iMac iMpact

1999 – They say imitation is the biggest form of flattery. Well, Apple, I hope you’re flattered. Lately I’ve seen many iMac iMitations. From a real computer that had the same colors as the iMac to the iToaster, iToilet, and chiaMac.

It Isn’t Censorship, It’s Something Else

1999: In the wake of the U.S. Senate’s unanimous passage of a measure to require ISP’s to provide filters to subscribers, much debate has sprung up. Charles Moore warned of the thin edge of the wedge that this measure walks (Thin Edge Of The Wedge: Why Internet Censorship Is A Bad Idea, MacTimes [no longer […]

Censorship and Filtering

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 […]

A New Type of G3 Daughter Card

1999 – With the Power Mac 7500, 8500, and 9500, Apple introduced a new way of upgrading their computers: the CPU daughter card. Prior to this, all of Apple’s upgrades (except for PPC upgrades to 68K Macs) meant changing the system board.

A Student Bill of Rights

“Since Littleton, the cost of being different has gone up. Thousands of powerful e-mail messages have chronicled an educational system that glorifies the traditional and the normal, and brutalizes and alienates people who are or who are perceived as different under various names – geeks, freaks, nerds, Goths and oddballs. One of the powerful messages […]

It Isn’t Censorship

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 […]

SCSI Termination Power

Apple has used the SCSI bus since introducing the Mac Plus in 1986. The SCSI bus must have termination power for clean data transmission. Most Macs provide termination power for the SCSI bus, so most SCSI devices for the Mac don’t need to provide it.

Is Apple Missing the Boat?

1999 – Did it strike you odd that Apple completely ignored the iMac at the World Wide Developers Conference? Sure, the latest PowerBook G3 is an incredible machine, but what about the Power Mac, the consumer portable, the iMac?

Fixing and Preventing Hard Drive Crashes

1999 – Lately, many people have been telling me that their iMacs have been giving them many problems. They’ve been reporting crashes, freezes, and other various maladies. I’ve been able to relate to these people, since my own iMac (which I renamed “the useless green lump” – until I fixed it.) was crashing too, for […]

Lombard PowerBook G3

The 1999 version of the PowerBook G3 (a.k.a. Bronze Keyboard and Lombard) was announced on 1999.05.10 and reached stores by the end of the month. At nearly two pounds lighter and 20% thinner than the PowerBook G3 Series, toting Lombard was easier than any PowerBook since the 4.4 lb. 2400.   In the field, a fresh […]

Mac Alive and Kicking

1999 – Lately, many people have been saying to me, “Ha! You have a Mac! Macs are dead!” Well, I don’t think they are. The Mac might’ve been a bit unconscious for a while, but it most definitely isn’t now.

Stealing from Xerox?

Okay, this isn’t a joke so much as something I found interesting. Apparently when our good friend Mr. Jobs accused our other good friend, Mr. Gates, of stealing interface ideas, he replied like this: “No, Steve. I think it’s more like we both have this rich neighbour named Xerox, and when you broke in to […]

Myth II Review

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).

The Future Looks Good

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 […]

Menagerie of Macs #5

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 […]

A Stray Thought: Are All Mac Users Left-wing Liberals?

“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 […]

Hard Drive Failure

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 […]

C2, the Next iMac

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.

The Business iMac?

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.

Statistical Lies

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.

350 MHz iMac (Late 1999)

A Limited Mac At 350 MHz, it may not seem a whole lot faster than the Revision D iMac, but the new “Kihei” iMac uses a 100 MHz system bus – plus RAGE 128 graphics and 2X AGP for superior video performance. In addition to regular iMac features, the new iMac has two separate USB […]

333 MHz iMac (Rev. D)

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. […]