Instant Messaging: There are a few options here but Meebo easily provides the best experience. It is essentially the same as the other options, however with Meebo you can use your existing account to log into multiple IM accounts at the same time. This however has a secondary purpose that makes it so great. When you’re instant messing with Edge there is a good chance you will get disconnected and miss parts of the conversation. Meebo enables logging when you sign up for an account, so you never miss any part of any conversation, and can refer back to it  at any time. http://meebo.com – automatically loads iPhone version upon visit.

Photo sharing: A sometimes forgotten feature of Flickr, Ringo, and other photo sites is the ability to add photos via e-mail. While this method isn’t as snazzy as iFlickr, you do have options of sending your photos with titles, descriptions, tags, and privacy settings. For your own e-mail upload addresses check in your Flickr or Ringo tools section. I suggest adding them as contacts with simple name like “flickr public” and “flickr friends.”

Netflix: While the iPhone does provide full access to the web, some sites are just a pain to navigate in a small screen. Netflix does not have an iPhone specific mobile site, but they do have a plain Jane one that allows full queue management and search functionality. The only drawback with using this site outside of it not looking pretty, is the lack of a webclip icon. https://www.netflix.com/Mobile/Login

Movie Times: Fandango and MovieTickets both have iPhone sites, but you may find them unintuitive and clunky, taking too long to find a movie in your area. Google however has a less pretty, but much faster solution – which is all the more important when you’re not on a WiFi network. Enter your zip and it shows movies, average ratings and reviews, and links to purchase tickets for multiple theaters in the area. http://www.google.com/movies?sc=1&hl=en&near=&rl=1

Your other option is Cinema – A newer webapp I switched to just today that has a great interface and is slightly easier to read than Google Showtimes. The drawback in comparison is the lack of reviews and IMDB links. http://themacbox.co.uk/iphone/cinema/

TV Times: A simple TV Guide is exactly what it claims to be. It allows you to sort by day or channels, change time zones easily, and search for specific shows. http://tv.comoki.com

Games: Unfortunately the nature of web apps limits the control you have for gaming in a browser, so you cannot expect much more than puzzle games and Myst-like point and tap adventures. There are  plenty of TicTacToe games and the like, but frankly it’s silly to do those games on iPhone when you can use a napkin or piece of paper without any load times. I find iSudoku, iPipes, and Bewjewled kill time the fastest in a doctors office or on the train.

Podcasting: To catch the latest podcasts without syncing your phone you can use Podcaster. You can add your favorites directly from your iTunes Library and find new podcasts within the app. The only downside of listening through your browser is that you cannot surf to other places while the file is playing. Some of my favorite podcasts are BuzzOutLoud, Gadgettes, Cranky Geeks and of course The MacCast (/shameless plug). http://podcaster.soprotech.com/

Passwords: We’ve talked about it many times, and now 1Password can sync to your iPhone and uses unique, secure bookmarks to autofill forms on websites. Your longwindedly secure passwords now don’t have to be typed out! 1Password has an extremely generous trial and is very affordable.

That’s all for now. I will follow up soon with more web apps and tips for making the most out of your iPhone. As as side note, users who bank with Bank of America have an amazing web app that gives you access to your account and finds ATM locations. Definitely worth checking out, even if you use another bank. The side is so good it makes me want to switch over from Commerce.

Today, Psystar tried to put all naysayers to rest by posting this video on their web site. They claim it shows their Open Computers running OS X Leopard, Ubuntu 8, and Windows Xp Professional. Now I am not refuting their claims, but as I watched the video I did notice some things that seem just too wonky not to point out. Besides I always love a good conspiracy theory.

As the video opens we see the alleged Open Computer running OS X on the far left. There is a bundle of small cables under the desk below the system and it looks like they are probably Ethernet cables. Nothing too unusual but, as you will see, they later seem to disappear. Even more unusual is the space below the desk on the right where there is an empty wire rack shelf system. Note that at this point in the video there seems to be nothing there. Also note that the area to the right of the display is empty. These two points will become significant later.

As the camera pans right we see the Ubuntu machine and the Windows box. Both have several cables coming out the side of the computer and running to the right toward the monitor.

Now notice the Mac system… no cables coming off to the right like with the Ubuntu and PC systems. Also notice that the bundle of Ethernet-like cables pointed out in the opening scene no longer seem to be visible.

Next the video transitions into showing the Open Computer supposedly running Leopard and the Mac version of Quake 4. What is interesting in this shot is there now seems to be an extra cable running from the right of the monitor toward the area of the desk where the empty wire shelf system sits. That shelf is also no longer empty as it looks like it now has a strange blue box sitting on it. At first I thought the cable near the monitor might be the mouse cable, but in the Quake demo scene you can clearly see the mouse cable moving with this mysterious second cable above it. The thicker cable does seem to be the monitor cable and it is going off to the right not the left. Remember, the Open Computer that is supposed to be running OS X Leopard is to the left of the monitor, not the right. Interesting.

Finally, the closing shot shows the exterior of the Psystar offices. When reports of Psystar and their Open Computer (initially called the Open Mac) first surfaced on the web, several reports noted that they changed their address as many as 3 times. Now that fact alone is strange enough, but throw in a phone number with an oddly high number of 6′s, plus the fact that they seem to want to keep things private and you have the makings of a full blown conspiracy.

Can someone ring up Fox and see if he is available to come down to Florida?

I’m twenty years old and a total geek, but I’ve only had owned mobile phone for about 3 weeks. My first phone was a V3 Razr, which was okay, but after owning the (hacked) iPod Touch and always thinking “I could click this number and call it if this were an iPhone” the Razr felt very limited. Even more so when browsing the web with the Opera browser or playing any games. Then came Sunday January 19th, the day I lost my iPod somewhere in New Jersey. The next day I went out and bought an iPhone.

Despite not owning a mobile in the past, I have spent quality time with Treos, Razrs, various Motorala models, and the iPhone. So my post isn’t completely without merit and experience. Browsing the web on those phones does not at all compare to the experience Safari provides on the iPhone. I would go so far to say that for the average consumer the only advantage they have are physical buttons, which allow you to dial numbers without looking when you’re driving… which we all do despite how dangerous it is. So in my fanboyish way I’ll check that off as Apple looking out for my safety.

A large portion of complaints I’ve heard are fixed, fixable, or just trivial. SMS messaging and overall performance of the phone has been greatly improved with the recent 1.1.3 update. The Software Development Kit (SDK) will be providing us with plenty of third party software without any hacks. Edge may not be the fastest, but isn’t nearly as slow as some people would have you think. iPhone does not sync with iTunes over the air, record video, send pictures and video messages to other phones, copy and paste, work with Exchange, have an easily replaceable battery, or have a slot for adding more memory. But the question I asked myself before buying was if I, or anyone, really needs those things.

Some complaints are like the lack of Exchange support are completely legitimate and crippling to some business customers. However the majority of complaints can, and likely will be fixed in future updates. The fact that the battery is not accessible to consumers is the biggest shame on Apple. If you’re going to spend 400 USD on a phone you should be able to access the battery without Apple/ATT getting involved. You will likely never seen an iPhone with a card slot to add a petty couple gigs of storage, and Apple has never released an iPod where you can easily access the battery. Perhaps this is just a train of thought we will have to get used to.

Apple has a decent chat client on OS X with iChat, so why this wasn’t available to us on the iPhone at launch is beyond me. When looking at the overall picture the iPhone keeps you connected in every single way your Mac’s default software does except for instant messaging. Doubtless this will be addressed by Apple in the future or by a third party, but Instant Messaging was a standard part of mobile phones well before the iPhone came to the scene. I’ve used the web-based clients and they are nice, but a native iChat client would allow notifications and a lot more features. You could list loads of apps that should be on the iPhone, but given how third party applications are just around the corner there really isn’t a problem. (Though I must admit I painfully miss Labyrinth and themes.)

The biggest problem is if you’re using the iPhone on anything but a Mac it can be a totally different experience. iPhone really is designed around iLife, so even if it works without flaw you’re not getting the same experience a Mac user is. Telling it to sync with Outlook and “My Pictures” just isn’t as intuitive and smooth. For example take a look at the Apple support forums; you will see plenty more threads from Windows users begging for help than Mac users. I am one of those people. I only own a PC at the moment, there is a Mac mini in my house. The problems were so annoyingly painful I decided to just sync to the Mac Mini until I get my own Mac. There are literally dozens of threads on the Apple support forums with people asking for help with the same problems over and over, getting no replies. Even if it is a small portion of the user-base, these issues are understandably annoying. This is the collective fault of Apple and Microsoft I’m sure, but the responsibility in my eyes is with Apple to provide a complete experience for any operating system they support.

