Update: Mozilla on NuBus PowerMacs
From Ken Watanabe
Charles,
You may recall that Mozilla stopped working on NuBus PowerMacs
(6100, 7100, 8100, and
related models) since just before the "1.0" major release.
Specifically, the installer application (for the Classic Mac OS
version) would crash with a "Type 12 error" during the installation
process.
If you have the opportunity, please let your readers on Low End
Mac (and anywhere else) know that the problem has been resolved
(finally!). I can now install and run the latest Mozilla on my
G3-enhanced 8100 without any inconvenient workarounds - tabbed
browsing and all.
The fix has not made it into the current "milestone" release or
to Netscape yet, so the only way to get a version with the fix at
this time is to download the most recent nightly build. The link
for this download is located near the bottom right corner of the
www.mozilla.org web site's main page (click on "MacOS 9" under the
"Nightly Builds" heading).
Thanks.
Ken Watanabe
- Thanks for the update, Ken.
Charles
13.3" WallStreet display
From Kevin Coles
Hello Mr. Moore,
I have been following the bidding on a PowerBook WallStreet 250 with a 13.3"
display and wondered why the bid has stayed so low (around $200
with a few days to go). I then found your article on LEM and found
out why. Thank you very much for the article.
I was wondering if a 14.1" screen could be mounted in place of
the 13.3" even though it's cable is routed differently, since
Series 1 came with 12", 13", and 14" screens?
Thanks again,
Kevin
- Hi Kevin,
Theoretically yes, although you would need a different lid and
screen bezel as well as the screen and cable. I'm skeptical that it
would be worth the trouble, or cheaper, unless you had a second
machine to cannibalize.
Charles
PB 1400
From James F. McLaughlin
I saw your comments on PB 1400 so
I thought I'd ask a couple of questions. Can you somehow have a USB
device (such as a digital camera) interfaced to a PB 1400? Also is
there any way to have a portable DVD player interfaced with the
1400?
Thanks
Jim
- Hi Jim,
The 1400 will not support USB, and there are no workarounds that I
know of. Unless there is a portable DVD player with a SCSI
interface (doubtful), that's not an option either. However,
PowerBook 3400s can be quite easily
modified to support CardBus devices.
Charles
Dr Bott T3 USB Hub
From Andrew Main
Charles,
I see you featured the Dr Bott T3 USB Hub in your latest column
[The 'Book Review]. A few
months ago I was looking for a way to connect more than one USB
peripheral to a client's original
clamshell iBook - without having to find desk space for yet
another piece of junk. The T3 Hub seemed perfect; I bought two,
thinking ahead to the next client. Then discovered it doesn't work
with the iBook! The case of the hub jams against the iBook's case
before the USB connector can make contact. I had to take the hub
apart and carve off nearly 1/4" of its case to make it work. Given
that the original iBook, with only 1 USB port, would be the #1
candidate for use with this hub, it seems to me odd that Dr Bott
didn't test it thoroughly with that computer when designing it.
When I brought this problem to Dr Bott's attention, I was told to
use the short USB cable that comes with the hub to make it work.
Well, if I'm going to have a hub on a cable, there are other
options that are cheaper. I sent the second one back. Dr Bott's
page on the T3 Hub says nothing about incompatibility with the
original iBook. I'll think thrice before buying any more clever
gadgets from them.
Andrew Main
- Thanks for the info, Andrew. Something that would never occur
unless you tried it. There was an issue like this with the PowerBook 2400c and some SCSI adapters. The
HDI-30 SCSI port on the 2400c was deeply recessed, and some of the
"boot" or "L" shaped SCSI adapters wouldn't seat properly.
Charles
Unable To Install WordPerfect In OS 9.2.2
From H.C. Gelderblom
Charles,
After downloading WordPerfect from <
http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~jdburto/wpmac35e.html> I'm
unable to install it on a 700 MHz iMac in OS 9.2.2. When I try to
install it says: no conversion extension found, program used to
create not found (in Dutch).
