and half the people on your street did as well, would the prestige still be there for you?

If you lived in a twenty-room mansion, and everyone else did as well, would the living in a mansion still have the appeal it would otherwise?

If everyone were a millionaire, would being a millionaire loose its meaning?

If everyone used a Mac, would you spend as much time as you do talking up the Mac to your PC using friends?

I like the Macs market share just fine, thanks. I like knowing I can do much more with my computer easily than most PC users. I like knowing I own the best. I love to hear all the problems PC users have with viruses, with machines always breaking down, with crappy beige boxes gathering dust under the floor of their desk.

I like owning a Mac, because doing so actually does say something about who I am.

Tim Robertson

Recently on the MyMac.com e-mail list Ralph J. Luciani one our terrific writers gave us a great heads up on a whole special report that BusinessWeek.com had posted. Not one to pass up a chance to read about Apple, especially from the business press I anxiously clicked the link Ralph had supplied.

After reading all of the articles, I came away really irked by the whole thing. There were a some glaring mistakes made by a couple of the writers and it made me realize that Apple may never get a fair shake from the business press.

The first mistake I found was in the article by Alex Salkever. In that article he was referring to iPhoto as being a part of the Digital Hub strategy that Apple is following. In it, there was this sentence. “Both iFilm and iTunes were out long before iPhoto.”

Uhhh iFilm?? Does business week know something we don’t know? Maybe BusinessWeek pulled a Time Magazine and let it slip that they were introducing a new piece of hardware? A real live film editor with a digital interface for the Mac! iFilm would be a great interface for digitizing all those ancient 16mm films your parents recorded when you were a kid! How neat! Or had the business/mainstream press done their usual great job of researching Apple? That errant reference to a piece of non-existent software or hardware has since been corrected on BusinessWeek’s website but wow, publications like BusinessWeek have fact checkers, research departments. They couldn’t even get iMovie right?

There was something else in that same article that was completely ridiculous to me. In trying to support his view about how Apple had become a niche company he made the point that Apple’s earnings are tied to successive product launches. “So, if Apple is to move up in the pack, the trick is to sustain early momentum. It succeeded at doing so with the original iMac, but the company also has had some big misses, as with the Newton handheld computer and the G4 Cube, a cube-shaped computer aimed at power users that flopped because of its limited expansion capabilities and high price.”

The NEWTON? That’s just crazy! The Newton came at least three CEO’s before Steve Job’s return. By putting that in the context of the Cube, it would seem to a reader unfamiliar with Apple that the Newton was a recent misstep by Steve Jobs’ since his return. Is this revisionist history or does this reporter have so little to support his point as to have to pull the Newton into the current management’s supposed “big misses.”

Originally, I let the all the above slide. After all, there’s no such thing as bad press. I went on to read the other stories and when I got to the story by Amey Stone, I was furious at a misleading statement that only a bare minimum of research would have eliminated. But since that research didn’t support the writer’s point, well, I digress.

In “Thinking Different about Apple’s Stock,” Amey Stone wrote that Apple’s stock through the crazy market of 2001 had, “traded between 15 and 25, and at $22 on Jan. 18, it’s right where it was three years ago.”

That is so completely misleading that it isn’t even funny. Amey doesn’t seem to remember or bothered to have checked to see that Apple had a stock split in the summer of 2000. Meaning, if adjusted for the stock split, the price of Apple’s stock would be equivalent to 44 dollars! Or depending how you look at it, retained virtually ALL of it’s value through was one of the worst years of the stock market, 2001.

That was just distorting the facts if you ask me, because overall Apple is up nearly 340% in five years. And yes, I did adjust for the stock split. Gee, that doesn’t sound all that bad to me and I’m not even a business whiz.

All the inaccuracies and revisionist history in articles like this just irks me. BusinessWeek is not alone. I notice these types of errors all over the web in the mainstream and business press. It just shows that Apple is one of the most un-researched and misunderstood companies out there. This is just the latest round.

Distortions, revisionist history, and bad research, it all makes me wonder how good any of their advice could possibly be, all this from a company that was pushing Enron as good investment. Well, I think they did. I’ll just have our MyMac research department check on that and I’ll get back to you.

