Apple Computer has taken the six colorful stripes (horizontal bands) off their famous logo; quite a bold statement. It shows Apple is changing. They are stripping the excess to become the leanest, meanest computer company around. Apple has simplified their product line, there software future, and made everyone think different.
The iMac
In a series of recent announcements, Apple launched new computers and a new operating system strategy. The first announcement was the unleashing of the iMac. This semi-transparent, glowing orb of a computer is quite a deviance from the typical concept of what one should be. Truly an incident where “seeing is believing.” Even the power cord is translucent!
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The Compact Disc is often taken for granted. It can hold over an hour of music at exceptional quality or 650 megabytes of data, and it will never go bad like a cassette or floppy disc. Every computer has been equipped with a CD-ROM drive standard for many years, allowing CDs to become very common in a computer room. However, Compact Discs have always been much harder to create than a floppy disc or a cassette, until recently.
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The Macintosh has always been known for its prominence in the graphics world. Ever since its first appearance in 1984, the Mac has been the computer of choice for desktop publishing and any graphics work. I’m not much of an artist, but I like to know that the Mac is what they would recommend if I wanted to get into that business.
A few years ago, a company named MetaTools released a program called Bryce. This program, made exclusively for the Mac, was a three-dimensional landscape (or worldscape, as the case may be) generator. Creating your world was simple. You simply put things where you wanted them and put a texture on them so they would look nice. The user interface was not the standard Mac interface everyone knows and loves, but it was made specifically for the purpose of this program. It was truly a great program.
For quite some time now, I have used this program. I know how to use it, and I am able to create beautiful photo-realistic images with it. Let it be known that this program requires a relatively fast computer. It can run on slower Macs, but the process of creating a three-dimensional image is a computational intensive task and can take hours to do. Therefore, the faster the computer you have, the happier you will be with this program.
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eMate 300
Company: Apple Computers Inc.
Estimated Price: $799
http://www.apple.com
I recently had a chance to use an Mate 300, the strange clam-like Newton cousin. It’s geared for classroom use, but is now available to everyone. Its small, grayscale screen is backlit and touch sensitive with the included stylus. There’s no doubt that the eMate is fun to use. In fact, it had to be one of the most enjoyable computing experiences I have had in a long time. This doesn’t mean that I would buy one. The experience is enjoyable, but the eMate’s practicality seems rather low.
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Backing up is the most important thing that can be done in any computer user’s life. Every file that you’ve had for years may not be on a backup disk. Take a look at your hard drive and imagine losing all of it. It’s a horrible thought, but it could happen.
I had never made backup disks of my information. For years, nothing ever happened to it. Some of these files were created on my old SE and transferred through each computer thereafter. As I had never lost any information from a crash, I never saw the need for backups. Then one day, that all changed.
I shut down the computer normally. Nothing strange had happened the whole day while I was using my computer. But the strangest thing happened the next day when I turned on the computer; a disk with a blinking question mark appeared on my screen. I have seen this before, so I put in the Mac OS system disk and went on my merry way.
Something was different this time, however. The hard disk icon did not appear on the desktop. Usually, when I restart with a system disk, the hard drive appears like normal and I continue working. So I ran Disk First Aid. It checked the hard drive and said that it could not repair the damage.
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After months of
grueling work,
everyone needs a
vacation. This year
led me to Florida,
a very nice vacation
spot with one large
problem: I was without my Macintosh. If I had a PowerBook I would have taken it, but I don’t, so that left me with two weeks without a computer. After a period of separation, you learn to do other things besides using the computer.
After the first few days of vacation, I felt the urge to surf the ‘Net. My case was particularly bad because the last e-mail I read before I left mentioned that Gil had left. I had to know more about this. The fastest and easiest way would have been to look it up on the Internet. As this was no longer an option, I simply went out and bought a newspaper. While the information was not as complete as you can get elsewhere, it satisfied my craving.
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DVD is the wave of the future, replacing compact and laser discs. Some say DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc, it will in any case market well. Soon Apple and many clone makers will be including DVD drives in the computer instead of CD-ROM drives.
There is enough space on a single DVD movie disc so that movies can be played in up to three languages, which languages depend on the movie. About eight hours with 5.1 channel soundtrack can fit on one disc. From what I have seen, the colors are bright and clear. Some people have said it is too bright, but that can always be adjusted on a television set.