This all said, I’m still fresh with my iPhone. As time goes on and we see more updates and the first third party apps you can expect to hear from me again.

Guitar Hero is a REALLY great game, and you can now jam comfortably in front of your Mac.

Here are the specs for those who wish to jam:

In the box

* Guitar Hero 3 software
* Guitar Hero X-Plorer wireless guitar controller
* Guitar strap

System Requirements

* Mac OS X v10.4.10 or v10.5 or later
* 2GHz or faster Intel Core Duo processor (2.33GHz recommended); does not support PowerPC processors
* 1GB RAM (2GB recommended)
* 6.1GB free hard-disk space (5.1GB + 1GB swap file)
* Video card: ATI Radeon X1600 or nVidia GeForce 7300
* Video memory (VRAM): 128MB (256MB recommended)
* DVD-ROM drive
* Macintosh mouse and keyboard

As you can see it’s a bit processor and RAM reliant. If you have the power then rock on!

I have heard a number of people express the opinion recently that Apple has changed the way that it announces products. This comes from the fact that Apple recently pre-announced two products, months in advance before you could even order them. The two products were the AppleTV and the iPhone. This has set the expectation for a number of people that they might learn about the next iPod or the next iMac in a similar pre-release fashion. This post is intended to discourage that expectation.

Let’s back up a bit and look at what this from Apple’s point of view. In general when Apple, or some other hardware company, releases a new product they are going through a product transition. So when they announce a new iPod they are trying to maximize how much money they make. A product transition has some risks for the company.

If they announce a product too soon and the product sounds very good then people may choose to stop buying the current product and wait for the new product. This is called the Osborne Effect after Osborne Computer Corporation which pre-announced a series of new products in 1983. The company went out of business shortly there after and the most common story has been that their sales dried up when they announced these new machines. (Whether this actually caused Osborne to go out of business is not universally accepted in retrospect, no one seems to argue that this was helpful to the company).

If a company still has old units in its warehouse when it ships the new product, these products will have to be sold for less money (or perhaps not sold at all). But, if the company guesses wrong how many of the old product it will sell in this transition and runs out of units in the warehouse then it may lose sales to a competitor. Combine this with a slip in the new product and you get the kind of scenario that can keep executives awake at night.

So why did Apple decide to pre-announce not one, but two products last year? The main reason would seem to be that they were not going through a product transition. They did not have a TV box when they pre-announced the AppleTV nor a cell phone when they pre-announced the iPhone. Why does this make a difference? The big difference here is that customers may in fact not buy some product that they were planning on buying and wait for the Apple product, but in this case it was not an Apple product. So with the iPhone, for example, what Apple wanted was for people to decide not to by that new BlackBerry, Blackjack, Razr, etc but to wait for the iPhone. What Apple did was create F.U.D. (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) about their competitor’s products. They did not need people to pre-order the iPhone so much as they wanted them to at least wonder whether they should wait and see. FUD is a very useful marketing tool. If you don’t have something sell, marketeers are trying to at least get you to wait before buying a competing product. Their hope, which worked in the case of the iPhone, is that if you wait long enough they will have a product you will want to buy.

So, will Apple pre-announce the next iMac. That is unlikely. But if they get into yet another consumer product business then it is very likely that they would pre-release that product.

This is a landmark case for the European Commission (EC) who seems to be actively pursuing large US companies with large market share in their respective fields, and it appears that Apple is next on the EC’s radar.

Apple and some of its music partners are currently facing investigation by the European anti-trust officials for the pricing of items in the iTunes store. The commission wants to discover the reasons for different pricing in different territories of the European Union (for people who aren’t in Europe, you can only purchase from the country which your credit/debit card address is located. Apple also has different prices in the different stores). This is no joke for Apple as the EC has power to fine a company up to 10% of there worldwide revenue.

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs said recently, “We think prices should be the same. We think anybody in Europe should buy off any store.” but then contradicting this a Reuters report is claiming an Apple spokesman said, “there is nothing in it’s contract with Universal obliging it to operate national stores or to set a higher price in countries such as Britain”, so what’s stopping Mr Jobs from doing what he says he wants to do?

Many analysts and the commission believe the reason Apple takes this position is due to the record labels putting pressure on the company to operate the variable pricing structure in different EU countries. The trouble is it contradicts and is possibly in violation of the anti-trust laws which operate in the EU. The record labels claim they charge different rates to cover different royalty payment rates which are overseen by different agencies depending on the country and are negotiated on a country by country basis.

I live in the UK and feel it would be much better for consumers if we had one European iTunes store from which we could all purchase. It would be a lot easier for everyone, as content is not consistent along with the pricing.

Checkout the video below from iJustine (tastyblogsnack.com). It shows her opening her 300-page AT&T bill. It had to come in a box rather than an envelope?! Come on.

The issue is, even though the iPhone data plan is unlimited, AT&T itemizes every bit (and byte) of data along with it’s associated charge. That means when you load a page in Safari, every graphic, image, video, sound, etc. is listed line by line in your bill. Now luckily, iPhone owners can opt-in to receive their bills electronically. If you have an iPhone you should set this up immediately. Do it now, don’t wait.

My big problem with this is that AT&T (and Apple) should know better. With an unlimited data plan it makes no sense at all to itemize charges like this. Let’s hope they hear the complaints coming from their customers and change this practice soon.

This may not be anything terribly new, but it appears at least one company has put a half-hearted attempt at misleading Mac users. While looking up guitar tabs this morning I came across this:

You might say that including both a Windows interface and a Mac interface would be ingenious, except for it’s fatal flaw. The first giveaway is, of course, the large Fisher Price looking buttons sticking out like a sore thumb. The second is it not being an actual window you can interact with. You might say the ad is doing more damage to itself by alerting Windows users that something is up.

However annoying it is, I couldn’t help but chuckle when I saw the attempt. At the very least we can say Apple is finally getting more attention, maybe not the kind we want, but it’s a start.

[Email to the Maccast, 7/29/2007]
I actually converted my parents to Mac when I was in college. Two years ago I gave my mom my year old laptop that ran Windows when I purchased my Power Book for school. My parents are as far from computer literate as they come… they had a computer that was running Windows 98 and was turned on about 3 times a year before I gave them my old laptop.

I listened to my mom complain that whole year about the Windows laptop I gave her because she didn’t know how to use it for anything other than the same tasks she does at work and wasn’t willing to put in all the time to learn it (not to mention all the “tech support” calls I would get from her asking me to fix it… from 200 mi. away over the phone…)

A year later when I upgraded to the Intel chip Mac Book Pro I decided that instead of selling my year old Power Book right away I would give it to my mom to use and maybe start enjoying the tasks she wants to do at home. I spent the weekend at my parents place and sat down with her one day and introduced her to the OS and explained that anything she didn’t know how to do she could figure out on her own if she “thinks simple”.

After only one week and 2 phone calls for help my mom was off and running with her new Mac. The digital camera she bought was finally getting used as was the mini DV. She started a mailing list to family and friends, created a DVD for a family event, doing all kinds of photography and basically having fun with a computer! After those initial 2 calls I haven’t heard a word from her all year about needing help to figure something out or fix something.

Giving that computer to my family was the best thing I could have done. I escaped untold numbers of phone calls for help, my parents have started enjoying/understanding technology and other members of my family heard about it and have purchased macs for themselves.

Reprinted with permission

EA is answering the call by releasing at the same time in July Command and Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed: Carbon, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix(believe it or not, but it looks pretty good). Bing also announced that they would also be releasing simultaneously their Madden and Tiger Woods games to the Mac.

ID founder John Carmack also made an appearance to show off some new technology they are going to be implementing into their new games which will be shown off at E3, it would be a safe bet to say it will have an OSX release, only what is it, plus the fact that they are at the conference gets me all excited.

So a huge announcement from EA saying they are going to give us Mac gamers what we want, and making it a timely release. Now we have to show them that we want this by supporting them, and purchasing the games.

What do you think about these new developments?

Live Maccast Chat: If you are reading this before or during the keynote and want to chat about it live join us on iChat/AIM in the room: maccast. To access it using iChat:

1) Launch iChat
2) Go to: File–>Go to Chat… and enter ‘maccast’m as the chat name.

See you there.