Bob McCormick

Prologue:
I’m not an unintelligent person, at work I have root access to the UNIX machines, I’ve outfitted my desktop Mac with RAM and Video upgrades. I even installed a SCSI card and drive and was able to make it work in OS X. Some of you may know that I’m an accomplished public speaker and can speak in front a live audience, without notes even! I’ve written and been published here at MyMac.com. I can discuss the philosophical possibilities of quantum physics, find extension conflicts in Classic Mac OS as well as hack OS X at the root level. But if you ask me to begin a home improvement project you had best not even be in the same county ’cause the odds are, it’s going to blow!

I had a vacation recently. Vacations that leave me more exhausted than when they began don’t make any sense to me. I decided to spend my vacation leisurely catching up on sleep, reading, surfing and finally tacking some home improvement projects. You see, I recently became a first time homeowner and figured it was time to fix up a few things around the house.

What could go wrong? I thought. Besides, my house included an extra safety feature that even Tim Allen could appreciate. It resides directly across the street from Fire Station #4. If all else failed, I could always pick up my thumb, run across the street and they’d rush me to the hospital, I joked inside my head.

Through this experience, however, I discovered that I am in fact evil. Like the Wolf Man, I have a side of me that loved ones and the public at large must be protected from. In the end, most likely, someone is going to have to hire Buffy to slay me with a Stanley™T-Square driven through my heart with a genuine Craftsman™ hammer. Read on, you’ll see what horrors lurk deep within me.

What follows, is a100% true story. No names, dates, or places were changed to protect the innocent.

Act One: “A Bright Idea.”

After a few days of leisure, I finally thought I might actually try to at least begin some simple projects around the house. The first thing I contemplated was what color to paint a bookshelf I have. While I was considering that I remembered some white oak stain that I had picked up for the wood walls in my living room. (With a house built in the 50s, there’s plenty of “Blonde Wood” around. UGH!) Well last fall I bought the white stain to hopefully do something with those blonde wood walls. It has been sitting in the garage ever since. I wanted to see what the white stain would look like.

That was a bIIIiiiiggg mistake, huge mistake, nothing bigger. Think of the ominous music that plays just before someone opens Pandora’s box or before the Nazi’s opened the Ark of the Covenant in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” If only I had left that wood stain alone.

Picture the handiest person you can think of, the absolute most “Mr. Fix-It” kind of man on the face of the earth, someone who can make any home improvement project look easy. Maybe you’ll think of your own father, or your grandfather, possibly even a neighbor. Maybe you have cable and you think of the guys from “Furniture to Go” or anyone from the Home and Garden channel. The first person that comes to my mind is Bob Vila.

Now imagine the complete and total antithesis of Bob Vila, completely inept with a tool, a brush, sander, power tool or absolutely anything suburban. Seriously, imagine that if that person were to touch a power tool that had been sprinkled with Holy Water, it would literally burn their fingers.

I am that person.

Honestly, I believe that I’m the “Anti-Bob Vila”! I’m sweet, kind, intelligent and maybe even eloquent at times but I can destroy a home faster than a wrecking ball!

Act Two: “I’ll Just Test It.”

Before tackling the bookshelf color question, I went out to the garage. Innocuously, all I did was pick up just one can of the white stain that I had bought. I shoooook it up real good! Really! or so I thought. “I’ll just test it.” I thought to myself. Then I set the can on the edge of my fireplace and dipped a brush into the stain. Picked out a small section on the wall and dabbed on some stain.

Nothing.

It was like there was no color to it at all! Which was strange because the stain was obviously white when I dipped my brush into it. Soooo… I dipped my brush in again and I spread more on in a bigger area. Like covering more area would make a difference.

Still, nothing!

Narrowing my eyes, I set my jaw and the wheels begin turning inside my head. I hammer the lid back on the can. I SHAKE that bad boy for all I’m worth!

I open up the lid, dip my brush again and still,

NOTHING!!

My left eye begins to twitch.