DVD discs are the same size as a CD, but they hold a lot more data. The music DVDs will be played in multiple channels, making it sound even better than CDs. The DVD-ROMs allow developers to do incredible things because they are not limited by space. Companies that put things on several CD-ROMs, such as national phone books, are the first to see the benefits because those CD-ROMs fit onto one DVD with room to spare.
While the arcane machinations of a network may seem foreign to most people, the fact is that networks are in wide use by a good number of Mac users. When you bought your computer, you might have read about network capabilities. Many people pass this off as useless information and go about their business. And this may be the only thing you can do depending on your setup at work or home. However, it is useful to know what can be done with networks just in case you obtain a second computer and want to have a network.
The concept of a network is very simple. Two computers are hooked together so that they can share information. You may not realize it, but if you have a printer connected to your printer, you are on a network. The printer port provides the easiest means for setting up a network. If you have only two computers, you can connect them through their printer ports by using a simple printer cable and plugging it into the printer ports of the two Macs. There you go, a network.
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After reading my last article, many of you may be wondering what to do with the fonts that you have now. You know that there are different types that do basically the same thing. You may be unaware of what to do if you have the same fonts in different formats. You may be unsure where to place fonts within the System Folder and where to put unwanted or unused fonts. I will try to demystify some of these font particulars as best I can.
Some of you are undoubtedly asking where should I put these fonts that I get. The answer is quite simple, but important nonetheless. All fonts should be placed in the Fonts folder which is in the System Folder. Installing a font is as easy as dragging it onto the Fonts folder. Most fonts are in a font suitcase, a special kind of folder that holds the different parts of the font. You can open a suitcase by double clicking it, just as you would a regular folder. You will find several files that are named as different point sizes. These are bitmapped font files for each individual size. Even though bitmapped fonts are not used for printing, they are shipped with TrueType and PostScript fonts because it gets displayed faster on the screen.
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Fonts are used everywhere, but we try not to think about them. The only time we care about them is when they don’t print right or they look bad on the screen. And we always seem to have a lot of them; many, without warning, appearing in the Fonts folder.
The font situation is atrocious in terms of categorizing. There are so many different types of fonts, it becomes very confusing. The easiest, if you can possibly call it that, way to understand fonts is to start at the beginning; the beginning being bitmapped fonts.
Bitmapped fonts were nice and easy. Unfortunately, they are never used on today’s computers. On all early Macs, the bitmapped fonts were the ten that came with the computer. They were titled with a city name, such as New York, London or Chicago. They were called bitmapped because someone went and drew each character in a painting program that produced a bitmap of the letters. The bitmap describes whether a pixel is black or white. The creator would have to create a separate bitmap for each size of font. This created nice looking fonts as long as the user did not want a 13-point size font. This would cause the Mac to do some math and create a horrible guess at what the size should be. Most fonts of the day were created for 9, 12, 14, 18, and 24 point sizes.
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If you’ve heard of the Web, then you probably have heard about Java and how it has something to do with the Internet. In reality, it isn=t used all that much. It could be very useful, but that is all — could be. For the most part, it’s the latest rage and one of the newest buzz words.
To understand Java, you need a little background in programming. So little, in fact, that I will tell it to you right now. Any application that you have on your computer was originally many lines of computer code. This code would tell the computer to open a window, draw to the window, do some arithmetic, or even open a file. The point being, everything that a program does, is a line of code written by a programmer.
There are many different “languages” that programmers will use to write these lines of code to make a program. It’s a lot like real life languages. If someone is fluent in English and Spanish, they can write the same thing in each. All computer languages can do the same things, but are implemented differently.
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Speech is, by far, one of the neatest features of Macs. It’s also one of the least used. It seems that everybody turns off speech recognition for one reason or another. Some people say it’s too slow while others say it uses too much memory. Not only is it useful, but it’s a lot of fun.
There are two types of speech uses on a Mac. One is Text to Speech (TTS) while the other is Speech Recognition. Combined, these form PlainTalk. Text to Speech is the easiest to use. If you open any speech savvy application, such as SimpleText, you can type and have it read back to you in a variety of voices depending upon your system. There is also a Mexican Spanish TTS system available off the Internet. This allows your computer to read back Spanish with an accent. In PlainTalk 1.5, TTS can read alert boxes that pop up.