From Dale Mugford:

As always, there are surprises unforeseen or unlikely that Apple makes happen at each year’s WWDC. Last year for me, it was the 802.11 draft-N Airport Extreme, which was not even mentioned in the keynote but was included as an update to the online store.

This year, I am wondering whether, despite having little to no word or mention on any rumor blogs, whether the Airport Express will see some kind of revamping for N or not.

As others around the web have guessed, I think Apple’s coming out with a full force Leopard attack, to reverse the negative lull that inevitably followed the notice of its delay. They surely want to ramp and rev it up, get people excited, and unveil features which will make Time Machine look like a minor addition. Leopard, despite being still months away, is an important move for Apple, one which will hopefully build on the Intel transition and propel sales of Macs higher in the market.

And there’s that iPhone thing. One wonders whether Apple has been hard-pressed to pump out the hardware in production while pushing hard to finish up software aspects in time for release. Could there be anything else that the iPhone will offer?

Unlike Alex, I think the Mac Mini may be toast. If it isn’t, it’s going to belong in the new small square box family, adopting the form factor of the Airport Extreme and the  TV.

From Jack Hodgson:

FWIW, I considered writing something, but when I looked around, I realized that I had no real leads on what will be announced. I’m gonna be just as (pleasantly?) surprised as anyone else.

From (me) Alex Curtis:

My top three hopes/predictions:

• Newton-like Assist: If you’ve never had the pleasure of using an Apple Newton, you probably don’t know what you’re missing. One of the neatest features of the Newton, besides handwriting recognition, was an service called Assist. Assist, when asked, could examine the meaning of text and do things with it. So, if you received an email that had a lunch appointment in it, simply tap Assist, and the Newton would add the event to your calendar, with the appropriate person’s info (taken from their email address which it would associate from your Address Book), and add them to the invite list. Assist could also grab info from an email’s signature, and automatically populate an Address Book card with the info (for some time, I used to just send emails to my Newton, just so I didn’t have to type out all the info into Mac OS X’s Address Book). Google Calendar is only starting to provide these kinds of features, but it still has a long way to go before it catches up to the Newton’s technology, which is some 10 years old. It would be great if Apple remembered it had this technology and ported it to Mac OS X Leopard.

• More extensible Address Book: The wealth of information that users can store in their Address Book is really staggering. And even though many Mac OS X applications can pull from that data, it’s rarely used in advanced ways. For instance, each contact can be associated with one or many other contacts (even though currently, there’s no look-up query for those fields to make it easier to populate). By tying those associations into social network-like services (maybe through .Mac?) like LinkedIn, Address Book users could find whole new ways to leverage the contacts they’ve made—and built right into the OS. Family trees could be easily generated as well. Adding this kind of basic intelligence to AB would help other apps like Mail. Imagine being able to sort incoming emails by people associated with a specific person or family. Crawling your previous emails to find relationships between contacts that you didn’t previously realize?

• iSync Phone Plugin Creator: So many phones out there support SyncML in some way or another, but many manufacturers don’t bother to build support for iSync. Enabling more users to “crowd source” the problem would go a long way to more Mac adoption. There’s rumor that we may actually see this kind of app, let’s just hope it’s true! It would be nice if this app also provided ways to sync not only contacts and events, but music, photos, and video too.

From our fearless leader, Adam Christianson:

I personally think we are likely to only see a demo of the new Leopard and get a detailed overview of what is in the final release. I would also like to see Jobs announce iPhone and Apple TV development workflows, SDKs and support. I expect Apple to require development for both platforms go through matching certification programs. I think it is possible we also see the quiet roll out of new iMacs or Mac Minis during the week.

How about you? What are you hoping to see at tomorrow’s WWDC 2007 Keynote? Drop a comment below with your best predictions.

I have been in a few Apple stores and they are generally set up the same with the high end production software to the left of the register and the games, GarageBand loops, etc to the right.

I was perusing the latest additions to the Mac gaming world and over heard one teenager complain with a friend about the price of a game that is at least two years old, the name of the game I cannot recollect. He stated that the game was two years old, was already in the bargain bin at a local “Big Box” store, and was more than fifty percent cheaper. The question was; “Why should I pay more for something I can get for less?” His friend, who obviously was a Mac owner, looked around the store like a person who had just been publicly humiliated as his friends tone carried throughout the store. The Mac owner quickly retorted that playing on a Mac is better than playing on the PC.

At this point I was pretending to be interested in a foreign language teaching app so as to be discreet and not be seen being nosy. I had to hear the Mac owners reasons, I have my own but thought they would be different.

He said, “They look great with the Mac displays! Nothing looks better than an LCD screen.” He was arguing the case very good so far. “Did you know that the Macs have Intel chips in them?” The friend at this point looked like a deer in the headlights, he obviously didn’t have a clue about the new Macs having not only Intel chips, but Core 2 Duos. “That means you can run Windows, if you really felt the need, and play your PC games.”

I’m not going to say at this point that the friend went right up to the register and bought a Mac, but I will say that he was intrigued. He at least went up to one of the Mac specialists and asked questions about the graphics cards that came with them, and other options that could be had.

He may never own a Mac, but he will at least know why it’s fantastic to play games on the Mac. Think about it this way, the game you are purchasing may be two years old, but it’s has had patches and has had bug fixes that were not done at the very beginning, so in most cases you are getting the best product and not worrying if the program will crash. Because our PC friends have done all the beta testing for the Mac version for us.

Looking at the application dock just now it occurred to me that that was an interesting collection of apps. Maybe not. But for better or worse, here they are (show us yours too if you like):

Grab — We start right out with an oddball. This is the standard screen grab utility that comes with the Mac, and I basically NEVER use it. But it’s open now cause I couldn’t get any of my usual tools to grab the application dock. But Capture->”Timed Screen” did the trick. I quit it the moment after I took the shot, and probably won’t see it again for a long time.

Finder — Ah the Finder. At Merlin Mann’s suggestion, I tried Path Finder for awhile, but Finder is good enough for me. I’ve even gotten used to the left-hand-icon-sidebar of Tiger. Although I really wish we could get consistent about what a single- vs double-click does on an icon.

ImageWell — I only found this app since MacWorld, and now I wouldn’t want to live without it. It makes incredibly simple the process of grabbing, scaling, doing simple editing, and then uploading, of images for my blogs. I love it!

Transmit — FTP client. I’ve used more different FTP clients over the years than just about any other type of app. Interarchy, NetFinder, Fetch, Cyberduck, others I’m sure, now Transmit. Transmit is working well for me right now. I have no desire to change. And I hate to damn-with-faint-praise, but I can’t promise I won’t switch again. It’s me.

BBEdit — BBEdit is one of the 3-4 apps that are running on my Mac ALL THE TIME. Years ago I gave up doing any of my writing in MS Word. Now I write prose, code, journals, proposals, scripts, invoices, drafts of emails & blog posts, lists, reminders, just about everything, in BBEdit. It has a weird combination of simplicity and power. Hard to explain. But it’s the place where I write, and I write a lot.

OmniOutliner — I’m evaluating using this to organize my to-do list in a GettingThingsDone sort of way. The jury’s still out. OmniOutliner was included on my MacBook. I think it’s the full version, and not a demo. I’ll be bummed if it expires.

Calculator — I use this often, but don’t usually leave it running. It’s still open from a recent session of arithmetic.

Ecto — For posting to most of my blogs. I could probably set it up to post to this one too, but I haven’t yet. It’s a terrific tool for easily creating, formatting, and uploading blog entries to all the major blogging systems. One quibble: I bought a license for it a couple years ago. Then, in one of my system upgrades and/or machine migrations, it forgot that I’d paid, so now I use it in Demo mode and it periodically pesters me to pay (again). It’s easier for me to reset the demo timer (I’ll never tell how), than to try and find the registration info. My-bad.

Terminal — Every now and then you have to do the Command Line thing. Running on my Mac about half the time.

Software Update — Not usually running on my Mac, but last night I was checking to see if I have all the OS X patches installed prior to the early (and awesome!) arrival of daylight savings time. I also installed the new iTunes, more on that soon.

Quicktime Player — I’m part way through watching the latest episode of Diggnation. I could watch it in iTunes, but for some reason there are things that I prefer to watch, or listen to, in Player. Anybody else feel that way?

Mail — This is another of the apps that is always running on my Mac. For years (and years, and years) I was a Eudora user. Mail Version 1 was pretty bad, but when Mail v.2 came along it got a lot better. So I switched. I tried Thunderbird for awhile, and didn’t like it. Tried BareBones’ Mailsmith for awhile, and liked it, but not $100 worth, vs. FREE for Mail. Full disclosure, I also use Gmail for some of my mail. Both Gmail and Apple Mail have their plusses. But they’re two completely different things. Apples and Oranges, so to speak.