Could you me give your opinion on this matter?
- Hi H.C.
Could be a corrupted file in the download.
You might try installing it on another Mac (perhaps with an older
version of the Mac OS) to see if the behavior is duplicated.
Charles
Your articles on free POP3 email
From Erwin van Bussel
Hello Charles,
I'm not very happy about Apple charging for their .Mac services,
especially since I'm not going to use them to their full potential.
At the moment the only iTools services I use regularly are mac.com
email and iDisk, so I plan to switch to other services to take care
of those needs. Fortunately, I remembered your columns on Low End
Mac about free POP3 email services [10
Free POP3 Rmail Services and Free
POP3 Email Update], and I going to try some of those out.
MyRealBox looks especially promising!
But how about a column about free (or cheap) iDisk-like services
on the Web? Online storage is something which I don't use a lot,
but it can be convenient to get larger files, which are too big for
email, to someone.
Thank you, and keep up the good work!
Erwin van Bussel
The Netherlands
- Hi Erwin,
Good suggestion, but considerably more time consuming to check out.
Some sort of overview perhaps.
Charles
Ack! sleep of death and my iBook
From Jeremy Morgan
Chuck, (can I call you that?)
My 466 MHz Graphite Toilet Seat
(iBook) has started to experience the sleep of death in OS
9.2.2. I haven't installed anything new. The only different thing
is I've started to sync the system clock to one of Apple's time
servers, but I've always done this with my Quicksilver without
problem so I doubt it's that. Who knows.
-Jeremy Morgan
- Hi Jeremy,
Chuck is fine.
Other readers have mentioned that turning off the Internet time
sync. stopped the SoD problem. Alas, it didn't work for me on my
WallStreet, but it does seem to be part of the puzzle.
Charles
Sleep of Death
From Luca
I have a "PDQ" version of the Wallstreet PowerBook G3, a 233 MHz
one. I saw one of these discussions of the "sleep of death" just a
little while before I installed OS X on my computer. Now that
I've used the sleep function extensively in both OSes, I think I
could give you a pretty good picture of my computer's sleeping
habits.
In OS 9, when it was put to sleep either by closing it up or by
using the special menu, it would only wake successfully about 1/3
to 1/2 of the time. The rest of the time it would usually hang up
and require a forced restart. Even when it did wake up, sometimes
it would take forever to respond after the hard drive spun up. For
some reason, the wake-up success rate was much higher when running
off the battery.
In OS X, it almost always sleeps properly. I installed it from a
CD containing 10.1.3, and I installed the 10.1.5 updater almost
immediately afterwards, so I can only comment on behavior in
10.1.5. I almost never shut down my computer now, because it works
so well, but sometimes I run into problems. It's currently set to
sleep after a half hour, so if I leave it open and idle for a
while, it'll sleep. For some reason, it's much more likely to be
dead if I leave it open than if I close it. More than once, I've
come back to my open computer only to realize that adjusting the
contrast and pressing the space bar didn't do anything. The screen
is black and the green sleep light isn't blinking. It's as if the
computer was shut down, but I have to use the force restart command
(sometimes repeatedly) in order to make it start up. Just
yesterday, I had a strange problem I'd never encountered before.
The laptop was closed, and when I opened it, it behaved as I
described for when it gets the sleep of death while open. No
startup chime when I pressed the power button, no change when
pressing the contrast buttons, nothing. Force restarting didn't
work the first time, so I pressed the key combo until I heard the
chime. Finally it worked after four or five tries. The standard
gray happy Mac screen appeared, as did the blue screen, but when
the "Loading" panel appeared (the one with the status bar that
shows how far along it is with starting up), the screen went really
screwy. It was cut in half both horizontally and vertically. The
bottom half was black while the top half showed the "Loading"
panel. The top half was cut in half, with each side showing the
same image. The image in the top half was very fuzzy and jumpy, as
if it were a TV that needed its antenna adjusted. The mouse cursor
alternated between being "above" the screen interference (looking
normal) and "inside" it (being distorted with everything else). The
login went just fine, but the screen image was distorted in the
same way after startup. I selected "Restart" from the Apple menu
and everything worked fine after that.