Knowing at least a little better, I go out on the patio so I don’t spill white stain all over the floor, dinning room table or on the rug. I diiiiiip deeply! Ahhhhh Haaaa, there is all the pigment. I dip and stir, dip and stir, dip and stir; then I take one last deeeeep dip.

I go back into the house, spread liberally then involuntarily yell, “OH SHIT!!!!!”

Now I can’t see any Wood Grain! It’s SOLID WHITE! I frantically begin to spread the stain, using the brush to puuuuullll the stain away, covering yet more and more of the wood as I try like heck to thin this out!!! Spreading for all I’m worth to try to get down to some wood grain.

“THIS ISN’T WORKIIIIIIINNNNG!” echoes repeatedly around my befuddled brain.

Quickly, I run out to the garage, grab a second can of the stain that hasn’t been all shook up. I quick open it. I then dip my paintbrush in the unstirred stain. Hoping that as I spread this thinned stain over the solid white pigment I can the pullll the solid white across the wood that hasn’t been touched by my Evil brush strokes. My logic is by evening out the solid white, I’ll be able to see wood grain again. The ‘test area’ grows exponentially now.

I step back to survey what I had wrought. I slump and involuntarily find myself saying (in my best Forest Gump voice), “Sometimes there just isn’t enough unstirred stain.”

By this time though, my confusion, my complete lack of experience and finally the whole series of missteps hits me and I’m laughing myself silly. It is jiggling my paintbrush; stain and solid pigment alternately dribble all over the floor in front of the test section. Which only makes me laugh more!

Believe it or not, not a single drop lands on my leather loafers. I have absolutely no idea how this is possible. Maybe it’s an indication of how deep my evil extends. I can only destroy what is around me and yet some how I remain protected.

Act Three “RTFM!!!”

Still, working more and more of the wall, nothing is thinning this stuff out. Panicky, I decide to run into the garage and grab a third can. Why grab a third can!? This I learned from my computer experience. When all else fails, Read The Fucking Manual. That’s why! Or in the words of doMESStic bliss, to finally read the Gawd Damn directions!!!

That still doesn’t explain why I have to grab a can out of the garage; there are two cans on the fireplace, right? At least I have retained at least enough awareness to realize that in my current state of near total hilarity and desperation (it’s actually kind of a fun state, you should try it some time) that if I pick up either of the cans on the fireplace I’ll undoubtedly somehow end up dumping the entire contents on the floor as I try to read the directions!! Neither lids is on tight. Undoubtedly what I find in the directions will probably make me go limp and drop the can.

So, I run into the garage yet a third time. Grabbing the can I run back into the house while SPEED-reading the directions. It was like being interrogated by the Home and Garden Channel Police. The spotlight bears down one me unrelenting. I feel the heat; it causes me to sweat clammily as I hold the can.

The Home & Garden Police: “Mr. McCormick, did you stir the contents thoroughly?”

Me: Muttering under my breath, “Yes, I did. Well, finally that is.”

The Home & Garden Police: “Did you bother to use a synthetic brush?”

Me: Answering angrily, “Yes, I did that right!”

The Home & Garden Police: “Did you only apply to a small section no more than two feet by a few feet square?”

Me: Exasperated, “YES! Well, originally it was! I mean.” I start again, “Well, at first is was no larger than couple feet square!” My voice trails off, “It just kinda got out of hand after that.”

The Home & Garden Police (tauntingly): “And did you let the small section dry no more than THREE minutes before wiping off excess with cloth dampened slightly with a small amount of stain?”

Me: Finally Breaking, “HOLY SHIT!!” (It had been at least 10 minutes since the first brush stroke.)

Me: RUNNING TO KITCHEN, RIIIIIIPING OFF A TON OF PAPER TOWELS.

Me: RUNNING BACK TO THE FIREPLACE, NERVOUSLY DIPPING PAPER TOWELS INTO AN ALREADY OPEN CAN OF STAIN!

Me: QUICKLY, FRANTICALLY, WIPING THE WALL LIKE HELL.

Me: LAUGHING MY ASS OFF as I bend all the way upside down to reach the bottom of the wall, while running back and forth between kitchen (for more paper towels) and the fireplace (to lightly moistening paper towels in the stain) and once again WIPING THE WALL LIKE CRAZY!