SpamSieve — This spam filtering program is awesome. I installed it a couple months ago when Mail’s spam filter inexplicably stopped filtering (still don’t know why). I tried the free demo of SpamSieve, paid the fee, and never looked back. Learns fast and very accurate. Highly recommended.

Firefox — Another app that’s running all the time. I run Safari as the default browser on my desktop (secondary) Mac. But on my MacBook (primary Mac) I run Firefox. I’ve tried most of the Mac browsers, and many of them are very good. But I’m comfortable with, and have all my bookmarks in, FF.

iTunes — Runs about 50% of the time. Use it mostly to listen to podcasts while I work (or pretend to be working). Just upgraded to the new version 7.1. I’ve yet to notice the difference. Although I leave iTunes running even when not listening to something, it’s one of the first apps I’ll quit when I need to recover memory or performance for some other purpose.

Awaken — This is something I’m evaluating for a possible posting. It’s a timer app that lets you program regular repeat reminders, as well as set a one-time timer. It seems to work just fine. Otherwise the jury’s still out. More later, maybe.

So those are the apps I’m running right now. I’m tempted to think of what apps I use that are not running right now, but then that would defeat the whole purpose of this posting.

What apps are YOU running right now?. Show us here

One of the early “Get a Mac” ads featured the Mac being able to communicate with a new digital camera while the PC just looked on, bewildered. Apple computers are supposed to “just work.” Yep, they “just work” with some peripherals if you happen to have a USB cable handy. Why is this the case?

Apple has always been an innovator. They dropped the floppy disk drive much earlier than other PC makers, included wi-fi in their laptops before many others and of course, Apple’s industrial design has influenced many other computer makers.

But for some reason, Apple has not integrated a media card reader into their laptops, nor their desktop lines. I own a MacBook Pro, and a couple of more slots on the side of the laptop would not look odd or ugly. iMacs could also benefit from a few slots for SD or CompactFlash cards artfully placed below the CD/DVD drive. It’s absolutely inexcusable that the Mac Pros do not have such slots. These are pricey computers; they should have features that are available on low-end PCs. However, I am not sure where on the Mac mini Apple could place easily accessible multimedia card slots.

You would think that since Apple is geared towards the creative, with software like iPhoto and iMovie, that there would be an easy, USB cable-free way to get the data on to your Mac so you can create. Who wants to search for cables when creativity strikes?

If you have a MacBook Pro and are dying to have a card reader, there’s a solution from Belkin that keeps your MacBook Pro’s form factor intact. You can view the product over at Belkin’s site. As of this writing, Belkin is out of stock of their multimedia card reader.

The MacCast always seems to get me thinking. This time, Adam, you got me thinking more and more about the topic of Digital Convergence. There are so many things going on in this area right now, I thought I’d share with you some of my observations.

The impact of the following issues are nothing less than dramatic . . .

• Professional music and video is now competing with amateur music and video (the democratization of content).
• New devices are being introduced daily that can support all different kinds of media.
• People don’t have any more TIME to spend on content/media absorption

than they already do today (most important).

• Viewing habits of an attention-span challenged generation are kicking in (people want shorter bursts of content).
• VOIP is now ubiquitious and PC video chat applications actually work.

Traditional media, brick and mortar retail stores, service providers, and new network-based services are all hardening for battle. The consequences of this battle will be severe and permanent.

How are things changing? Let’s look at some examples . . .
Many frequent travellers and just about anyone who is mobile has realized that they can take their media with them. Not just on their physical devices like iPods, but by leveraging easy access to media anywhere there’s a network connection. Look at the success of devices like the slingbox – people now have true location independence and can literally stream their own personal media where ever they are. A traveller, instead of watching a pay-per-view movie or other show on a hotel television, might download a movie or a missed episode of a favorite TV show from iTunes. That’s one less pay-per-view movie sold in a hotel and perhaps a few less shows watched on traditional network TV (where an individual is no longer exposed to advertising).

Services like YOUTUBE and iTunes are competing more and more with traditional content and delivery mechanisms. Networks are starting to feel the pain and are offering clips and shorts of their most popular segments to try and retain audiences. You will find most people starting to split their time among all these different sources of content (including, of course, The MacCast). And, this content revolution is centering on the mobile computing platform.

To the point . . .
What I find that people most often fail to realize is that this is that all these shifts result in a ZERO-SUM GAME. It’s no wonder that it’s got everyone scrambling – there are real dollars at stake. When you move to a different form of content or a different delivery vehicle, you often don’t go back. In the early days of the Internet FEDEX started moving customers to “self-service” on the web – it was instantaneous, it was open 24 hours a day, and it was extremely convenient (accessible right from your keyboard). How many people who starting using the web-based tracking tool do you think went back to calling on the phone? Virtually no one…

I get most of my content through my PC or MAC today. I enjoy watching programs WHEN and WHERE I want (even if I’m just sitting in an airport with my EVDO broadband wireless connection. I’m not likely to go back to buying those shiny round pieces of plastic (DVDs) at Walmart. We all know what has happened to the market for CDs (latest victim – Tower Records). People simply don’t want to buy pieces of plastic – they scratch, they break, and they get lost.

Even on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” they got it wrong. Their “expert” predicted that the 15 minutes of fame for YOUTUBE was up and that the pendulum was swinging back to professional content. WRONG! This cat’s out of the bag and he’s not going back in…

So what’s the bottom line?
The first thing is easy to predict because it’s already happening – DILUTION. More players means that people are going to have to split their limited viewing times across more products. Products that are probably a better fit for them because their choices are expanded. That means that advertisers will have a field day and will enjoy lower rates with better targeted demographics (new opportunities will abound).

The second thing that is going to happen is that digital media will continue to converge. People will MOVE to devices that can deliver all their content. I don’t know that this will be one specific device, in fact it will probably be a lots of different types of devices that will meet the demands of their owners. This is all just an extension of the move to digital content. Just as we are seeing the disappearance of the record store and CDs, so will we see the disappearance of DVDs.

Remember also that special types of media need special types of media players. You can’t play a DVD without a DVD player, but you can watch a movie on your computer or other digital device without a motorized “spinning” piece of plastic.

Speeding toward convergence . . .
Bandwidth continues to propel the digital revolution. Did you ever think 5 years ago that you could have a 6Mb/sec connection to the Internet for less that $50 per month? I sure didn’t. I still can’t believe that I’m sitting here now with almost 2Mb/sec over EVDO wireless (from Verizon). My kids can watch streaming videos or play games on the Internet in the back seat of the car while I driving around town.

Obstacles . . .
Battery life for digital devices is one of the biggest problems that we face today. As vendors boost the capabilities of their devices and platforms they consume more and more power. In reality, I believe that battery technology is improving – we are just consuming the additional power as quickly as it becomes available (so we’re not actually achieving improved usable times).

Retail loyalties and politics will also come into play as groups ban together to slow the progressive move to increasingly digital content. Walmart was said to recently threaten studios who might make their movies available through iTunes. Target reportedly removed all of the Disney advertising displays from their stores due to the unfair pricing advantage of digital downloads on iTunes – $12.95 for the recent iTunes release of the movie “Cars” vs. the DVD cost which was substantially higher.

Digital convergence is well on it’s way. It’s all good for the consumer because it gives us what we want when we want it. I hope this helps provoke some thoughts and comments from your readers on the issue.

Just in the past few days, the digital protections (or DRM) in which TiVo wrapped its recorded programming were defeated to allow the content to be played on a consumer’s networked device of choice. And I’m sure I’m not the only member of the MacCast community who has been waiting for the TiVoToGo functionality, but I’m excited at the possibility of watching even more recorded content on the go.

What I find interesting is that in the few days since this hack was made available, some previously held DRM hostages are wishing they had never been freed. The Unofficial Apple Weblog posts their argument trying to explain that the this hack may be bad for Mac and TiVo users in the long run for two reasons : 1. that instead of spending time on offering additional and more flexible cross-platform features for its users, TiVo will spend the time repairing its now broken DRM; 2. that content providers and DRM approval committees like CableLABs will see this as a flaw with TiVo’s DRM and not provide TiVo content or certify its DVRs to receive protected content.