I hope at least some of this info will help you out.
- Hi Luca,
Thanks for the report. I don't have OS X on my WallStreet, but
sleep works perfectly in OS 9.x and OS X (up to 10.1.4 so far)
on my Pismo.
Charles
Better Computers and Better Users
From Peppermint Pademelon
Greetings.
I'm sending this to you via email, because I don't know whether
you bother to read the Low End Mac forums. I apologize somewhat for
the tone near the end, but, quite frankly, I think perhaps your
latest article deserves it. You might at some point want to think
of healthier ways to inflate your ego besides gloating over who
buys the same toys you do.
Shalom
Better Computers and Better Users
...is the biggest load of self-inflating horse s**t I have ever
read.
Has anyone stopped to think about *one* thing with regard to
that little survey that everyone Mac-ish seems to be preening
themselves over?
Macintoshes are *substantially* more expensive then PCs. Not
slightly, *substantially*. Coincidentally enough, guess what?
People who have the extra money to spend on a more expensive
version of a product are in all likelihood people with higher
educational achievements. I'm sure that if you cared to you could
demonstrate a direct relationship between education level and, say,
the cars people buy. The vast majority of Lexus owners are going to
be college graduates, for instance, while Chevy owners are going to
be all over the map.
(There are other minor correlations you could toss into the mix,
of course, besides price. Macs are more common in higher education
settings then they are in other venues, so folks who've encountered
them there might be more predisposed towards buying them then
others who buy a computer based on, say, what they use in the
workplace. Folks tend to buy what they're comfortable with, after
all. That says *nothing* with regard to who's choice is actually
superior. Although, I guess if you want to be a materialistic
a**hole you can insist that the choice that's associated with
spending the greatest amount of money is the 'right' one.)
This was a marketing survey, for crying out loud. It's
demonstrating that Mac owners, like Lexus owners, might be a good
segment to attempt to sell expensive things to, because their
ownership of a Mac is a semi-reliable index of their income.
Reading all this elitist crap into it is simply, well... crap. On
so many levels. It's advocacy like this that makes truly
enlightened people wince and shake their heads in disgust. Defining
yourself by the products you buy is pathetic, and you're clearly
not intelligent enough to realize it, Mr. Moore.
Reading articles like this reminds me of watching those horrible
people with big hair on the Trinity Broadcast Network, who truly
seem to think that having money is the index by which to judge
whether God loves them or not. I'm sorry, Charles, owning a Mac
isn't guaranteeing you a place in Heaven, and it's clearly not
earning you brownie points here either. For you, the camel that
isn't passing through the eye of the needle has an Apple logo on
it, and I hope you understand that at some point.
-Disgusted
- Hi PP,
Macs cost somewhat more initially than PCs (slightly/substantially
= value judgment), but I stand by my assertion that they are
cheaper to own over the long haul - substantially cheaper according
to the infamous disowned (but not denied) Australian survey by
Gartner Group that found the total cost of Mac ownership was "36
per cent lower than similar PC environments elsewhere."
I'm certainly not wealthy or even comfortably well-off (freelance
writing is not a highly paid field). My car was built by the same
company that makes the Lexus, but it's called a Corolla, and it was
made in 1989.
That said, I have no problem with elitism, so long as it's not just
gratuitous snobbery and there's actually something substantive to
be elitist about. And in the case of the Mac, I'm convinced that
there is. "Elitism" is a word that has been redefined into a
pejorative by populists and leftist social engineers, but there is
a commendable sort of elitism that reaches down to offer a hand up
rather than pushing others down. Anybody can own a Mac and will
likely save money in the bargain. Without an elitist ideal, all we
are left with is the pursuit of mediocrity.