While having your Mac talk is fun, it is limited in its use. Speech recognition, the second part of PlainTalk, is where the real fun begins. With this on, you can open files, empty the trash, find out the time and date, close windows, zoom windows and even change the view of windows. Those are just a few of the things the Finder will do. If you have any speech savvy applications, many will be able to be controlled with speech.
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It finally happened. I always heard about Internet horror stories but when I went online, nothing happened. The setup was great, I never made a tech support call, and nothing ever went wrong with my modem. Then one day, that all stopped.
My modem is a 28.8 Teleport Platinum from Global Village. I’ve always thought they were a very reliable company. After all, their Bronze modem came with my Performa 550. If Apple likes them, so do I.
My story starts at the Global Village Web site.
I downloaded the software and installed it. Everything seemed to work fine. It did something to the modem and said everything was working fine. I tried to connect to the Internet. Nothing happened. Well, something happened, but it wouldn’t let me connect. The screen said “Establishing Connection” like normal, but then “The connection is not reliable” flashed on the screen and everything disconnected.
This was disheartening. I figured I could fix the problem, so I restarted. When I tried to connect, nothing happened. The next step was to delete some preference files. I trashed a whole bunch of them, restarted, and nothing happened. This was really getting on my nerves. I rebuilt the desktop, nothing happened. Finally, I decided to reinstall the software. All of it.
First, I reinstalled the System Software. Still, my modem would not connect to the Internet. Then I reinstalled the Internet software. My Internet Service Provider (ISP) included installation instructions and four disks with the software on it. I reinstalled everything and set up all of the programs. Assuming I did all of this correctly, I tried to connect. My modem refused to connect.
And that was how my modem sat for two days. It seemed to work fine, but I couldn’t get on the Internet. This taught me an important lesson: One can live without the Internet. I learned I can do other things to occupy my time. One of the largest being doing real work rather than procrastinating. Every time I looked at the modem, I knew eventually I was going to have to fix it.
Then it hit me. I had another modem. The Global Village Bronze was sitting in my basement. Of course, it’s only a 2400 modem, but it would tell me if my modem was broken or if it was the software. I hooked it up and when I tried to connect, the exact same thing happened.
That proved it was a software problem. Informative, but not helpful because I did not know what software was causing the problem. But at least I knew there was hope and my modem was not at fault.
After reading through my ISP instructions twice, and not figuring anything out, I went to bed. When I woke up, I still had no ideas. But later that night, something made me think of passwords. Nothing special about them, but just the word. Finally, on the third day, I realized what I had done.
When I reinstalled the software and reconfigured everything, I forgot that I have two passwords. There is the e-mail password and the PPP (point-to-point protocol) password. In the Config PPP control panel it asks for your password. I had typed in my e-mail password. It was supposed to be my PPP password.
I hope you found my story amusing, at the least. For you Global Village Platinum owners, beware of that upgrade. Be prepared to go through a little turmoil. My modem is now 33.6, but I can’t tell the difference. I still have to wonder what caused the upgraded modem to stop working in the first place. Any ideas?
The Net can be a very lonely place. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a good way to meet people, but it’s so crazy that you tend not to use it so much. You need a more regulated community on the Web. Here are some sites that I have found to fit this mold quite well.
The first is from Apple Computer, Inc. This is the Personal Home Page Launcher (http://www.myhome.apple.com). In order to use this site, you must have a “Cookie Capable” browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. A cookie file is stored on your hard drive and can hold any information that a site may need at a later date.
The first visit to the site entails a one-time setup for your site. Be prepared, you need information such as the make and serial number of your computer. You get to choose up to five interests that you want links to as well as the look of the site. When this is done you are greeted to a warm site that is full of links categorized according to your specifications.
New Web users will find this to be very useful in starting your surfing, including directions on how to make this your home page in your browser. It is meant to be used by “newbies” but has a lot of great links updated daily for every user. It is set up so that you can change any categories or the look at any time. This isn’t really a community, but it definitely makes you feel good.
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If you haven’t already heard, there’s a new modem standard. Previously, 28.8 bps was the highest modem speed possible without a digital line. The new standard is now 33.6 bps. This doesn’t mean you can connect at this speed right now; it will take awhile.