If you’ve listened to This Week in Tech or are active in these kinds of digital copyright debates, you may have heard these arguments before. They’re the same ones used as justification for passing the DMCA: copyright owners must have legal recourse against those who break the DRM that protects their works; if not, copyright owners will refuse to distribute their content online. Clearly podcasts, most of which are not-DRM’d, are proving that theory wrong every day. What’s new about this argument is to hear it from the same group of people who have been complaining about the limitations and restrictive characteristics of such DRM in the first place. Some Mac users who have been put-off by TiVoToGo are essentially asking for the restrictions to be put back in place. Perhaps we should call this psychological response the “digital Stockholm syndrome”?

What’s telling is that with this TiVoToGo hack, there’s little talk about piracy—moving the content off of the TiVo and distributing it all over the Internet. Maybe it’s because hacking the TiVo to extract recorded content was accomplished long ago, so those who really want to “pirate” TV weren’t stopped by this DRM in the first place. Instead, the discussions are mostly about enabling Mac users to watch more content on their MacBooks or iPods, just like PC users have been able to do via TiVoToGo for a long time now.

Even though the studios are trying to put the screws to Apple to make FairPlay even more restrictive, to me at least, it’s clear by this TiVo hack story that all Mac users want is to be able to watch more of the their legally obtained content on their device of choice.

Refreshed or Refurbished

Now another problem with this story is that while the headline on the Consumerist website clearly states it was a “refreshed” MacBook, most blogs picking up the story are reporting it as a “refurbished” model. The semantics are subtle but there is a big difference. A “refreshed” model is basically an “open box” return. It was returned to the store, but not because of any defect. Could be buyers remorse, wrong model, etc. In these cases Apple services the unit in store. They basically look it over, run simple diagnostics and then are supposed to run the system restore CD/DVD (that comes with the model) to get the machine back into factory condition. Now on the slim chance this story is true then the Apple Store employees obviously forgot to do this procedure. A “reconditioned” model however, is one sent back to Apple due to some sort of defect. It is put through a much more rigorous process, restored and tested at a centralized facility. Again, if the story is actually true then the distinction between “refreshed” and “reconditioned” may go a long way to explaining why this unit slipped by.

As for the quality of stories on Digg, don’t get me wrong. I love Digg and I use it, but sometimes we need to remind ourselves what Digg is. Digg is a great indicator of what is socially hip on the web at any given moment, but hardly a bastion of links to highest quality news stories. I’m just sayin’.

I’m sorry, but this is going to be a bit of a rant…here goes.

Today’s article in the Financial Times titled Studios push anti-piracy rules on Apple reports that the studios are pushing for tighter copy-controls on Apple’s iTunes movie distributions. They write:

After months of discussion, a sticking point has emerged over the studios’ demand that Apple limit the number of devices that can use a film downloaded from iTunes.

And in the very next paragraph, FT.com states that the studios want to avoid piracy—demanding that Apple introduce a new distribution model for movies.

This just gets me riled up, and I think it does the same to some of you.

As we Mac geeks may know, currently, music downloaded from the iTunes store can be copied to at most five authorized computers (computers all purchasing music with the same iTunes account), synchronized with an unlimited number of iPods, shared via streaming with five other computers on the same network within 24 hours, and the same playlist of tracks can be burned seven times to a standard CD format and ripped to remove any of these copy restrictions. Video bought from the iTunes store, on the other hand, cannot be streamed to other computers, nor can it be burned to a standard physical media to be played in a DVD player or other digital device. The point is, even though music is fairly locked down via the iTunes service, control over video is already considerably more restrictive.

According to the article, the studios are asking for even tighter controls on how consumers can use these videos.

If the reason for this additional control is out of a concern for piracy, shouldn’t there be at least some evidence for the existence of piracy of iTunes distributed video? If there were evidence, surely we would see how-tos posted on the front page of Digg, Slashdot, or maybe even here on the MacCast. But we haven’t seen that—not for iTunes video at least.

Regardless of whether this was the studios’ spin or the FT.com’s failure to ask more engaging questions—it all comes back to that ole red herring of piracy. Take another look at the quote: “…studios’ demand that Apple limit the number of devices that can use a film downloaded from iTunes.” The studios, in this context, aren’t so concerned about piracy—rather they are obsessed with control over every miniscule consumer use of legally obtained content.

Say what you will about the Zune, but it introduced the latest portable media innovation with wireless media sharing, but it was severely crippled—“three plays for three days.” If that’s not out of concern for the content industry, why can photos be shared without the restriction? I propose that this debate is really not about piracy, it’s about limiting what consumers can do, on their device(s) of choice, with the content they’ve legally obtained in the privacy of their own home (or personal network). Apple proved that you can compete with free with its success at selling $0.99 music tracks, and Apple, the content industry, and consumers have reaped the rewards.

Now I’m sorry for getting up on my soapbox in this post, but I’m almost done… I have come to expect this “piracy spin” from the content industry, but shouldn’t we expect more from journalists who report on this market. FT.com didn’t write about what consumers want and expect of their downloadable media. They didn’t ask the studios or Apple what drives demand for products in a market place. It’s innovators like Apple who have exploded the market for online media sales, and made the use of the media fairly flexible for consumers. Shouldn’t FT.com have at least questioned the track record of the content industry as the ones who have fought new online business models and technological innovation tooth-and-nail?

As a consumer and a blogger, I think it would have been useful for FT.com to ask the studio representatives more meaningful questions.

Much has been made of the delays in getting Adobe’s mission critical pro apps, including Photoshop, onto the Intel platform, a gating item for many PowerPC Mac users considering the move to Intel. The other software category experiencing major delays for MacIntel ports, perhaps slightly less mainstream, is that of audio plug-ins and software synthesizers.

Audio plug-ins are programs that run inside a host program, such as Logic or Garageband, and in many cases in “standalone mode” as well. Without major contortions, it’s fairly impractical to run PPC plug-ins inside an Intel-based host program and nearly impossible to run both PPC and Intel plug-ins in the same host at the same time (see this discussion thread on BigBlueLounge for a workaround that involves some third-party software). Plug-ins typically generate audio (by making sounds), transform audio (e.g., by adding delay or compression), or both, and represent a substantial after-market for the big audio programs

Plug-ins are also where much of the audio fun is at, and audio geeks usually have dozens or even hundreds of plug-ins to call on for specialized tasks. Garageband supports plug-ins, e.g., as instruments in the “Generator” selections or as effects in the other parameters inside the Details pane in the Track Info window.

With the Intel Mac platform, plug-in developers have faced some substantial difficulties getting their code onto the Intel Mac:

1. Many of these vendors are smaller development houses serving a niche audience, so resources are limited.
2. The large majority of plug-ins are cross-platform–a business necessity for products with such a small and specialized audience–and thus not as likely to be on an XCode code-base. Harder job to port.
3. Plug-ins present a labyrinthine support matrix, with multiple machines running multiple OS versions, both multiplied again by the number of audio host programs (Garageband, Logic Pro, Digital Performer, Cubase, Ableton Live, Pro-Tools, etc.). Users expect the plug-ins to work in all their host environments, which can represent a formidable challenge to smaller developers and their QA teams.
4. Standards for plugins have been chaotic, often driven more by vendor needs than user needs. There are numerous revisions to the VST spec, and incremental updates to Core Audio by OS/X version to contend with as well. VST was a stronger cross-platform standard before Apple released Core Audio, but these days many vendors now choose to support VST on Windows, AU on OS/X, and RTAS format (for Pro-Tools users) on both. All these support options mean more code and more testing.
5. Plug-ins push the envelope for both computational complexity and user interface. There’s some amazing innovation in these products, and they can be surprisingly complex. E.g., plug-ins may do “pitch correction” on vocals that perform very elaborate calculations on audio waveforms, and software synthesizers may precisely reproduce the user interface of legacy hardware such as old Moog and ARP synthesizers, right down to the funky knobs and patch cords. Plug-ins are different from other applications, and those other applications appear to get off much easier.

Apple beat its predicted Intel transition timetables to the street by months, and upgrading Mac users are of course an impatient lot. The “big hosts” have been ready for some time now. Logic and Garageband were updated quickly of course, but Universal versions of Ableton Live, Digital Performer, Pro-Tools, and Cubase 4 have been out for some time, ready and willing to take advantage of multiprocessor support on the Core Duo megamachine of your choice. So the move to Intel has been a customer relations challenge as well.

The plug-in vendors, however, still have some work to do. A small Canadian developer of software synthesizers, Applied Acoustics, recently posted a plea for patience to customers on its web forum: “These Universal Binary updates are so much work it’s unbelievable. We can’t wait to have this technology change behind us…” Their initial estimates in March called for Summer updates. Now they are aiming to release some updates by the end of the year, and won’t ship an update to their superb Tassman modular synthesizer until 2007.