That said, I am also a temperamental nonconformist who likes
"thinking different" for the sake of thinking different. If
something gets too popular, I can deduce that there is probably
something wrong with it, or at best mediocre about it, without
further investigation
Ergo: the argument that Windows is "the most popular OS that
'everybody' uses," cuts no ice with me, and indeed would send me
scurrying to embrace the Mac (or even Linux) on principle. I know
from experience that virtually anything that appeals to the mass
consumer market is not likely to appeal to me. Banefully, elitists
usually lose when they compete with populists in the same market
for the same consumer dollar. Low taste drives out high
taste.
Consequently, while I would like to see Apple with a market share
of, say, 10-15 percent, I'm not at all sure I would want to see
them penetrate much farther than that, because in order to do so
they would have to dumb down and compromise the Mac experience to
appeal to the bland taste of the broad consumer market.
I never suggested that a Mac would earn me or anyone else anything
more than a satisfying computing experience, but it can provide
that because it's better, and because I and other Mac users have
the discrimination (in the positive sense of the word) to recognize
and appreciate superior quality and elegance in a computing
machine.
Charles
Hello from home
From Ron Stuart
I have been a Mac user since 1985. I am also from Nova Scotia. I
was introduced to your writings when I found Low End Mac and joined its list. I enjoy your
writings very much and will keep up on them.
Do you do any other articles here in the province. I would like
to hear some personal info about you. Is there a site which
contains that info.
Thanks again for your Mac support and keep up the good work.
Ron Stuart
Nova Scotia
- Hi Ron,
I have a weekly column in the Halifax Daily
News and a twice-monthly one in the Guysborough
Journal. I've also been a columnist for Atlantic Fisherman for
15 years.
I once started to build a personal website, but didn't get very far
with it. Basically, I'm just a middle-aged workaholic freelancer.
;-)
Charles
Update: Mozilla on NuBus PowerMacs
From Ken Watanabe
Charles,
You may recall that Mozilla stopped working on NuBus PowerMacs
(6100, 7100, 8100, and
related models) since just before the "1.0" major release.
Specifically, the installer application (for the Classic Mac OS
version) would crash with a "Type 12 error" during the installation
process.
If you have the opportunity, please let your readers on Low End
Mac (and anywhere else) know that the problem has been resolved
(finally!). I can now install and run the latest Mozilla on my
G3-enhanced 8100 without any inconvenient workarounds - tabbed
browsing and all.
The fix has not made it into the current "milestone" release or
to Netscape yet, so the only way to get a version with the fix at
this time is to download the most recent nightly build. The link
for this download is located near the bottom right corner of the
www.mozilla.org web site's main page (click on "MacOS 9" under the
"Nightly Builds" heading).
Thanks.
Ken Watanabe
- Thanks for the update, Ken.
Charles
13.3" WallStreet display
From Kevin Coles
Hello Mr. Moore,
I have been following the bidding on a PowerBook WallStreet 250 with a 13.3"
display and wondered why the bid has stayed so low (around $200
with a few days to go). I then found your article on LEM and found
out why. Thank you very much for the article.
I was wondering if a 14.1" screen could be mounted in place of
the 13.3" even though it's cable is routed differently, since
Series 1 came with 12", 13", and 14" screens?
Thanks again,
Kevin
- Hi Kevin,
Theoretically yes, although you would need a different lid and
screen bezel as well as the screen and cable. I'm skeptical that it
would be worth the trouble, or cheaper, unless you had a second
machine to cannibalize.
Charles
PB 1400
From James F. McLaughlin
I saw your comments on PB 1400 so
I thought I'd ask a couple of questions. Can you somehow have a USB
device (such as a digital camera) interfaced to a PB 1400? Also is
there any way to have a portable DVD player interfaced with the
1400?