Me: Repeating the above paragraph at least three times.

The Home & Garden Police (smugly): Watching me the whole time, knowing they’ve got their man and reaching for the phone to call Buffy.

Epilogue:

I finally give up. I understand my fate, my miserable lot in life. There can be no other explanation for this. I AM THE ANTI-BOB VILA! Save yourself. If I were you, I’d move to a different hemisphere.

The only thing that can save me from this state is if Apple will finally release a whole new compliment of digital hub products. See, I understand drag and drop. I understand cut and paste and WYSIWYG. Heck, I’m even getting really good at the command line. Seriously, wouldn’t it be great? Just think of the whole new line of iHome iMprovment products there’d be; Final Roof Pro, AppleHandiWorks, of course my favorite, iWalls (with a choice of file formats, iStain and iPaint). Apple could even release another line of digital hub products for the automotively challenged beginning with iTuneup.

But if Apple fails to become the true digital hub of our homes, there is no hope. One of these days my house will end up a steaming/smoking pile of rubble with me standing in the middle of it holding only a can of wood stain in one hand and a paint brush in the other with the apocalypse shooting out of the end. Surrounded by all the trucks, firemen and equipment from Fire Station #4 backing up Buffy.

Oh! Oh how I wish Apple made home iMprovement products.

Bob McCormick

Nope, It doesn’t surprise me at all.

As I have mentioned in some previous columns, I like to bike ride. I don’t race at all, save for a brief flirtation with low-level, “category 5″ racing in the mid-80′s. I ride for the physical enjoyment, the exercise, all the usual “feel-good” reasons. I’ve been doing it for some time, I guess, having gotten my first “ten speed” as a teenager. ( And Parent units; Bikes don’t have ten speeds any more. It’s an old term and you give yourself away when you use it, so please stop using it. ) I’ll digress for a moment, and mention that for a long time, say the 1890′s, until approximately the 1930′s, indoor track bicycle racing was more popular in this country than baseball or football are today. It’s hard to imagine people packing into New York’s Madison Square Garden, not to watch the New York Knicks (whoever they are.), but to watch powerful, skilled athletes race fixed-gear bicycles around a banked track at blinding speed. And none of them used steroids! Imagine that.

But, there’s another reason I ride: I like to observe things. Lots of things. Things about our society, things about life in general. Oh yeah, during the warm summer months, I like to observe attractive women. I do not apologize for being in good health. Anyway, over the past twenty-plus years, I have observed a lot of things from my bicycle saddle. And I’m able to do this unobtrusively, since bicyclists tend to blend into the background. (Admit it, you see us, but you don’t really “see us” do you?) I’ve ridden through urban housing projects, where drug dealing is done right out in the open, and no effort made to hide it. And I’ve ridden through some of the most exclusive suburbs west of the city of Boston. On one occasion, I rode right into a “Gated Community”, right past a security guard, who smiled and waved as I rode past. Amusing, because for all he knew, I could have been the “psycho of the week”, there to cut up all the nice rich people with a big bread knife. I rode around for a bit, taking in the swimming pools, tennis courts ( Boy, those people play a lot of tennis, it would seem.) and enormous, landscaped lawns. I am guessing that the bill for landscaping one of those lawns is surely more than I earn in two years. Oh yes, almost every driveway had at least one pricey SUV parked in it. I’m talking Range Rovers, Land Cruisers, and the Mercedes Benz models. One driveway had a Hummer parked in it. I’ll bet that really turns heads at the country club. Sigh… I rode out again, in time to catch the guard, who was now sitting inside his little booth, looking very bored. I didn’t catch whether he was armed or not. I understand that many of these gated communities have armed guards after dark. Lovely, considering that the typical private security guard would, in all likelihood, shoot himself in the foot.

