My Mac is privileged to present the best from As the Apple Turns, a Macintosh news and insight website presented in the style of a continuing saga. But culling the best of Jack Miller is no easy task, and we wish we could reprint them all. While we can't do that, we are at least able to choose a small sampling of his work and present them here as they appeared on his website. Enjoy the ongoing Mac soap opera, and when you get a chance, be sure to check out his website for your daily dose of drama! http://www.infoxczar.com/atat

A Tiny WHAT Set? (11/22/99)

Face it: looks count. People judge things on appearances. It's a hard fact of life, but once it's accepted, the sky's the limit for those with a flair for style. Would the iMac have been a phenomenon if it had the same feature set but looked like a beige monitor with an enormous butt like the Gateway Astro? Would the iBook be topping the sales charts if it were a squat black box with nothing but straight lines and right angles? Yeah, right. Which means that Apple (and the whole Mac-using community) owes a huge debt to the man who makes its products look the way they do: Jonathan Ive.

Of course, that doesn't mean that we in the Mac-using community actually need to repay our debt to Mr. Ive; we figure Apple's probably paying him plenty. On top of that, his creations rack up so many awards, Ive's probably having a Trophy Wing added on to his house right about now. And last week, the iGuru received yet another award to dress up his place: the Royal Society of Arts bestowed upon him the coveted Medal for Achievement in Design in a London ceremony. (Throw it on the pile, Jon.) A MacWEEK article has more on Mr. Ive's latest prestigious honor.

The really interesting stuff, though, is the list of little details about his creations that Ive shared with the audience. Industrial design isn't just about looks-- it's about substance, too, and Macs have substance oozing out of their ports. For instance, Ive revealed that every iBook has a "tiny spanner set" (that'd be "wrenches" for the uninitiated) hidden in its plastics in case they're needed for an emergency screen replacement. And the new iMac case is actually a lens, whose special shape circulates air better and allowed the removal of the fan. Crazy! It's little touches like that which make Apple's-- and Ive's-- products masterpieces of design. Well, that and the fact that they look about a bazillion times better than anything else out there. Substance is one thing, but style rules the sales figures.

Shed A Little Light (11/23/99)

Those of you who have been tuning in on a regular basis know that we, your friendly AtAT staff, are a highly principled team, with many deeply-held convictions. We believe that if everyone ate a healthy portion of Tater Tots every once in a while, there'd be no more wars. We believe that operating systems should suck as little as possible, maintaining a cool-to-lame ratio of at least 5:1. (Incidentally, every Microsoft operating system we've ever used scores so low, the values are best expressed in scientific notation.) We believe that Steve Jobs is an alien messenger sent from the stars, charged with the divine mission of injecting a little style into our otherwise beige little lives. But above all, we believe that Macs should light up when you use them.

We've been through all this before: the pre-release rumors about the iMacs lighting up, the original iMac mouse glowing until the feature was removed before shipment, the faint glow of the white Apple logo on the original PowerBook G3 Series, etc. But it wasn't until the "bronze" PowerBook G3 that we really got our wish-- the Apple logo on those suckers glows so brightly you could use it to signal planes in heavy fog. At that point we'd hoped that Apple had finally "seen the light" and accepted that light-up computers are the wave of the future. Of course, then we got the Power Mac G4 and the new "Kihei" iMac, neither of which glow at all. Fine, we thought-- Apple's just putting this cool feature into the portables. After all, we'd heard that while the Blueberry or Tangerine logo on the iBook's lid doesn't actually light up, it bears a cool glowing halo while the system's in use.

Of course, now that we actually own an iBook, we know just how dim that glow really is. Sure, in a dark room it's visible if you're looking for it, but it's nowhere near as impressive as the big, bright Apple beacon on the PowerBooks. Luckily, we stumbled across the secret to the iBook's hidden glow in MacNN's forums: put the Blueberry iBook under a black light. Reportedly, the handle "glows bright blue" under ultraviolet light. Sadly, not being hippies, we don't have immediate access to a black light to give this a shot-- but perhaps we can do what one of the posters did: take the iBook to a black-light-enabled strip club. ("Actually, miss, we're just here to see our laptop glow. Uhhh, I mean...") Hey, anything in the name of science.

Ready For Takeoff (12/1/99)

You're aware of how many Apple-bashers in the press are adopting kindler, gentler attitudes these days? Well, we figured it couldn't last, but longtime Apple critic Hiawatha Bray continues his newly-Mac-tolerant ways in his latest Boston Globe column, as reported by faithful viewer Zach Leber. Sure, Bray gets his licks in as he describes his new iBook, but many of his points are completely valid. We haven't had the opportunity to try to use our iBook on a plane like Bray did, but given how cramped we were even when using our much smaller Duo 280c, we can imagine it's no picnic. Yes, it's big and relatively heavy-- heck, that's our main criticism, too. Yes, we wish Apple had made at least 64 MB of RAM standard in the iBook's shipping configuration. In fact, the only statement with which we flat-out disagree is, "why bother with a built-in handle?" (We love the handle. Nobody disses the handle.)

