I’m the news director of a small TV station in upstate New York, and a few weeks back we decided to put more effort into our station’s web site. “More effort,” in this case, meant two or three updates during the working week, and still pictures to go with the stories.
Category Archives: Mac Musings
1999: One of the more interesting stories of the past week was the decision of MacTimes to close its doors and try to auction off its domain name on eBay for a cool $100,000. As I write this, there are 12 hours to go – and no bidders.
Intel recently christened “the chip formerly known as Merced” with the newly coined name ITANIUM. (Yes, they really do want it in all caps. Tough.)
Five years ago, my employer was spending about $3,600 for a Power Mac 6100/66 with 16 MB of memory (so much!) and a 230-500 MB hard drive. And Apple’s extended keyboard, which was a separate item back then. And an Apple 14″ color monitor.
1999: After looking over the requirements for deploying FileMaker 5, my employer has decided to cancel the upgrade order. We have a network of about 80 Macs, most running System 7.5.5 and many running 68040 processors (including IIcis with Sonnet upgrades), and everyone uses FileMaker with shared databases on our file server. The cost of […]
1998: Last week, I wrote about ATMs from a human interface perspective. I suggested graphics and color and a modicum of intelligent programming could go a long way in making ATMs more friendly and less frustrating.
1999: Apple has responded to the uproar over the inability of Blue & White Power Mac G3s with certain ROM upgrades to accept G4 processors. The following is from Apple’s Tech Exchange. (Because Apple considers this an off-topic discussion, this page was removed from their site.)
1999 – One little chip sure can set off a world of controversy. It started when Apple introduced the Power Mac G3 in November 1997.
Power Macintosh G4: As far as many are concerned, that sums up Steve Jobs’ big Seybold announcement today. It was certainly an impressive introduction. Depending on what software you’re currently running, the 500 MHz Power Mac G4 can be two-to-three times faster than the fastest G3 or Pentium III available today.
1999 – In The iBook Disaster, John C. Dvorak dissed the iBook design as a “girly” computer, saying, “The only thing missing from the new Apple iBook is the Barbie logo.”
1999: A reader got me thinking when he wrote, “I find myself more and more bothered by Apple’s current direction and am curious to know what you think. “Here’s what has me agitated: shutting out Be, shutting down involvement in mkLinux, the rumored ‘no G4 upgrade’ bomb in the G3s, OS X not compatible with […]
1999: The United Nations has proposed an email tax to subsidize internet connectivity in the two-thirds world. The latest rumor is that the United States government also wants to tax email. From the perspective of the taxman, email has got to look like one incredible revenue opportunity.
1999 – Apple did it again. Not only did they turn a profit, but they exceeded analyst’s expectations. This is a brief summary of those results.
1999: Third Voice is a plugin for Internet Explorer for Windows that allows Third Voice users to append comments to pages on the world wide web. These comments are available to anyone who uses Third Voice. The biggest objections have come from webmasters. We really don’t like the idea of people putting notes on our […]
1999: Who would have thought that a PC software product could make such waves in the Mac community? But that’s what is happening: The appearance of Third Voice has caused quite a stir, prompting articles, emails, and long threads in various forums.
1999: Convergence is the coming together of separate streams. In this case, the streams of personal computers and television. In Why Convergence Won’t Happen, Rabbe Sandelin says that it isn’t going to happen.
1999: “BlackBerry is the first complete, secure, integrated, wireless email solution for the mobile professional. Microsoft Exchange users can now enjoy untethered access to their corporate email wherever they go.”
1999: Whether you call it the P1, Consumer Portable, iBook, or WebMate, Apple’s newest portable Macintosh is shaping up to be a real winner. For consistency, we’ll call it the WebMate in this article.
1999: Have you heard that Gateway now sells as much equipment through its storefronts as it does via phone, mail, and online orders? Talk of the Web for the past week has been that Apple should do the same thing. After all, they have very little control over CompUSA and Sears, let alone the hundreds […]
I received an interesting email yesterday.* The writer asked, “Where is the low end in Low End Mac?” Ouch.
1999: Change is the very nature of the computer industry. From the first computer kits to the first personal computers. From the 8-bit Apples, Commodores, and TRS-80s to the pseudo-16-bit IBMs, and then to the graphical Lisa and Macintosh.
1999: Our friends at the Macintosh Broadcasting Company (MacBC) are thinking different. In the article Is It Time for a Cheaper Mac?, they propose that Apple wait to release a new inexpensive modular Mac until it can ship with Mac OS X Client installed.
1999: You’ve gotta love the spin people put on things.
1999: To begin, I want to thank Charles W. Moore of MacTimes for bringing up the subject of censorship and Web filtering (see Thin Edge Of The Wedge: Why Internet Censorship Is A Bad Idea [no longer online]). Over the past two days, AppleLinks (It Is Too Censorship!) and MacBC (Is Filtering the Same as […]
1999: Charles W. Moore objects to the United States government requiring larger ISPs to provide content filtering to its customers for free or at cost (see Thin Edge Of The Wedge: Why Internet Censorship Is A Bad Idea [no longer online]). Although I agree with Moore in general that censorship is a bad thing, I […]
1999: PowerBooks have always been six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. Usually a step or two slower than their desktop siblings, in the past, PowerBooks often suffered from compromised screens, small hard drives, and serious memory limitations.
1999: According to The Internet Operating System Counter, the Mac OS and Linux are the fastest growing server operating systems.
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: 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.
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.)
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: 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.
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.)
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.
Have you heard about iCab, the new shareware Mac-only web browser from Germany?