Thanks
Jim
- Hi Jim,
The 1400 will not support USB, and there are no workarounds that I
know of. Unless there is a portable DVD player with a SCSI
interface (doubtful), that's not an option either. However,
PowerBook 3400s can be quite easily
modified to support CardBus devices.
Charles
Dr Bott T3 USB Hub
From Andrew Main
Charles,
I see you featured the Dr Bott T3 USB Hub in your latest column
[The 'Book Review]. A few
months ago I was looking for a way to connect more than one USB
peripheral to a client's original
clamshell iBook - without having to find desk space for yet
another piece of junk. The T3 Hub seemed perfect; I bought two,
thinking ahead to the next client. Then discovered it doesn't work
with the iBook! The case of the hub jams against the iBook's case
before the USB connector can make contact. I had to take the hub
apart and carve off nearly 1/4" of its case to make it work. Given
that the original iBook, with only 1 USB port, would be the #1
candidate for use with this hub, it seems to me odd that Dr Bott
didn't test it thoroughly with that computer when designing it.
When I brought this problem to Dr Bott's attention, I was told to
use the short USB cable that comes with the hub to make it work.
Well, if I'm going to have a hub on a cable, there are other
options that are cheaper. I sent the second one back. Dr Bott's
page on the T3 Hub says nothing about incompatibility with the
original iBook. I'll think thrice before buying any more clever
gadgets from them.
Andrew Main
- Thanks for the info, Andrew. Something that would never occur
unless you tried it. There was an issue like this with the PowerBook 2400c and some SCSI adapters. The
HDI-30 SCSI port on the 2400c was deeply recessed, and some of the
"boot" or "L" shaped SCSI adapters wouldn't seat properly.
Charles
Unable To Install WordPerfect In OS 9.2.2
From H.C. Gelderblom
Charles,
After downloading WordPerfect from <
http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~jdburto/wpmac35e.html> I'm
unable to install it on a 700 MHz iMac in OS 9.2.2. When I try to
install it says: no conversion extension found, program used to
create not found (in Dutch).
Could you me give your opinion on this matter?
- Hi H.C.
Could be a corrupted file in the download.
You might try installing it on another Mac (perhaps with an older
version of the Mac OS) to see if the behavior is duplicated.
Charles
Your articles on free POP3 email
From Erwin van Bussel
Hello Charles,
I'm not very happy about Apple charging for their .Mac services,
especially since I'm not going to use them to their full potential.
At the moment the only iTools services I use regularly are mac.com
email and iDisk, so I plan to switch to other services to take care
of those needs. Fortunately, I remembered your columns on Low End
Mac about free POP3 email services [10
Free POP3 Rmail Services and Free
POP3 Email Update], and I going to try some of those out.
MyRealBox looks especially promising!
But how about a column about free (or cheap) iDisk-like services
on the Web? Online storage is something which I don't use a lot,
but it can be convenient to get larger files, which are too big for
email, to someone.
Thank you, and keep up the good work!
Erwin van Bussel
The Netherlands
- Hi Erwin,
Good suggestion, but considerably more time consuming to check out.
Some sort of overview perhaps.
Charles
Ack! sleep of death and my iBook
From Jeremy Morgan
Chuck, (can I call you that?)
My 466 MHz Graphite Toilet Seat
(iBook) has started to experience the sleep of death in OS
9.2.2. I haven't installed anything new. The only different thing
is I've started to sync the system clock to one of Apple's time
servers, but I've always done this with my Quicksilver without
problem so I doubt it's that. Who knows.
-Jeremy Morgan
- Hi Jeremy,
Chuck is fine.
Other readers have mentioned that turning off the Internet time
sync. stopped the SoD problem. Alas, it didn't work for me on my
WallStreet, but it does seem to be part of the puzzle.