German synth maker Native Instruments has struggled to meet its predicted dates as well, to the point of generating violent revolt in its customer base. NI’s plug-ins have also been delayed from original Summer 2006 timetables, and their delays have been timed with other marketing program decisions that have generated some rather awe-inspiring customer dissatisfaction on their own discussion boards and around the web. NI’s just this month made some peace offerings to its customer base, and has begun releasing UB versions of their products in a steady stream over the last few weeks. So far these new versions are looking strong on the Intel platform, and the company appears to be on a roll, with new Universal versions of Reaktor 5, Kontakt 2, and Kore 1.1 out in just the last 2 weeks, and its new products such as Massive having shipped Universal at launch.

Other vendors have fared a bit better. FXpansion, which makes percussion plug-ins such as BFD and Guru, as well as converter programs that, e.g., allow you to run VST plugins in AU hosts, has decided to narrow down its support matrix gradually over time, still offering broad, but less of the insane number of support options in current versions, in an attempt to deal with the proliferation of standards. Several of their programs are available in Universal versions today, with more in beta.

IKMultimedia just released the Universal version of its Sampletank software sampler and Amplitube guitar processor products, and expects the rest of its product line to be ported by early 2007. Waves plug-ins are rolling out with Intel compatibility over the year. Arturia is now shipping many universal versions, and Cycling ’74 announced that its entire line of plug-ins is Intel compatible as of September 22. Linplug has most of its plug-ins Universal, including the very wonderful Albino 3. Even Cakewalk, which has focused on PC audio software such as Sonar for over a decade, has shipped UB versions of two software synthesizers, Dimension Pro and Rapture, its first products ever featuring Mac compatibility. (Dimension Pro sounds great by the way…I think the Mac music community should reward a vendor for venturing into new territory like this…download the demo and see what you think).

A few vendors are still missing in action: one noteworthy example would be PSPAudioware, which announced Universal support in March as well, but offers no date commitments yet. But in general the vendor support is lining up, slowly but surely, on Intel compatibility. This last quarter of 2006 seems to represent the watershed moment for plug-ins. By early 2007, the holdouts will be ready to move to Intel, and Mac Intel users will have the majority of their plug-ins supported natively on Intel. If you’ve been waiting for your favorites, it’s been an exciting few weeks watching these new versions go native, one by one. The toolbox isn’t quite complete yet, but the vendors seem to be making progress and working very hard. Here comes the flood.

Editor’s note: When Matt sent me the following piece I was grateful because the timing could not have been better. Just this week I answered at least 3 to 4 emails from listeners who had issues with their systems that were covered by one of Apple’s Repair Extension Programs(REP). I agree with Matt, it is amazing how many people don’t know to check for these coverages. It is even more amazing how many people choose NOT to take advantage of them. In my 3 to 4 cases at least 2 people said they would not contact Apple to get the repair because they “could not afford” to be without their Mac for a a few days to a week! Seriously!? So, you would rather have a broken, annoying and less productive Mac than one that actually works like it should? If you rely on your Mac that much to make a living you should consider keeping an old system around, getting a used Mac or purchasing a bottom of the line Mac Mini as a backup system. Combine that with a good cloned backup regiment using a product like SuperDuper and you are covered.

A word to the wise folks… if you have ANY defective product and the company has a program for you to get it fixed free of charge… run, don’t walk, to the service center.

One of the most under-utilized offerings from Cupertino is theRepair Extension Program(REP). This model allows different "known issues" with certain Macintosh computers to be rectified even on out of warranty machines as a courtesy from Apple, meaning it’s absolutely free. Now before I divulge any more of these secrets it has to be said that this is not in any way a service to be abused; if you don’t have the fault linked with these machines you won’t gain anything but higher future pricing by entering the program; if however you are experiencing the issue then you have it all to gain and Apple will be more than willing to help.

To register for one of these programs you will firstly need a machine that is covered as noted on the Apple REP page. For an idea of the kinds of programs available I will detail the current offerings below. Then you need to take your machine into an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) where the repair will be booked in, the part ordered and the issues fixed as soon as possible. Depending on the nature of the issue this could take from 24 hours to a few weeks so be sure to call ahead of time and prepare if you have any doubt.

The most widely known of the REP’s is the G3/4 battery exchange for 12" iBooks and 12" or 15" PowerBook G4′s. There are however many more such as:

• iBook G3 REP for logic boards
• 15" PowerBook G4 REP for displays and memory slots
• MacBook Pro battery exchange
• Power Mac REP for power supply issues
• iMac G5 REP’s for video and power issues as well as power supply issues
• eMac G4 REP for video and power issues

Repair extension programs are there to cover issues arising with specific components used in these models which arose after their release. Because Apple often uses multiple part numbers, and even suppliers for a given component in a given model, these programs are usually limited to certain serial number ranges and as such not all machines of the vague models listed above are covered. If however you are experiencing issues sounding like those listed above, or that you believe could be covered by a Repair Extension Program or Exchange Program then check outApple’s web site for more information.

To find your machines serial number then go to the Apple menu (top left of your screen on the menu bar), click About this Mac and then click twice on your Mac OS X version number, or click More Info… and it should be listed near the bottom of the default section. If your serial number is not listed here then your machine has likely had a logic board replacement in the past and the number will only be available from it’s physical location on the machine. For instructions on locating your models serial numberclick here

As a longtime Windows user who has owned, built and used hardware with pretty much every version of Windows OS (starting from 2.1 I think), one of the most impressive features of the Mac for me is the Migration Assistant. The first night I had it, I started up the new Mac Pro, connected my MacBook over Firewire and when the assistant was done; I sat down at the Mac Pro with every application, preference and desktop tweak from my MacBook fully installed and was ready to get to work. (OK, I did have to reauthorize two applications, but all my settings were migrated for those as well).

I have never moved from one PC to another without at least a week of pure hassle—hunting for key codes, reinstalling applications (even if restored from backup), reinstalling preferences, figuring out how to get Outlook to find and use old mail files, ad infinitum. In fact, my Windows laptop at work suffered a hard drive crash right around the same time I was installing my new Mac – some dark cloud of technology karma was hanging over my head there for a few weeks – and it took 3 days to recover even with a current backup. I’m still missing a few apps for which I need to hunt down the old versions before upgrading again. Not just a time sink, but a time sink with a genuine soul drain at its center.

I know it’s a bit of a geeky pleasure, but I was frothing about Migration Assistant so much that friends began complaining I need therapy—or to just get a life. Apparently I’ve become a bit of a fanboy. Fine fine fine…but, Mac users, you don’t know how lucky you are.

The Mac Pro is just ridiculously fun. On this Mac I have installed Parallels and am working now on Boot Camp. There have been a few glitches with the current Parallels, for which a fix is pending—and I do feel already that running Windows on a Mac is like putting training wheels on a Harley, or maybe ugly wallpaper over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But the mission now is to make a single Mac do the work of a Windows PC and a high end Mac without letting Windows bring down the neighborhood.

Here’s one other tip from my recent upgrade experience. The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (at http://www.photoshopuser.com) has an Apple discount program as a member benefit—you log in to a special NAPP mini-site on the Apple Store, and save pretty big. One major purchase at the Apple store pays for the annual membership fee and still brings home a Mac at a noteworthy discount. Plus you get all the other benefits, including content on the site and a subscription to the superb Photoshop User magazine. Worth checking out.

Hey, I realize that switcher stories are getting so common these days, we’re all at risk of fatigue from the influx of new Mac fans and fanatics among us. Forgive me then for adding a few words more in the rising tide of Mac market share. When I quite literally blew up my home-built PC a few weeks back—with a dramatic flameout of the PSU and a roomful of acrid smoke–I was driven to make my “second-tier” switcher commitment. I am now officially a “switched-again” Mac user.

I got my 2Ghz MacBook as my first Mac in May, but in truth I’ve primarily used this machine as a desktop, KVM’d next to my home-built XP machine. Real multi-taskers use separate machines. Despite (or perhaps because of) over a decade of masochistic personal Windows malaise, I was struggling to get myself even to attempt Microsoft OS on my Mac. I’d upgraded to a 100gb 7200rpm drive, but I couldn’t convince myself that Parallels or Boot Camp would beat the sheer convenience of hitting the scroll lock key and moving over the to other box. My original plan was not to deepen my Mac ties until Leopard came out, then think about a MacBook Pro or Mac Pro, and let Windows run in its own isolated tier.