Of the things I have seen, some have been hilarious, and some, well, nasty. One time, I had just ridden past Inman square in Cambridge. I stopped for a red light, as any real cyclist should. From somewhere behind, I heard several loud, hard-on-the-eardrums, cracks. Gunfire. Someone apparently felt the need to express himself by robbing a convenience store, and had fired several rounds. So, that was scary. Needless to say, I vacated the area pronto, and it was some time before I rode through Inman square again. Another “nasty”: On a hazy Sunday afternoon, the Massachusetts State Police were in the process of removing a dead body from the charles river, right near the Hatch memorial band shell. ( That’s the place where they have those great concerts on the Fourth of July.) As it turned out, the body was that of a known homeless man, but that was as much as anyone knew.

Perhaps the nastiest thing I have seen in recent memory, was an automobile on fire, fully engulfed by flames. This was right near the Alewife MBTA (Boston’s mass transit system) station. I had been riding the local roadways for the better part of the afternoon, and saw the black smoke, rising from a short distance. I approached, and joined several other cyclists and rollerbladers, to watch this rather unusual spectacle. People were being kept at a safe distance by police, and that was a good thing. Let me say that to see a car on fire, in person, is very different from seeing it on tv, or in the movies. the “KA-WHAP” sound, made when each of the four tires blew, made people jump back several more feet. I later found out from a bike patrolling Cambridge police officer that the car, a late model Ford Mustang, had been stolen from the Alewife station, and that the thieves, apparently not “pro’s”, had fudged up the electrical system of the car, causing the fire. Sadly, the thieves didn’t burn up with it. Oh well, guess you can’t have everything.

I’ve seen plenty of good, funny things as well. Among these, is a young woman who does a “Robot Mime” performance in Harvard Square. She does the robot moves perfectly, and some people are convinced she is some sort of mannequin, since she can stand motionless, for considerably long periods of time.
Nope, I’ve seen her stop for a break, and she’s quite real. Last time I checked, store mannequins didn’t eat pizza. But how does she do those moves? Heh, some things you see around Harvard Square are worthy of a David Lynch movie. ( He’s never around when I need him! ) There’s the guy who wears a “sandwich board” which always has some sort of religious message on it. (“The Rapture is coming! Are you Ready?”). I’ve been tempted to stop and tell him that I just saw Jesus, and he’s heading this way. No, I thought better of that idea. ( Read, I chickened out.) And there was the woman who hung out anywhere on Mass Ave, between Central Square and Harvard Square, and was always doing a very bad rendition of “God Bless America”. I use past tense here, since I have not seen her in over a year. Oh yes, there is the area known as “The Pit”. Heh, when they rebuilt Harvard Square more than ten years ago, they wanted to design the subway entrance to have “aesthetic appeal”. So, the area around the subway entrance is “sunk” several feet, and lined with benches. Well, it instantly became the place for the local “punks” with their leather outfits, spiked purple hair, and chain jewelry, to hang out. A few kids, some runaways, and some trying to escape the oppression of affluent white suburban life, have made the pit a “home away from home”. For the most part, it’s part of the show, but I’d avoid it after 9 PM. And oh yes, there’s the occasional protest. Guess some people just can’t let the sixties attitude die with dignity. One group was demanding an investigation into who really killed Kurt Cobain. Hoo-boy. It’s amusing, knowing that some of these kids are participating in behavior which will someday keep them off the Supreme Court. Oh well. And some things I have seen are just funny because, well, they just are. An example of this would be the endless line of vehicles, waiting to gain entrance to Walden Pond Beach on a hot summer day. It stretches, sometimes for more than a mile on route 126. From a bike, you can see that there are no smiling faces behind the wheels of the various vehicles. I have often wondered how many divorce proceedings begin right there, in those lines of cars and pricey SUV’s. What’s even more amusing, are the ones who try to “beat the system”, by parking in an illegal spot, and sneaking into the swimming area through the woods. This never works, but they keep trying. ( Word to the unwise: Soccer moms, unless you are a serious cyclist, avoid wearing spandex shorts, okay? )

