A few weeks ago I got a letter from my friend David in Western Samoa. I lived next to David in Vaitoomuli village for two years while I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. We taught at the local high school together. I trained him on Macs, because I wanted to have someone to troubleshoot the […]
The science fiction world lost a great humorist and the Mac community lost a great advocate on Friday, May 11, 2001, when Douglas Adams unexpectedly passed on at the age of 49.
2001 – We continue the review of the old Apple 75 Macintosh Advantages brochure here, attempting to update it to Mac OS 8.6-9.1 vs. Windows 95/Me/2000 as much as possible.
2001-05-11: Super Mini Optical Mouse for notebooks. How Dual USB iBook keyboard differs from Clamshell iBook layout. New TiBook accessories from SmartBook. More ‘Book news.
2001 – Your Mac was so darn fast when you bought it. It was a top-of-the-line and state-of-the-art computer, but it suddenly seems older than you. You have the impression that with all its power, it could deliver the goods in much less time than it does now.
2001: Apple has been making CRT monitors since the late 1970s. Their last model, the Apple 17″ Studio Display with ADC, ended the line of perennially pricey displays with a myriad of off-the-wall features and ever-changing proprietary connectors. Yet there probably hasn’t been one model that somebody doesn’t love.
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 […]
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.
2001-05-05: Apple introduces new iBook design. More 512 MB modules available for TiBook. AppleCare on Apple refurbs. More ‘Book news.
2001: My previous article, The Computer for the Best of Us, stirred up quite a few emails. Some were angry; others agreed with my opinion. What became clear, however, was that there are two interpretations of “The Computer for the Rest of Us”.
2001 – Isn’t it great to have a cool looking desktop picture in the background when you do your work or surf the Net? Most people like to have a decent picture and have a hard time finding the one they like.
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 […]
As everyone knows, in order to graduate from any reputable IT school, the anti-Mac chant is our first line of defense against having to deal with Mac users. Remember, a happy Mac user is an IT administrator’s nightmare . . . because they never call you!
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.
2001-04-27: New iBook announcement rumored for next week. Tutorial on upgrading hard drives in iBooks. 512 MB modules for TiBook allow 1 GB of RAM. More ‘Book news.
2001 – When the word gets out that you want old Macs, people respond. A reader of this column recently donated several Macs to our school, including an old (1993) PowerBook 145b. Since my PowerBook 5300cs was stolen from a storeroom last fall, I have been ‘Bookless, and all computing has been restricted to home […]
2001 – We explored ways to increase the browsing speed of Internet Explorer (IE) a few weeks ago. As IE offers more than mere “get to the pages” browsing, we want to take advantage of all its features. With IE 5.0, Microsoft has added some great features.
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.
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, […]
2001-04-20: PowerLogix trims price of 466 MHz G3 upgrade for WallStreet. PCMCIA tutorial updated. FireWire Depot intros titanium laptop drive case. More ‘Book news.
I’ve gotten all sorts of interesting mail regarding the revised 75 Mac Advantages series I’ve been working on, but by far the most interesting letter I got was this one from Dan Edelen, the original author of the 75 Macintosh Advantages booklet. With his permission, I am reprinting his letter here for you read about […]
2001: The “Read Before You Install” document on the Mac OS X install CD says that installing Mac OS X on a FireWire or USB drive is unsupported. That means it doesn’t work, right?
2001: Charles Moore recently wrote a short piece on Applelinks, Macs Still Cost Too Much, discussing how Macs are too expensive when compared to PCs. While hardly one to drag an old argument out of the closet (Macs have better components, Macs last longer, etc.), I will admit that Charles does have a point.
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 […]
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 […]
2001-04-13: Used Lombard PowerBooks from $1,399. 333 MHz PowerBook 1400 and 466 MHz WallStreet G3 upgrades on sale. More ‘Book news.
2001 – Now that you know how to import and organize a library of MP3 files, you may want to take advantage of a very powerful feature offered in iTunes: CD burning.
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.
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.
2001-04-06: Apple’s Mobile Newsroom deal built around Titanium PowerBook. New FireWire hard drive enclosure. Bargain ‘Books. First refurbished TiBooks available. More ‘Book news.
2001: Microsoft recently announced it’s Hailstorm initiative. In a nutshell, Hailstorm is a storage system for the personal information of its users.
2001 – iTunes is one of the best software solutions that Apple has released in a long time. Despite the fact that most Apple software is great with a nice touch of Mac-like behavior, iTunes is a home run – it is beyond great. Not only is it amazing Mac software; it is consumer-savvy and […]
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?
Welcome to High End Mac, our April Fools 2001 parody of Low End Mac.
A senior programmer high in Microsoft’s Windows XP development team has written me with details on many additional improvements WinXP packs that were previously unknown to testers of XP Beta 2. The focus of the email was on the bugs in XP Beta 2.
