| Issue #64/Aug. '00 |
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A humble answer, to one of your editorial questions in issue #25, from an "old" Macintosh fan: I, myself, am starting to get fed up with system error 10's and 11's, but I will NOT for (almost) anything in the world trade my Mac Performa 5400 (PPC) for a pure PC!
Torbjorn Hagg
Your comments in 'My Turn' are valid and warranted. There are lots of what I call Mac fanatics, or zealots, bigots and even some idiots who seem to think that if Apple does it, or if Apple says it, it must be so! As a realist, I am not one of these. Apple is far from perfect and far from being the company it could have been. That's not to say that with the right strategies, good management and continued great products, they won't bounce back by next year. I think (hope) they can! A company that loses $5 billion in sales, in less than 3 years has a lot to answer for, in my opinion. The sooner Gil leaves, the better off Apple will be. These are strong statements. But they are my own opinions. I'm entitled to think and say whatever I want in our free society. You and I are entitled to our opinions, but we have to be prepared for the barrage we may receive from the Mac community, valid or not! Keep on expressing your opinions, you're not alone!
TTYL
Hey, when is production of those T-Shirts with those cool front cover-page graphics going to start? I can't wait :-)
Francis Moralles -- DrMac --
Some of you may be wondering what T-Shirts DrMac is talking about. Very soon, My Mac Magazine will start selling both T-Shirts and either coffee mugs or mouse pads to help offset some of the cost of producing the magazine every month. Plans are being made now to do it, but it will take a little more time.
We will let you know when they go on sale, how much they will be, and what great artwork or slogan will be available. Mike Gorman has suggested using new artwork, never before seen in My Mac, rather than reprints of his great cover work. What do you think? Drop us a line with your ideas and if you would be willing to buy some of our offerings. Feedback is very important to us! Gentlemen, thank you, thank you for changing the Font type and size. I read only one earlier issue, but was going to read no more because it was difficult to read that small type. Then I tried the May issue on a whim, and to my surprise; something was different! You now have a satisfied subscriber (well, maybe not a subscriber); but a hooked reader.
Sincerely, Richard
Glad you like the new layout, Richard! We felt for a long time that our font and smaller 'print' might be making reading difficult for some people. However, with all the readers out there, we didn't want to do anything drastic and risk losing readers (you are why we do this every month!). But something needed changing and we decided to go with Times 14 pt. as our standard font.
Hope everyone else likes the changes!
On your e-mail page in the May issue, you write that it is very hard to reach Apple with feature suggestions. It is, but they do have a page at: http://www.cqf2.apple.com/MacOSQ.FM$random?HTML=MOSQ.html where you can upload suggestions. You never get a reply, so all you know is that you've sent it. (They might throw the suggestion straight into the electronic garbage bin for all I know...) By the way, great magazine!
Greetings,
I read with interest your recent review of Window Monkey 1.0 in My Mac #25. At first glance, I too loved this product. Below is a review that I wrote the day after it was released for my local BBS.
Yesterday, I downloaded from the Internet, a new piece of shareware called Window Monkey 1.0.
The Website for the author (Tiger Technologies - www.tigertech.com.)
states:
Simply put, Window Monkey lets you work more easily with better-looking windows." I was excited before I started to download. I love to dress up my machine and this seemed like a suitable competitor to Kaleidoscope. After downloading, reading the enclosed ReadMe, and the great manual, I decided to try it. I couldn't wait! I installed the Control Panel, restarted my machine, and began to play. I liked it immediately. You can place any pattern in any window. I did a few and decided to leave it on my machine. I kept going back and changing more windows. I was having fun! But, as the day wore on, and I was getting some real work completed, with FileMaker Pro, ClarisWorks, GraphicConverter, Illustrator and even SimpleText, my machine started crashing. (Type 1 and Type 3 errors) As Window Monkey was the only new software that I had installed, I immediately removed it and continued to work. The crashes stopped. I wrote a bug report and sent it to the author. I hope they get it to work. I want to use it! I have included the software above for everyone else to try but beware that it could cause problems.
It's amazing to me how we could come to two different conclusions about the same piece of software! When I sent in the Bug Report to Tiger Technologies, they told me I was the only person in the world who complained and was having problems. So I tried it again, with the same results as before. I then found some hidden preference files on my drive, related to this product and sent them another report. They then asked me to do a MacsBug report for them. After being a little insulted by their first note, and a lack of time, I decided to just trash the product and wait to see what happens. I had the same results on two different machines. Well, after sending me a couple of test releases, version 1.1 of Window Monkey has been released. I guess I wasn't the only person in the world after all! I haven't had the nerve to try it as of yet, but I will. I love the concept! TTYL Rob Homuth rocky@ionline.net
Hey, that's TWO letters from you in this issue, Rob! It's a conspiracy, I tell you!
Seriously, I was glad to get this letter. Not for the fact that someone read my review (grin) but that others out there will take me to task on something. As I said in my own review last month, I never had any problems with Windows Monkey 1.0, nor the follow up 1.1 version. But if you did, I would like to pass that on to people.
As for Tiger Technologies, I have had contact with them once or twice, and both were pleasant experiences. After reading your review and letter, I contacted Robert Mathews of Tiger Technologies. Here is part of his response....
I'm sorry that Mr. Homuth had trouble with my program. Even though most people did not have any problems, the first version of Window Monkey -- like any new software -- did have some conflicts that even my 100 beta testers didn't discover. I've addressed most of these in the two updates I've released since then.
However, I did *not* tell Mr. Homuth that he was "the only person in the world who complained and was having problems." I did tell him that he was the only person to report having random type 1 and type 3 crashes. (This is still the case; nobody else has reported this.)
I took his bug report seriously enough that I offered him a free copy of
Window Monkey in exchange for his help, and sent him some debugging tools and a custom version of Window Monkey that might pinpoint the trouble. When I mentioned that he was the only person to have that problem, I did so not to be dismissive, but to impress upon him how much I would need to rely on him to help me fix it.
Mr. Homuth chose not to help, which is fair enough. But I don't think
it's fair that he decided not to help me solve the problem, but feels free to complain publicly about it. If he'd taken a few minutes to provide me with the information I asked for, the problem would likely have been fixed in the first update; unless someone else reports it, there's nothing I can do otherwise.
It's understandable that Mr. Homuth was unhappy that the program
apparently didn't work properly on his machine, and I apologize for that.
My offer of a free copy of the program if he can help me figure out what
the problem is certainly still stands. He also reported being concerned about finding an invisible Window Monkey picture file in his Preferences
folder, but this is the normal way that Window Monkey works if you add a pattern to that folder, and I updated the documentation for version 1.1
to make this more clear.
However, his main complaint seems to be that I told him that nobody else
was having the problem he mentioned, but I then released new versions of
the program anyway. This is silly; the new versions don't attempt to fix
the problem Mr. Homuth had, because I have no idea what caused it. And
since only one person was having this particular problem, it didn't seem
worth holding up new releases until I could fix it, especially as he
decided not to help me.
I would love to fix the problem Mr. Homuth reported and give him a free copy of the program if he would help me find the cause; I take it very
seriously and don't want even one person to have trouble. If that person won't help me, though, I can only point out that there are over 8,000
people who have downloaded Window Monkey from my Web site who apparently aren't having this problem, so its unlikely to affect most of your readers.
Thanks again.
Email: publisher@mymac.com or editor@mymac.com
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