So, what’s my point of all this? Well, it occurred to me the other day, that nothing seems to surprise me any more. I used to keep a mental inventory of everything I had seen on a particular ride, but now, a lot of things just go right past me. Is this a “good thing”, or a “Bad thing”? Well, that’s a tough one to speculate. There is one thing I have seen that did surprise me however: They put Christmas Decorations up, over Mass Ave. in Cambridge! Horror of horrors! This is Cambridge after all, the center of “Uber Liberalism” in the northeast. Surely, someone could manage to tie Christmas decorations in with the “imperialistic, white-male policies of the Bush administration”, or something like that. After all, in the lily-white town of Lexington, a very concerned group of citizens managed to put a stop to the town’s nativity scene, which had been a holiday fixture on the town common for more than eighty years. ( Yeah, that’ll show Ôem! ) Perhaps a demonstration needs to be arranged, to protest Christmas decorations in Cambridge. It wouldn’t surprise me.

Bruce Black

(c) 01-16-02
David Schultz

As my wife and I sat there on Pacifica
State beach, to catch my very first Pacific Ocean
sunset, I couldn’t help but think the experience seemed
to encapsulate the whole MWSF Expo for me. The truth
dawned on me as the sun slowly hid itself behind the
horizon, sinking into the Ocean: “The Sun had set
on many things this week,” I thought, “especially
in the Macintosh Community.”

The Keynote – Remembrance of Things Past

It all started in the keynote. We were
in the press line at 7AM, and already there were many
there. We hooked up with the MacAddict guys. Nice
bunch. Of course the big talk was Time magazine giving
away Steve’s secret. But that talk soon stopped as
the security people at the top of the stairs began
the countdown to the mad rush into the hall. And so
we all charged…

Steve was at his best. He spoke in sentences
like Hemmingway wrote prose – in short and punctuated
verbal hits. "You wanted a G4. We said yes. You
wanted SuperDrive. We said yes."

The keynote was poignant in several
respects. As Steve showed off iDVD and iPhoto capturing
the birthday party of someone’s daughter, and other
family matters, he turned to us and said, “This
is why we do what we do.” I later asked someone
from Apple “What did the “this” refer to when Steve
said “This is why we do what we do”?” He paused for
a moment, looking for words in his mind, and said
something about loved ones and heartfelt relationships.
“Interesting,” I replied, “I thought he was referring
to the memory of these things, not the things themselves.”

The point is of course that your daughter
has only one 3rd birthday, and once it’s over it’s
gone forever and memory is the only thing you have.
A first in your life can only come once, and then
it’s gone forever, the rest being mere memorial seconds.

Why do we do what we do then? Was Steve
pointing to the girl on the screen and the photo print
he made from iPhoto? No. He was talking about the
fleeting, vaporous nature of our existence, and our
desperate, and at times feeble, attempts to capture
it and make it solid in some way. Our daughters and
loved ones mean so much to us because each minute
that passes is not only one more minute we
had with them, but also one less minute that
he had with them as well. Things are meaningful to
us because we understand that we are losing them with
each passing instant. After all, even Homer has Zeus
say in The Iliad, “I love them [mortals] because
they die.”

… think about it.

This is why we desire iPhoto. One person
said to me that he is going to capture his anniversary
with his wife and have it printed in a book. Hey,
you only have ONE tenth wedding anniversary, don’t
you? Might as well try and make it solid by printing
some momentary sensory images, call them “photos”
and printing them out, right?

Lost Memory

Just before the Expo, New Year’s Eve
morning in fact, I lost my best friend of fifteen
years, Dr. Erwin Schrodinger. Dr. Schrodinger was
thrown out of his litter when he was small (seems
mom didn’t want him), and it made him very dependent
on me; he would rarely let me out of his sight for
some kind of abandonment anxiety, maybe. Even after
I got married Schrodinger was still “daddy’s kitty.”
If I would get up and walk across the room, he followed
me, making sure I wasn’t leaving for too long. It
was the best $10 I EVER spent.

I loved Dr. Schrodinger. We went through college,
graduate school, marriage, three national championships,
four houses and two towns together. But he was ill,
and he was in pain. When he fell in his litter box
because he suddenly couldn’t lift his hip, he looked
up at me, laying in his box, as if to ask for help
out of his litter box and into some dignity. I picked
him up and placed him on couch, making sure every
need was met.