That was all fine until the IDE controller on my PC motherboard failed. I spent an ungodly amount of time swapping cables, PCI IDE controllers, and drives in this machine—to no avail—until I left a power cable a bit too loose, turned it on, and sent the soul of my old machine to that great clustered network in the sky. So I had no PC – my main server in my home – and I had a laptop I was using as a desktop. At first, I figured the choice was between these options:

1. Gearhead mode. Rebuild the PC and beef it up a bit with a dual core processor, new graphics, faster RAM. Cost with parts recycling would be, say, $1200 US for a very fast machine. Time was also an issue, as work is busy, and a death in the family had complicated life a bit.
2. Resistance is futile mode. Admit defeat, and cover the need with a commodity Wintel machine for about the same or fewer dollars.

Then, a third option presented itself: Mac geek mode. I could sell my MacBook (several buyers instantly presented themselves as soon as I thought of this), and trade up to a Mac Pro which would be the Windows server of my dreams and the Mac of my dreams. So for my second switch, I picked up a 2.66Ghz Mac Pro tower.

As Keanu would say, “whooooooaaaaaaaaaguhhhhhhhhhh.” I’ve had it about 2 weeks so far, and it is plain and simple the most astonishingly wonderful machine I’ve ever used. I know a lot of home builder enthusiasts who think Macs are the Antichrist’s own computer and would consider it a ridiculous compromise to buy a machine like this. I even priced the parts for a dual dual-core Xeon, but it was either a wash or actually cheaper to buy the Mac Pro with all hardware being equal.

My argument is that the Mac Pro’s sophisticated design is a fine salute to the selfsame craft that motivates the DIY’er and commands the respect of anyone who values the elegant fusion of design and technology. For me, the Intel Mac platform is a computing hobbyist’s dream platform. The big deal for me is that this high end Mac has rekindled my enthusiasm for computing like nothing else has been able to do for years and years. It’s a rebirth, and I am switched-again.

I know Adam isn’t the biggest fan of the concept the rumored Apple iPhone. So, instead of talking about rumors, let us leave them aside for a moment and practically consider a scenario where Apple were to sell a mobile phone.

The “I wish Apple would make a” Syndrome

The consumer expectations bar is always high for Apple. The general public looks to it as a problem solver. Apple is a leader in thinking through technical tasks and making them easy for everyone. That’s why we’re always hearing: “I wish Apple would make a …”. And when I say Apple, I think much of the credit goes to Steve Jobs, who is nothing if not a perfectionist, and we’re all beneficiaries of it.

Apple’s ability for making things easy is much needed in the mobile phone arena. Consider the iPod—the now ubiquitous five year old digital walkman. Think of of getting music onto a portable digital player before iTunes and the iPod. Apple made the process of ripping a CD (and now downloading it online) to a computer, connecting a device, transferring the music, and easily listening to it on an iPod, an absolute breeze. Apple’s “making things easy” approach is much needed in the smart phones market—especially for the non-tech-savvy consumer.

Just like the iPod five short years, Apple took a market that was very complex and made it simple—and is now the dominant market player for the mobile media device. I believe in the exact same way that the mobile phone market (especially smart phones) is ripe for Apple’s picking.

Realistic Predictions

First off, I think everyone would agree that an Apple branded phone would have to be more than a typical mobile phone with iTunes. It’s prior collaboration with Motorola on the ROKR, and iTunes enabled SLVR and RAZR was fine for playing your iTunes music on a mobile phone, but I think we’re all looking for more, here.

An Apple phone must be better integrated with iTunes and Mac OS X. Yes, we have iSync, but its spotty compatibility with your typical mobile would have to be spot-on for Apple’s own phone.

Since iTunes 7.0, we’ve seen more complete device integration in the app itself, instead of in iSync. It makes sense because it gives the consumer one place to conduct all their syncing needs. For the iPod, it makes the most sense to put this synchronization in iTunes because that’s where all the media is—but you also have your Address Book and iCal syncing thrown in. Keeping device syncing features in iTunes also enables Apple to extend the features to other OSs, like Windows. Expect to see this same iTunes device management for an Apple phone—there’s even evidence of such integration in the error codes of iTunes 7.0 .

I don’t think that Apple would build such a device from the bottom-up. The iPod is essentially a play-back only device-—and an amazingly ergonomic and well designed one at that. But it’s all about data retrieval (music, photos, video, contacts, calendar) not data entry or creation. On a mobile phone, as a base, Apple would start with iPod functionality, add making calls, texting, emailing, adding phone numbers, gaming, surfing the net, taking photos, etc. There’s a lot more work that goes into a mobile phone than an iPod, which is why I don’t predict Apple would invest the time to engineer a mobile OS from the ground up.

Instead, I believe Apple would pick from an existing platform. They’ve done this repeatedly before. Two major examples that come to mind are: Mac OS X is built on NeXT which is built on Unix; and Safari is built on khtml from the KDE project. An existing mobile phone platform must be robust enough for current iPod functionality—playing music, H.264 videos, and games, while adding advanced contact management, Internet applications, and file browsing. It will need to be powerful and flexible enough to enable major GUI changes—as no current mobile phone interface is intuitive. Lastly, they would want a platform that has an existing base of developers.

I don’t believe the platform will be Microsoft Windows Mobile based because there’s too much rivalry between Apple and Microsoft—after all Apple didn’t choose Windows to underpin their new OS or Internet Explorer for their new web browser. Linux is an options, but from all reports, the mobile phone versions just aren’t ready for prime-time. No, I believe Apple will choose a powerful third party platform for which they’ve already ported and developed—-Symbian S60.

Yes, Apple has helped develop for the S60 platform-—the S60’s browser is based on Safari and khtml. It’s a great mobile browser, providing a lot more functionality than the often touted Opera Mobile does.

As a plus, S60 already has built-in support for OS X’s iSync. It works well with iCal for events and to-dos, and it even brings over your Address Book contacts’ mug-shots—all functionality rarely seen consistently on other mobile phones in the market.

Apple will do more than add themes to an existing interface. I believe that they might use the S60’s supported Adobe Flash to create their own intuitive interface. Additionally, they already have experience with the S60 platform—which would leverage their existing assets. Developers are already writing apps for the S60 platform as it is, so it would be easy to get them onboard as well.

The S60 platform gives Apple the ability to hit the ground running in the mobile market, and the flexibility to create the iPhone as they see fit. I’ve essentially talked about software because I think sky’s the limit on hardware when you have a designer like Jonathan Ive.

But that’s just my two cents. What do you think?

I love the Internet as an amazing tool for learning. Dale told us about students podcasting down-under. The Internet community encyclopedia, Wikipedia shows the value of collaborative education. And yes, even YouTube has worked to inform us with viral videos and user comments.

It was on YouTube that I found this 35 minute video. It’s a rare video of a young Steve Jobs giving a demo of the NeXTSTEP operating system.

If you don’t know about the history of NeXT Computer, it’s the computer company founded by Steve Jobs, when he and Apple parted ways in the mid-80s. You can read about the history of NeXT Computer on Wikipedia, it’s an interesting read.

To me, what’s more interesting when you watch the video, is how much of NeXTSTEP is in OS X. I know, I know, Mac OS X is based on NeXTSTEP, but if you consider that this video is from circa 1995, I hate to say it, but I’m really feeling gipped!

Yes, we have a much better GUI with Aqua, I’m sure the underpinnings are improved in many ways, and the amazing iLife line of apps that OS X offers were nowhere to be found (perhaps because NeXTSTEP was legally required not to compete in the graphics design arena?). But when it comes down to it, so much of what existed some 11 years ago works the same way today.

I’m sure I’m going to get in trouble for writing this, but I’ll ask it anyways—Where’s the innovation since NeXTSTEP Apple?

Take a look at the video and tell us all what you think by commenting below. Discussing this kind of stuff is what our Mac community is all about, right?

I have always loved Macs but because of certain software that is only available on Windows, gaming, and cost I have always used PCs at home. With Apple’s recent transition to the x86 platform and offering users the ability to run Windows, those reasons are no longer holding myself and others back from making the switch. Not to mention the major improvements going from OS 9 (what I used) to OS X being a very attractive aspect of the switch.

Recently I was able to take my first trip down to an Apple Store in New Jersey. I have to say with all honesty that it was the best experience in any electronics store I’ve ever had. The first thing I noticed was that the sales associates did not bombard me when I walked in the door saying “Can I help you find the Mac for you today?” Unlike PC shops the computers were not password protected and you didn’t need to grab an employee to tinker around with the Macs.