Charles
Sleep of Death
From Luca
I have a "PDQ" version of the Wallstreet PowerBook G3, a 233 MHz
one. I saw one of these discussions of the "sleep of death" just a
little while before I installed OS X on my computer. Now that
I've used the sleep function extensively in both OSes, I think I
could give you a pretty good picture of my computer's sleeping
habits.
In OS 9, when it was put to sleep either by closing it up or by
using the special menu, it would only wake successfully about 1/3
to 1/2 of the time. The rest of the time it would usually hang up
and require a forced restart. Even when it did wake up, sometimes
it would take forever to respond after the hard drive spun up. For
some reason, the wake-up success rate was much higher when running
off the battery.
In OS X, it almost always sleeps properly. I installed it from a
CD containing 10.1.3, and I installed the 10.1.5 updater almost
immediately afterwards, so I can only comment on behavior in
10.1.5. I almost never shut down my computer now, because it works
so well, but sometimes I run into problems. It's currently set to
sleep after a half hour, so if I leave it open and idle for a
while, it'll sleep. For some reason, it's much more likely to be
dead if I leave it open than if I close it. More than once, I've
come back to my open computer only to realize that adjusting the
contrast and pressing the space bar didn't do anything. The screen
is black and the green sleep light isn't blinking. It's as if the
computer was shut down, but I have to use the force restart command
(sometimes repeatedly) in order to make it start up. Just
yesterday, I had a strange problem I'd never encountered before.
The laptop was closed, and when I opened it, it behaved as I
described for when it gets the sleep of death while open. No
startup chime when I pressed the power button, no change when
pressing the contrast buttons, nothing. Force restarting didn't
work the first time, so I pressed the key combo until I heard the
chime. Finally it worked after four or five tries. The standard
gray happy Mac screen appeared, as did the blue screen, but when
the "Loading" panel appeared (the one with the status bar that
shows how far along it is with starting up), the screen went really
screwy. It was cut in half both horizontally and vertically. The
bottom half was black while the top half showed the "Loading"
panel. The top half was cut in half, with each side showing the
same image. The image in the top half was very fuzzy and jumpy, as
if it were a TV that needed its antenna adjusted. The mouse cursor
alternated between being "above" the screen interference (looking
normal) and "inside" it (being distorted with everything else). The
login went just fine, but the screen image was distorted in the
same way after startup. I selected "Restart" from the Apple menu
and everything worked fine after that.
I hope at least some of this info will help you out.
- Hi Luca,
Thanks for the report. I don't have OS X on my WallStreet, but
sleep works perfectly in OS 9.x and OS X (up to 10.1.4 so far)
on my Pismo.
Charles
Better Computers and Better Users
From Peppermint Pademelon
Greetings.
I'm sending this to you via email, because I don't know whether
you bother to read the Low End Mac forums. I apologize somewhat for
the tone near the end, but, quite frankly, I think perhaps your
latest article deserves it. You might at some point want to think
of healthier ways to inflate your ego besides gloating over who
buys the same toys you do.
Shalom
Better Computers and Better Users
...is the biggest load of self-inflating horse s**t I have ever
read.
Has anyone stopped to think about *one* thing with regard to
that little survey that everyone Mac-ish seems to be preening
themselves over?
Macintoshes are *substantially* more expensive then PCs. Not
slightly, *substantially*. Coincidentally enough, guess what?
People who have the extra money to spend on a more expensive
version of a product are in all likelihood people with higher
educational achievements. I'm sure that if you cared to you could
demonstrate a direct relationship between education level and, say,
the cars people buy. The vast majority of Lexus owners are going to
be college graduates, for instance, while Chevy owners are going to
be all over the map.
(There are other minor correlations you could toss into the mix,
of course, besides price. Macs are more common in higher education
settings then they are in other venues, so folks who've encountered
them there might be more predisposed towards buying them then
others who buy a computer based on, say, what they use in the
workplace. Folks tend to buy what they're comfortable with, after
all. That says *nothing* with regard to who's choice is actually
superior. Although, I guess if you want to be a materialistic
a**hole you can insist that the choice that's associated with
spending the greatest amount of money is the 'right' one.)