On Saturday before New Year’s Eve he
slipped out of it and lay motionless on the floor,
barely breathing. He would move his eyes, and at times
he would seem to come to and reach out with his paw
and grab my hand, letting out a sad little “meow.”
We had a vigil the whole week end, hoping he’d pass
quietly at home. I laid there on the floor, with him
wrapped in a blanket, all week end, assuring him of
my presence. Every once in a while he would come to,
look and make contact with me, and then seem to sink
again, with the comfort that I was there by him and
he knew I would do what had to be done.

It wasn’t to be. Monday, New Year’s Eve, we drove
to the vet early in the morning, after making sure
he did the one thing he loved to do for the last time,
namely, spending a night sleeping with his best friend,
me, in the big bed. The vet came in and administered
the barbiturate concoction. My dear Dr. Schrodinger
reached out toward us one last time as the needle
went in, took a deep breath, and it was over.

It was hard on me. I was devastated.
It was so quick. But after all, we had a long-standing
agreement that he would die of old-age and never of
want. So he died like he lived, with dignity, and
with me by his side. I miss him.

His image in my mind is fleeting and
its vividness is vanishing quickly. I recall the last
week end we had with him, how I sat there and looked
at him trying my hardest to, as it seemed, take a
photograph in my mind, to burn a memory into my brain
so deeply that nothing could erase it. I focused on
every detail so that I could remember everything about
him, for I knew that in two days he’d be gone. But
I couldn’t. He was slipping away in my hands and in
my mind. We took no pictures of my sick friend; those
aren’t the memories we wanted to preserve. I took
one last look as they wrapped his limp body in a towel
and took in away, after we had a few minutes with
him. Soon after, I began to forget.

The first thing I did when I came home,
and was alone, was to search the house for pictures
of him. I found some, gathered them, sat down on the
couch, and consciously began the mourning process,
tears falling over the captured impressions which
now represented the only thing I had left of my dear
friend – printed, objectified memories. I miss my
kitty and I am sad. That fifteen years was gone in
a second. I hang on to them tightly. I thrust and
push myself into the past, wanting to recapture moments
and days, trying to touch and feel my lost friend.
But memories make no sound, they don’t stink up the
house on occasion, they don’t feel furry, they are
not fat or thin, and they can’t reach out to me and
follow me everywhere as he always did. They are just,
as Plato would say, faint copies of originals, and
now the original is gone and I miss him, while the
copies become fainter and fainter.

This is why we do what we do. iDVD,
iMovie and iPhoto are testaments not only to innovation
but to the fragility and fleeting nature of our lives.
We don’t want to forget; we want to remember, and
all because we know the events captured will never,
ever present themselves to us again. They are gone
forever.

It was entirely appropriate that Steve
recapped the memories of the iMac with a look back
at old commercials to see how the iMac grew up, as
were, the same way that we looked back on that girl’s
birthday just moments before. It was twilight, the
twilight of the iMac as we know it, and we were all
saying good bye and ushering in a new era of Apple
computer. There was a strange isomorphism between
the demos of iDVD and iPhoto, and rerunning the old
commercials of the iMac. It was almost as if Steve
was trying to say the iMac was his child and he wanted
to share some memories with us (its high points and
milestones), the same way one might want to share
memories of his daughter’s 3rd birthday with iDVD,
iMovie or iPhoto. It just all seemed so connected
to me. Everything was passing away. Twilight had arrived.

“It’s Time”

That’s right Steve, “It’s time.” And
that’s the problem, isn’t it. That’s what makes our
world so fragile. Is it me, or do we seem to spend
our whole lives saying good bye to loved ones? And
as one writer here told me "Days are long. Years
are short." Indeed.

Well, it’s time to say good bye not
only to the iMac but to the old Mac OS. As one Apple
employee I met with said, “The train has left the
station. The old OS will soon be a faint memory.”
Yes it has and yes it will. And it ain’t coming back,
just like time itself – it’s marching on.

There was Steve explaining that he
is moving up the pre-install of OS X on new machines
from March to, well… now. A clock. He uses a clock
as a metaphor for OS X’s growth and development. The
very thing that memory depends on. The clock is ticking,
my friends. It’s time to get on board.