The part where we can get behind Mr. Bray 100%, though, is where he starts raving about AirPort. If you think AirPort's cool and you've never used it, you probably don't realize just how cool it is. We bought our iBook expressly with the intention of turning it into a wireless portable AtAT production terminal. (Meaning, we wanted to be able to surf the web while lying on the couch or sitting in the back yard. Is that so wrong?) After a few weeks of disappointment from the on-line and mail-order vendors ("PREORDER," "OUT OF STOCK," "CALL FOR AVAILABILITY," etc.), our local Micro Center reported that they had both cards and Base Stations in stock. We picked ours up last night, brought the gear home, and started to build our own wireless network.

Installation could only have been easier if Apple had packed a small gnome in the box to perform the physical labor. If you've read other AirPort reviews, you probably know the drill: for the iBook, we flipped two switches, flipped down the keyboard, attached the antenna to the card, and slipped the card into its slot. The Base Station was even easier: we plugged it into a power outlet and connected it to our LAN with a standard Ethernet cable. That was it, from a hardware perspective. As for software, after we ran the AirPort installer and restarted, the AirPort Setup Assistant kicked into gear and asked if we wanted to configure our Base Station. It then copied the network settings from the iBook to the Base Station, and before we knew it, we were surfing from the couch, unfettered by wires or cables. We've seen horror stories about AirPort configuration, but in our case, it was quick, simple, and flawless.

And get this: contrary to early rumors, AppleTalk support seems just dandy. Not only were we able to connect to any of our other Macs via the Chooser's AppleShare, but we were also even able to print wirelessly to our ancient HP DeskWriter 560c. Everything just worked, like a good Apple product should. So now Katie (AtAT's resident fact-checker and Goddess of Minutiae) can indulge her truly frightening eBay addiction without having to miss her favorite TV shows. Ain't technology grand? The Apple team has really pulled off a miracle here: they've made us agree with Hiawatha Bray.

End Of An Error (12/1/99)

Stick a fork in it-- it's done. Apple Expo 2000, the UK Mac trade show to end all UK Mac trade shows, has just, well, ended. After Apple recently reneged on a promise to attend and bring along Steve Jobs to deliver one of his fabulous keynote addresses, the whole show began to crumble, until finally it vaporized completely. A Macworld UK article has more on this disturbing development.

Why is it disturbing? Because it's the culmination of a pattern of abuse; Apple has pulled out of UK Apple shows (or cancelled them outright) for three years straight now. And in this codependent relationship, Apple Expo 2000 was supposed to be Apple's olive branch-- the one show that would make up for all those past sins. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be, and we imagine that the UK Mac community is more than a little steamed right now. Once Apple pulled out, there was much debate among the show's organizers and exhibitors over what should become of the show. Should it be another Apple-less Apple Expo, or should everyone just cut their losses, cancel the gig, and get on with life? As it turns out, Apple pretty much made the decision for them. When Steve and company bailed on the show, they reportedly took their ball and went home; Apple withdrew the rights tocall the event "Apple Expo." Faced with a starless show and a required name change, those involved finally decided to pack it in.

We still haven't figured out Apple's apparent antagonism towards the UK. In addition to the ongoing Apple Expo disasters, Apple also recently canned the practice of developing and releasing localized (er, "localised") British English versions of the Mac OS. Our best guess right now is that Steve is privy to some secret government plan for the U.S. to annex the British Isles and declare them the 51st state...

Let's Play Dueling Errata (12/2/99)

Another day, another Pentium bug. Oh, wait, we're sorry; chips don't have bugs-- they have errata. We know this because when Motorola admitted that the PowerPC G4 couldn't run at 500 MHz or higher without potentially corrupting its own data cache, "errata" was the word they used. "Errata," and not the phrase "big honkin' bug that's going to prompt Apple to downgrade the speeds of their whole Power Mac G4 line-up without lowering prices until we can figure out how to fix this damn thing." Granted, it's shorter, but it's also not nearly as descriptive. Still, when in Rome...

So this new Pentium III "erratum" is either more or less serious than the G4 speed ceiling, depending on your perspective. Basically, Intel admits that one or two percent of all the "Coppermine" Pentium III chips they've made might not actually boot correctly. If a system with the affected chip "is powered all the way down, and someone turns it on, it may not boot until you turn it on again," according to Mike Sullivan, an Intel spokesperson. So while it's nothing that's going to hold back the whole architecture from reaching its originally-expected clock speeds, it is a problem that might make some computers exhibit some puzzling behavior. It's your call.

Dell made a call, too, though, and it was decisive: according to a Reuters article, the company has "stopped shipments and manufacturing" of all systems which use Coppermine processors until Dell lab techs finish performing their own tests. Even though the delay is expected to last at most a few days, that's one point in favor of the Motorola G4 erratum: at least it never halted a Power Mac G4 shipment. Then again, for a while there, availability was so poor, there weren't any G4 shipments to halt in the first place. Anyway, the only real lesson we've learned here is that nobody has a monopoly on processor errata. At least, until Microsoft starts making chips.

Jack Miller
jackm@infoXczar.com