This was a marketing survey, for crying out loud. It's
demonstrating that Mac owners, like Lexus owners, might be a good
segment to attempt to sell expensive things to, because their
ownership of a Mac is a semi-reliable index of their income.
Reading all this elitist crap into it is simply, well... crap. On
so many levels. It's advocacy like this that makes truly
enlightened people wince and shake their heads in disgust. Defining
yourself by the products you buy is pathetic, and you're clearly
not intelligent enough to realize it, Mr. Moore.
Reading articles like this reminds me of watching those horrible
people with big hair on the Trinity Broadcast Network, who truly
seem to think that having money is the index by which to judge
whether God loves them or not. I'm sorry, Charles, owning a Mac
isn't guaranteeing you a place in Heaven, and it's clearly not
earning you brownie points here either. For you, the camel that
isn't passing through the eye of the needle has an Apple logo on
it, and I hope you understand that at some point.
-Disgusted
- Hi PP,
Macs cost somewhat more initially than PCs (slightly/substantially
= value judgment), but I stand by my assertion that they are
cheaper to own over the long haul - substantially cheaper according
to the infamous disowned (but not denied) Australian survey by
Gartner Group that found the total cost of Mac ownership was "36
per cent lower than similar PC environments elsewhere."
I'm certainly not wealthy or even comfortably well-off (freelance
writing is not a highly paid field). My car was built by the same
company that makes the Lexus, but it's called a Corolla, and it was
made in 1989.
That said, I have no problem with elitism, so long as it's not just
gratuitous snobbery and there's actually something substantive to
be elitist about. And in the case of the Mac, I'm convinced that
there is. "Elitism" is a word that has been redefined into a
pejorative by populists and leftist social engineers, but there is
a commendable sort of elitism that reaches down to offer a hand up
rather than pushing others down. Anybody can own a Mac and will
likely save money in the bargain. Without an elitist ideal, all we
are left with is the pursuit of mediocrity.
That said, I am also a temperamental nonconformist who likes
"thinking different" for the sake of thinking different. If
something gets too popular, I can deduce that there is probably
something wrong with it, or at best mediocre about it, without
further investigation
Ergo: the argument that Windows is "the most popular OS that
'everybody' uses," cuts no ice with me, and indeed would send me
scurrying to embrace the Mac (or even Linux) on principle. I know
from experience that virtually anything that appeals to the mass
consumer market is not likely to appeal to me. Banefully, elitists
usually lose when they compete with populists in the same market
for the same consumer dollar. Low taste drives out high
taste.
Consequently, while I would like to see Apple with a market share
of, say, 10-15 percent, I'm not at all sure I would want to see
them penetrate much farther than that, because in order to do so
they would have to dumb down and compromise the Mac experience to
appeal to the bland taste of the broad consumer market.
I never suggested that a Mac would earn me or anyone else anything
more than a satisfying computing experience, but it can provide
that because it's better, and because I and other Mac users have
the discrimination (in the positive sense of the word) to recognize
and appreciate superior quality and elegance in a computing
machine.
Charles
Hello from home
From Ron Stuart
I have been a Mac user since 1985. I am also from Nova Scotia. I
was introduced to your writings when I found Low End Mac and joined its list. I enjoy your
writings very much and will keep up on them.
Do you do any other articles here in the province. I would like
to hear some personal info about you. Is there a site which
contains that info.
Thanks again for your Mac support and keep up the good work.
Ron Stuart
Nova Scotia
- Hi Ron,
I have a weekly column in the Halifax Daily
News and a twice-monthly one in the Guysborough
Journal. I've also been a columnist for Atlantic Fisherman for
15 years.
I once started to build a personal website, but didn't get very far
with it. Basically, I'm just a middle-aged workaholic freelancer.
;-)
Charles
Go to Charles Moore's Mailbag index.