What was Steve saying when he said
“It’s time”? To whom was he speaking? Clearly, he
was speaking to developers like Adobe and Macromedia
(who wasn’t even at the Expo), and others who should
have some builds of their premiere programs, Photoshop
and Dreamweaver, out by now. Steve even joked that
he could have Photoshop as his default app in iPhoto,
if it were out, that is! “What are you waiting for?
What’s taking so long people? We’re moving ahead.
Move it or lose it.” That was the message.

Frankly,
I am tired of all the Photoshop complainers out there.
They speak as though, somehow, as if by magic, a wave
of the wand, a downright miracle will happen when Photoshop
is released, namely, that OS X will be a real OS after
that. Absolute and utter nonsense. There are
programs that do what Photoshop can do for OS X
(we will be introducing them to you in reviews soon,
one of our favorites if TIFFany [see link above]). OS
X will be the very same OS it was before Photoshop is
introduced and after. Not a thing will change. And of
course there is the obvious distinction between an app
and an OS, which some amazingly ignore (one person actually
wrote that Photoshop is "missing from OS X"!!
Nonsense I tells ya.

No, it is the tyranny of a minority
that have the power to speak louder than others because
they have the web sites and technology. 90% could
care less about Photoshop and could use it full-time
right now and not miss a step. It is in a word elitist
and would make even John Stuart Mill roll in his grave.
Just because those who have the web sites and the
columns use Photoshop and endlessly complain about
it, it does not follow that OS X is not adoptable
RIGHT NOW by most everyone (hardware issues and finances
aside). It’s time… to stop complaining and start
using OS X.

"The train has left the station."
Darn tootin’!

This change (another temporal concept,
by the way), will have repercussions throughout the
industry and we will, I assure you, see it change
the Mac Web. Sites that refuse to hop on board will
lose readers. If the old Mac hippies keep hanging
on to the old OS they will be trampled by the new
kids on the block as they storm into the future. At
some point one has to stop complaining and start using
OS X because, simply put, it’s time. It is a beautiful,
powerful and wonderful OS, and will soon be the major
competitor to Windows in business. The open source
community is coming to apple’s aid. It’s going to
happen very quickly. The Unix core is a stroke of
genius because the material is already in place.

It’s time.

There is a thin line between having
a low end machine and an obsolete machine. And that
line will become clearer very quickly. In the blink
of an eye we will suddenly see that OS X is the default
system, that we are using it all the time, it will
be assumed that you’re using it, that all our
programs are carbonized, and that any task we want
to accomplish can be accomplished right now in OS
X. Whether a machine is low end or obsolete will no
longer be measured by its color or form factor, but
by its OS, and the support of the same, and that time
is coming quickly. The train has left the station
and it’s headed right for us.

It will be seen in reviews
soon. We have talked at Applelust about whether to downgrade
a review because it isn’t ported to OS X. Well, we really
can’t knock a product because of a nonexistent version,
can we? That’s not fair at all. But
the time is coming, and coming quickly, when NOT having
an OS X version will count in our review ratings, and
count in a negative way. That is, the time is
quickly coming when we will say “It would have four
bounces and not three if they had an OS X version.”
Up until 10.1.1 it wasn’t an issue really. Now, well,
as Steve said, “it’s time.” So at Applelust we have
made a decision: No product can get a perfect score
unless it has OS X drivers, is an OS X version, or has
OS X option, or whatever. We don’t care about the cost,
frankly. We just want those apps because “it’s time.”
So a quick word to developers – “If you want a high
rating here, anyway, you gotta give us carbon at least.”
In fact, other than reviews which are in progress, we
now plan to review OS X versions only.

It’s time.

The simple fact is that we are watching
a twilight, an ending, a death in the family, if you
will. What was this whole Expo about? Memories. The
memory of the old iMac; the memory of a daughter’s
birthday; the memories captured in iPhoto or iDVD;
the memories of the old OS. As we sat there in Pacifica
and watched the sun slowly sink into the Pacific,
I saw the old iMac, Classic, and my kitty, say good
bye.

It’s time.

Seize the day…