First, you’ll have to upgrade your modem. If you have a 28.8 modem now, this probably means downloading some software off the Internet. Otherwise, the other option is to get a new modem.
Depending on your provider, you may have to wait for them to upgrade. Even if they do, don’t expect to ever connect at that speed. If you have a 28.8 modem now, you know that you rarely can connect at the top speed. With the new speed, you will probably be able to connect at 28.8 speeds.
So, yes, you will be connecting faster, but probably not at the top speed. This depends on your phone lines. If you live in a very busy area, you have even more problems because of how busy the lines are. The busier the lines, the slower your connection will be.
If you need more speed, there is another option: a digital line. Sure, they cost more, are harder to hook up, and cause a lot of problems, but an ISDN line can give you up to 128K bps bandwidth.
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Encryption
To encrypt means to put into code or cipher. You may have made codes with friends when you were younger. You would have your message, then you would make a code. Maybe you moved every letter over one. An A would become a B. To decode it, the recipient would have to move the letters back one. That was a form of encryption. But encryption can be much more secure than that.
Encryption has been around for millennia. Julius Caesar used it to protect documents from the messengers delivering the documents. Although that wasn’t very secure, it still was encrypted. We still have problems today. Networks of computers are very dangerous, in the security sense. People use encryption to protect their documents.
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Two months ago I was very skeptical of the Internet. Some of that skepticism came from America Online and its sad excuse for a Web Browser. I was used to being horribly rushed to find things because I was paying for every minute. But now I have the direct connection and the Internet is a completely different place. The Internet is supposed to be a fun place.
When I first received the software, I was almost scared. I’ve heard the horror stories of trying to connect for the first time. An instruction manual came with the software from my provider. I followed every step, filling in all the domain names as needed. When I finished, I decided to try connecting. It worked on my first try. I haven’t made one phone call to the tech support for help. Maybe I was really lucky, but it was a good first impression of the Internet.
I soon found out that the Internet is full of information. Any topic is on it. The great part is that you can search for it and find it. Search engines are the most useful things on the Net. I use Alta Vista for all of my searches. I probably end up using it a few times a day. I’ll pick one of the first sites that sounds interesting and see what it is really like. It still doesn’t have every single site, but it has most of them.
The new Be computers are very interesting. They don’t actually do anything for the Macintosh community, but they are worth knowing about. Be is a company that has designed a completely new computer design. It was built from the ground up. Probably the most noticeable design difference is the second processor.
The computer itself is called the BeBox. At the moment, it contains two 603 PowerPC chips inside of it. Eventually, the BeBox will contain as many as eight processors. This multi-processor design allows for incredible performance. One of the benefits is true preemptive multitasking. Also known as multithreading, each “thread” is a spot in memory and processor cycles. This basically allows the processor to pick any task (thread), process it and go onto another one. It is impossible for memory conflicts because they are not allowed to go out of their thread.
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MIDI and MOD: Music on a Mac
The Mac was seen as a toy in its infancy, but a few industries found a use for it, and it caught on. The music industry was one of them. They came up with a great technology, called MIDI. There is an similar upcoming technology called MOD.
MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Any composer can tell you that this is a great thing. To use it, three things are needed. The first one is a MIDI-compatible keyboard. (Today, most decent keyboards are) Second, you need a MIDI interface. This is just a small box that, in its simplest form, attaches the keyboard to the Mac. The last thing needed to do MIDI is the software. More specifically, a sequencer.
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OpenDoc is a new system of working. The basic idea has already been done. “Publish and Subscribe” links different documents into one. When one changes, the final outcome changes with it. OpenDoc has this same idea. It is something that seems very strange at first. It is a system made up of many different components. These components interact with each other to create any type of document you need to make. It isn’t even an application, really. It is built into the System. You create a new document by using the menu command “New” or making a new piece of stationary.
Once you open the document, you will notice something very strange. The menu commands only include the basics like Print and Copy. You start off by pasting a graphic, typing text or using the Embed command. The Embed command loads any component that you request, so you can make the needed type of document. When you click on a block of text, a whole new set of menus appear. They may be Style, Font, Format and Size. When you click on a graphic, the menus may change to Image, Color and Tools.
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