Myth II: Soulblighter is finally out! It took its sweet time getting here, but it has finally gotten to the stores. But was it worth the wait? What about the bug that delayed its release two weeks? Should I get it? These questions will be answered (unless I forget some).
Yearly Archives: 1999
I remember a time when the Mac was the laughing stock of the computer industry. It had “no software” (unless you compared it to, say, Amigas, Ataris, or other ‘toy’ computers). The market share was decreasing (but still large enough that companies in other markets would kill for it). Worst of all, there were virtually […]
This month I was planning on writing a nice little piece on the personal style of the Mac. A little article that talked about how cool they are with their aesthetics, design, and following. But that is no more. Due to some unaccounted for problems I will be writing about the possible advent of the […]
The Columbine massacre in Colorado has been on my mind – and probably yours as well. It’s very troubling on any number of levels.
“Computer, tell me a joke!” you say – and nothing happens. Why? Because you didn’t install the Speech Recognition software correctly.
1999: The idea of an iMac with “Intel inside” is both more and less ludicrous than it sounds.
It’s easy to visit a site like Low End Mac and find out when a model was first produced and when it was discontinued. But how do you determine how old a specific device is?
“Don’t lie to me, Gustav! You’re a stinkin’ Mac user!” – Ratbert, from a Dilbert comic strip, in which he proposes a “Holy War” in order to “standardize on one computer” by having the company “identify and eliminate the deviant users of Macintosh, Unix and – God help us – OS/2 Warp” “What if half the […]
1999 – The Power Mac 7200 offered good value, but its only official upgrade path involved replacing the entire logic board. What other options were there?
1999 – It happens to the best of us, and it will probably happen to you eventually. Yep, it’s the one thing we all say won’t happen, but always does – a hard drive failure. I’ll show you how to safeguard your iMac from disaster, and, aside from some sort of disk drive, it won’t […]
1999: I think Apple surprised most of us by releasing the iMac Revision D at 333 MHz instead of 300 MHz. A lot of us had expected the lower speed, possibly coupled with a boost to 64 MB of RAM or the addition of a DVD player, neither of which happened.
1999 – I have an issue of BYTE magazine from many, many years ago with a cover story on benchmarking (along with one on a new computer from Apple called Macintosh). It’s a topic the computer industry has followed with keen interest for decades.
1999: Once upon a time there was a compact computer called the Macintosh. It used small disks, a small keyboard, and a small screen. Then a company called Radius invented a revolutionary device: a full page display for the Macintosh. Unlike conventional displays, this was a portrait monitor – taller than it was wide.
1999: Mark Twain is purported to have said, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Whether he actually said it or not, the fact remains that statistics can and do lie. Of all computer users, Mac users should know it best.
code name: Lifesavers Skipping right past 300 MHz and coming on the market just three months after the 266 MHz Revision C iMac, the Revision D iMac runs at a speedy 333 MHz. In addition to a 25% faster CPU, the iMac 333 ships in the same five colors: tangerine, grape, lime, blueberry, and strawberry.
The PowerBook 1400 was available in several different configurations, including two different displays (dual-scan and active matrix) and three different CPU speeds (117, 133, and 166 MHz). Only the 117 MHz version merits a Road Apple rating – and only because Apple left out the Level 2 (L2) cache.
So you have an iMac or Blue & White G3, and you totally love it – but you need to buy a low-cost removable-media drive. What should you get? With this criteria, you have three options: a Zip drive, a SuperDisk (a.k.a. LS-120) drive, or a standard floppy drive.
The Macintosh IIcx, IIci, and Quadra 700 share the same case design, and some users have found it a challenge removing the hard drive. That’s a shame, because the IIcx was designed for ease of construction. Apple demonstrated assembling one from part in under two minutes, if I recall correctly. You can use any standard […]
1999 – If you haven’t read Fred Langa’s latest anti-Mac tirade, you’ve missed a great compilation of misinformation and innuendo. (By now most Mac users know that Fred Langa seems to have a low tolerance for Apple Computer, the Macintosh, and especially the iMac.)
1999 – Like any other computer, the iMac, has it’s occasional problem. I’m not talking about a problem like, “Oh no, I got lime, but I wanted grape” or “Where’s the serial port?” I’m talking about bigger problems, like the devastating flashing question mark.
For the past several weeks, we’ve been buying and installing new Power Mac G3s at work. You know, the Blue and White ones.
1999: A special thanks to Jeffrey Cho of The iMac NewsPage for bringing this one to my attention: Has the Age of Disposable Computers Arrived? The US$299 WEBzter Jr. from Microworkz is one of the first PCs to emulate the iMac by shipping without a floppy – but with a 56k modem, so it’s Internet […]
1999: I received a nice note from Road Warrior reader and PowerBook 1400 user Albert Juwono of Indonesia this week.
Standing as it does, not only head and shoulders, but knees and ankles above its competitors in terms of name recognition, Adobe Photoshop is in danger of becoming a generic term for image editing software. An overwhelming majority of graphics professionals use it, and a great many amateurs as well, despite the fact that it […]
1999: I’m not alone in my burnout. I received a lot of email after last week’s column on burnout. Several writers, including a fair number of webmasters, said it helped them put things in perspective and reduce their hectic pace a bit. I’ve been slowly recovering from a few consecutive days that thoroughly drained me.
IF YOU’RE NOT DUTCH, YOU’RE NOT MUCH That’s been a common bumper sticker here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for as long as I can remember. Our most prominent ethnic group, if not our largest, is Dutch-Americans.
1999: I’m going to begin this week’s column with a couple of soapbox issues. First, the much-maligned passive-matrix (STN) dual-scan flat screen displays.
This article was written in 1999, the days of the Classic Mac OS (then at version 8.5), which was designed for a single CPU – and the G3 was then bleeding edge. We now have OS X, which supports multiple CPUs, CPU cores, and hyperthreading, but some of the problems discussed in this article remain […]
The ATI Nexus 128 is a PCI video card that works in a standard 33 MHz PCI or Apple’s accelerated 66 MHz PCI slot found in the Blue & White Power Mac G3 and the Yikes! Power Mac G4.
1999 – When I told my friends and family that I had just bought a new iMac, I got pretty much the same response: “Eww! A Mac!!! Gross.”
1999: Some people still don’t get the iMac. The new InfoWorld (15 March 1999), in a sidebar on page 40, comments, “There is still no floppy drive on this computer….” Duh!
1999: Computers have fascinated me since I read the first Radio Shack flyer about the TRS-80. And once I got my hands on a personal computer, I discovered my destiny. I was born to be a computer geek. (See Geek Like Me for more on that topic.)
What upgrades are practical for an older (pre-Power) Mac?
1999 – I cut my teeth on personal computers in 1979 on an Apple II+. Back then, the computer (not including floppy drive and monitor) cost over $1,500. Today, the 300 MHz Power Mac G3 is about the same price without floppy and monitor.
1999: I have never seen a review of an email list before, but I thought it would be helpful to have someone check one out to see what is on the list, and whether or not joining the list would be worth the effort and the crowded email box. I have done such on “The […]
