May 1998: We’ve had over a week to put iMac in perspective – and it’s still a winner.
Author Archives: Daniel Knight
1998 – I don’t think I’ve been this excited about a computer since I got my own Mac Plus to replace an 8 MHz XT clone.
This was posted during a discussion of stripping PowerPC (a.k.a. PPC native) code from the System Folder for use on 680×0-based Macs.
1998 – Homer Brickley on Nando.net thinks we’ll see $500 computers by Christmas ( The Computer Model T Is Not That Far Away). I beg to differ.
1998 – Your results may vary, but this should provide a good starting point for tweaking serial throughput on your Mac setup. Note that FreePPP allows serial port settings of 115.2 kbps and 230.4 kbps, settings not possible with Apple’s serial toolbox routines. This follows up on our earlier article, Macintosh Serial Throughput, providing real […]
1998 – Much of the following information has been distilled from a series of articles by Steve Gibson of SpinRite. Since these articles specifically address Click of Death (COD) tools in the Windows world, they provide excellent technical information but no Macintosh perspective. If you want to know more about COD, Gibson’s articles are the […]
1998 – Scott Barber blew me away with the news: He has Mac OS 8.1 running on a Macintosh IIsi!
April 1998 – You’ve probably heard that the University of Texas McCombs School of Business will require students to purchase or lease a specific Dell laptop running Windows NT beginning in the Fall 1998 semester. (Special thanks to thessaSource for following the story.)
“You can’t run a 9600 modem on a Plus.” “You’re wasting your money buying a 56k modem for that old Centris 610.” “Those old Macs don’t do handshaking.”
By now you’ve probably heard of FireWire, the new high speed standard for moving data between devices. Also known as IEEE Standard 1394 or P1394, FireWire was invented by Apple as a faster alternative to SCSI in its many permutations.
1998: The price/performance ratio of the Power Mac G3, especially after recent price cuts, is simply amazing. And somehow Apple has packaged the technology into the G3 All-in-One for as little as $1,500. The rumored $2,000 PowerBook G3 also sounds like an incredible value.
It’s the hot new technology for 1998: modem bonding. Windows 95 supports it, many modem makers support it, and ISPs are beginning to support it.
1998: I recommend you read It’s the Latency, Stupid by Stuart Cheshire to get a good understanding of latency, then come back to this overview.
1998: According to the hype, v.90 (a.k.a. 56k) modems are the greatest thing since Zip drives. In some respects, they are. They’re ideal for surfing the World Wide Web, but perhaps less than ideal for other uses.
1998: We’ve looked at packets, compression, and latency. We’ve seen that each takes a toll on throughput. The following shows the effect of this at various modem speeds.
1998: Should the Internet be a tax-free zone? President Clinton thinks it’s a good idea. Anyone shopping on the Internet is inclined to agree. Why would anyone oppose the Internet Tax Freedom Act?
March 1998 – This letter was written in response to news reports that the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, was considering phasing out Macs in favor of Windows computers. This letter should be appearing soon in Imprint, the university newspaper.
1998 – There are several variables that determine hard drive throughput: How fast your Mac can move data over the SCSI or IDE bus, how fast your drive can move data over the drive bus, and caching, including both disk caching by your Mac and the disk’s internal data buffer.
Apple popularized SCSI (small computer system interface) by making it a standard feature on the third Macintosh, the Mac Plus, which was introduced in January 1986. Although Apple only embraced a subset of the emerging SCSI standard, the new bus allowed chaining up to seven peripherals to the computer. The 8-bit parallel interface was theoretically […]
“No Newton is good news.” “Apple kills the Newton.” “Life after Newton.” These are just a few of the headlines since Apple’s Feb. 27 announcement to discontinue the innovative but unprofitable handheld computers. Although it would have been nice if Apple could have sold the Newton division and its technology to someone else, the fact […]
1998: By now, everyone should realize that the 56k modem is just a flash in the pan. So were the 33.6k modem, the 28.8k modem, and the rare 19.2k modem. And let’s not forget the 14.4k modem, the 9600 modem, the 2400 modem, the 1200 modem, the 300 modem, and the lowly 110bps modem.
1998 – If you’ve seen the snail, you love the snail. Apple’s incredible new ad pulls no punches, bragging to the world that a Power Mac G3 is up to twice as fast as a Pentium II PC.
1998 – It’s the talk of the Internet: Apple has apparently inked an exclusive deal with CompUSA as the only national (U.S.) Macintosh reseller.
It had to happen sooner or later: First, Apple dropped support for the Mac 128K and 512K. After all, with single-sided floppies, too little RAM, and no SCSI port, they could no longer be considered serious productivity machines. The last version of the Mac OS to support these computers was 4.1, introduced in 1986.
“Should You Buy Disposable PCs?” is the cover story in the February 1998 issue of Byte. It is certainly an intriguing question.
During Macworld San Francisco came the rumors that Claris would discontinue Emailer. With freeware Eudora Lite and the emailer in Internet Explorer 4.0, perhaps people would be unwilling to pay for Emailer.
A source in Kitsap, Washington, writes, “I read the articles about the Grand Rapids (MI) Schools trying to go to PC only, and I couldn’t help but relate to the problems in Grand Rapids. The South Kitsap (WA) School District, where I live and where my wife teaches, is going through the same horror. I […]
Low End Mac began on April 7, 1997. The first editorials were published on July 15, 1997. All editorials are by Dan Knight unless otherwise noted.
Can you say beleaguered? That became the word most associated with Apple in 1997.
Rather than have six separate pages for the remaining case studies, all of which are quite brief, I’m combining them all on a single page.
