NeXT: Apple’s Right Choice

When I first wrote about BeOS, several readers were careful to point out the good sides of Apple picking NeXT instead of Be. Without the purchase of NeXT, we never would have gotten Steve Jobs back as iCEO, and there would be no iMac or iBook. But Apple got much more than Steve and a […]

The White iBook: Five Pounds of Genius

2001 – Apple has hit several home runs in the past few years, but it never did anything as fine as the latest iBook. The 4.9 pound portable is an almost incredible combination of strength, small size, good looks, and technology at a good price.

12″ iBook G3 (Mid 2001)

The Dual USB iBook had been the subject of great speculation in the weeks before its introduction. Gone were the tangerine orange, key lime green, graphite gray, and indigo blue colors of the past – the new iBook is simply white. Gone are the curves – the new iBook is a white box with rounded […]

Using BeOS on a Power Mac

In my past couple articles (BeOS or NeXT: Did Apple make the wrong choice? and User Interface: Mac vs. BeOS), I’ve described parts of BeOS. It’s a technically impressive OS that lacks some of the finesse that the Mac OS has.

User Interface: Mac vs. BeOS

Last week I talked about some of the advantages that BeOS has over Mac OS X. When Steve Jobs first demonstrated Mac OS X, Mac users got a taste of their own medicine – we’re used to having a superiority complex.

BeOS and BFS, the BeOS Filing System

I’m glad that my previous article has generated some interest and that David Puett took the time to clarify some points that I skimmed over in his BeOS or NeXT: Did Apple Make the Wrong Choice. I agree that I oversimplified some things in my article. Still, I think some of my ideas were generally correct, […]

Organize Your Files and Never Lose Track of Them

2001 – Before we get started, let me introduce a new feature to iBasics. I will rate tips in terms of difficulty, from easy to intermediate to expert. As the focus of the column is basics, we will mostly go through easy and intermediate topics, but sometimes an “expert” tip will be useful, especially as […]

BeOS or NeXT: Did Apple Make the Wrong Choice?

It’s hard to believe it has been four years. In early 1997, Power Computing announced that they would ship BeOS with its clones. An upstart clone maker shipping an upstart OS, if you will. This was big news, since BeOS fixed many of the problems that System 7 faced. The discussions from then sounds all […]

Home Network Throughput

In a previous article, I talked about creating an MP3 server out of a Quadra 630. At that time, I asserted that it could handle the job, but I hadn’t really tested it out. Now I’d like to put a few numbers on my Quadra’s performance and talk about optimizing it.

4 Years of Low End Mac

2001 – Four years ago, there was no Low End Mac. There were good resources for PowerBooks and Power Macs, but support for older models was spotty. You might find a really good Mac Plus page or a site with excellent Mac IIfx info, but I couldn’t find a comprehensive resource covering the oldest Macs.

PowerBook Value

2001 – Two weeks ago, in What’s Wrong with PowerBooks, I wrote about some negatives of PowerBooks, and last week I looked at the other side in What’s Right with PowerBooks. So what does it all mean?

Low End Mac Users Are Nuts

Dan Knight, most caring of all Mac-related website editors, thought it was time to allow us people from that little island across the big pond (that’s Great Britain, not Hawaii) who still use Apple computers in the face of ever dwindling numbers of Apple stores and ridiculous retail prices to make their voice heard on […]

What’s Right with PowerBooks

PowerBooks are wonderful but problematic. They can be too expensive, a poor desktop replacement, and not really that portable by the time they are packed up for traveling. Many people get caught up in the marketing around PowerBooks or iBooks when they would be better off with a different Mac.

Shot in the Foot Again: Firmware Upgrade Disables RAM

2001: Before I even knew there was a firmware update for my PowerBook G4, the Mac Web let me know that a lot of users were having problems with it. These updates were posted late Friday, March 23. By Saturday morning, sites like Accelerate Your Mac, Mac Observer, MacCentral, and MacFixIt were reporting big trouble […]

75 Mac Advantages, Part 3

2001 – There’s been a hiatus in the Mac Lab Reports, a column I have been writing consistently once a week for several months, while I did research for this entry, especially regarding QuickTime. I’ve wrestled with that one in particular because of the issues surrounding the implementation of multimedia on PCs.

RAM Disk Benchmarks, Classic Mac OS

2001: The newest addition to our benchmark suite is TimeDrive 1.3 (available here), which measures drive throughput. This can test a floppy, Zip, hard drive, or RAM Disk. TimeDrive is fairly primitive; the benefit of that is being able to run it on very old Macs.

Using Outlook Express 5, Part 3

2001 – Welcome to the third and final segment of this Outlook Express (OE) tutorial. We went through the most important features of OE in parts 1 and 2. To put the icing on the cake, let’s examine a bunch of convenient features available at your fingertips. They are mostly useful to personalize OE or […]

What’s Wrong with PowerBooks

2001 – There’s a chasm that separates the promise and the reality of PowerBooks. Maybe it is marketing or collective delusion, but PowerBooks can be a horrendous value for many people. Many PowerBook users just don’t get their money’s worth.

Using Outlook Express 5, Part 2

2001 – Last week, we went through the basics of Outlook Express (OE). Now it is time for slightly more complex operations to take advantage of the power that begs to be used. In this case, more complexity means more power. OE has a variety of tools that make importing, filtering, and sorting easy. They […]