The employees were of course ready and willing to help anyone in the store with a question, but didn’t constantly throw a sales pitch at the customer. Overall the store was very relaxed and a fun place to go. Anyone who has gone PC shopping before would see a stellar difference between the Apple Store and a Circuit City. By the time I left I was twice as excited to come back and buy my MacBook later.

Over the next few months I plan to share not only my perspective of what it’s like switching from Windows to Mac, but also that of my parents. In my eyes they are ideal Apple customers as they are fed up with constant problems on Windows machines and want a computer that will act like any other appliance in their home. Until that switch is complete I am going to bring you tips and tricks for iTunes 7 on Windows and the iPod.

My next article will focus on a topic that anyone using Parallels or Bootcamp would be interested in: making Windows XP look and feel more like OS X. I’m going to review the alternatives to QuickSilver, Spotlight, Dashboard, The Dock, Exposé, and Finder that are available on Windows XP. As well as OS X Tiger visual styles for Windows and WindowBlinds, and some general Windows XP tweaks.

Until then,
John

“While Apple, of course, has no general objection to the proper use of the descriptive term “podcast” as part of a trademark for goods and services offered in the podcasting field, it cannot allow marks that go beyond this legitimate use and infringe on Apple’s rights in POD and IPOD“.

As near as I can tell, Podcast Ready has two applications at the US Trademark and Patent Office (USPTO) for the term “Podcast Ready”. One is a service mark (Serial number, 78813822) which Apple has no objection to and the other is a trademark (Serial number, 78761085) which is the one Apple is opposing. Now I don’t understand this from a legal perspective, but I think the basic argument is that Apple is OK with the term “podcast” being applied to services, but has chosen to go after any marks where the term “podcast” is applied to a physical product. The Podcast Ready trademark application is for, “Portable listening devices, namely, MP3 players”. Where Apple is choosing to make this distinction seems to be a fine line and one that has sparked a heated debate in the podcasting community.

What’s in a name?

Turns out a lot.
The timing of this event seems to be just about perfect as it lead right into one of the biggest podcasting events on the planet, the Podcasting and Portable Media Expo 2006. Podcasters from all over the globe came together and the debate about the name “podcast” was a big topic of discussion all around the expo. The discussions were all kicked off with a big push from a keynote given by Leo Laporte (TWiT). Leo has chosen to unilaterally challenge the term “podcast” and is now referring to them as “netcasts”. During the keynote he explained that he feels now is the time to move the podcast audience beyond the technology early adopters and into a mainstream audience. He pointed out the dominance of iTunes and iPods in podcasting and the fact that the term “podcast” has played at least some part in fueling the association between the two. So in essence the question he posed is, “Is the name “podcast” bad for podcasting”? Leo’s answer would appear to be “yes”.

Possibly acting as the yin to Leo’s yang there is Rob Walch of Podcast 411. Rob correctly points out that many news agencies and bloggers are misleading us into thinking Apple is attempting to trademark the term “podcast”. They are not. They are trying to protect their iPod trademark and are doing what is legally required of them to successfully protect that mark. To that end Rob feels the name podcast is the right name and should not be changed or modified. With regards to Leo’s suggestion of changing to “netcast”, Rob feels it is crazy to even suggest a change and that “netcast” would be a less accurate name than podcast. In Rob’s opinion the term “netcast” is very similar to “webcast” and more accurately describes audio or video that is listened to or watched directly (streamed) over the Internet and not delivered via a subscription or RSS. He even recently added this entry to the Urban dictionary to solidify his feelings about it.

So what does this all mean? Well, one thing is for sure… this debate is not over. Personally I fall somewhere in the middle. Leo is right, we need to move podcasting outside of technology and more into the mainstream. We also need to get other directories, services, podcatchers, etc. to come forward and challenge the Apple/iPod/iTunes triad. I agree that for the moment the term podcast and it’s association to iPods, at least by the uneducated, can be an problem in those efforts. The name however can be overcome and so far I have not heard a more appropriate term than “podcast” suggested. “Netcast” does not cut it. There was a time when not everyone knew what the Internet was and you could have argued Globalnet, Worldnet or some other term would have been more descriptive or appropriate. The reality was “Internet” was first, it was cool and it fit. In time “podcast” will achieve the same level of recognition, in fact the process has already begun which is why it makes no sense to turn back now. I truly honor and respect Leo and his contributions to this new media. He is an icon and a leader for this community. If anyone would follow him, there is no doubt in my mind Leo could effect this change. The trouble is, in talking with many of my fellow podcasters over the weekend a mass conversion to “netcast” doesn’t seem likely. Sorry Leo, this time it looks like you’ll just be charging at windmills.

In these days of countless stories of exploding Dell notebooks and massive Dell power adapter recalls, Apple has seemed relatively immune to these sorts of problems. Every once in a while, some odd thing came along, but it seemed like relatively calm waters. I fear, however, the sense of safety for Mac notebook users may be coming to an end. There have aready been hints of problems with the white brick adapters and scattered reports of various failures. Who can forget about the class action settlement around the previous Apple adapters?

Recently, I have had problems with my Apple PowerBook power adapter which has lead to me take a close look at their design and safety. With no apparent trigger, no visible damage or other warning of any kind, my adapter began to spew sparks and flames and burn the paper notepad on which it was sitting. Thankfully, I was literally sitting right in front of the adapter when it happened and I was able to instantly unplug it – but not before it damaged the paper notepad and my PowerBook. And it could have been much worse.

I was surprised that an adapter could possibly do something like this – it had to be a fluke, I thought. So I posted a page that showed photos and gave some details of my problem. This quickly attracted many thousands of visitors, some of whom contacted me to share similar stories with me. Fortunately none of them were injured, but reports ranged from simply needing a new adapter to their notebook being rendered a nearly useless five and half pound hunk of aluminum and plastic.

The fact this wasn’t entirely isolated piqued my curiosity. Talking to a few people associated with some Apple Authorized Resellers & Service Providers found they had seen this failure many times before. So what was causing it? Why did these adapters so easily short out and smolder or even catch fire? Could it be prevented? Has Apple made improvements in this department? Will it happen to me again or other users?

How It Starts

The adapter provides 24.5 volts of direct current electricity – enough to generate a bit of a spark when it arcs. In the case of the adapters that burn and spark near the DC out, the internal cable insulation wears down to the point that there is little insulation between the wires left. At some point, there’s just so little left, the cable is able to spark – potentially with no visible external triggers or warnings – and this spark is enough to cause the plastic to smolder and/or burn.

Obviously, the plastic used in the insulation is at least slightly combustible, as evidenced by my experience. Furthermore, it appears that it may be designed in such a way that the internal cable insulation is less durable than the visible external insulation. The result is that the cable appears to be perfect – at least on the outside – yet on the inside, it could be precariously worn. There’s no way a consumer could reasonably be expected know this or anticipate such a failure.

It seems Apple has been aware of problems in this area of the adapter. Early versions of the white brick adapters (such as the one on the snow iBook G3 I purchased years ago) used an inverted cone type design to reduce stress on the cable. However, it seems that wasn’t satisfactory, so Apple re-designed that area to be flat and placed a short rubber sheath that extends along the cable as it leaves the adapter. Unfortunately, it seems evident even that isn’t sufficient to mitigate the stresses that occur even in normal, careful use. Like many Mac users, I don’t roll my adapter cable around the small feet and have been very careful with my adapter, yet it still managed to short, spark and burn.

Don’t forget that Apple’s previous adapter designed have resulted in various recalls and even a class action settlement.

A Preventable Problem

Of course, combustible materials, poorly designed wire stress management and fragile insulation isn’t alone enough to start a fire. What makes this so dangerous is the fact that the Apple power adapters do not integrate sufficient short circuit protection on the DC side. This means, when the wires touch or nearly touch, they will arc and generate a spark – not once, but again and again, as long as the adapter remains plugged into electricity. And because it happens on the DC side, it does not trigger any circuit breakers, household fuses or GFCI outlets.

This is a huge problem – even my $35 PC ATX power supply will barely emit a single tiny spark before the entire thing powers itself off and requires me to disconnect and reconnect the power before it delivers any more current to the DC side. The Apple notebook adapters are a lot more expensive and – hopefully – better designed than the local computer store’s $35 special on a generic Chinese ATX power supply. Yet… why doesn’t the Apple power adapter turn off when it detects a short?

Still No Improvements

Now… everybody obviously asks, "Well, surely Apple has improved their adapters?" People have even written to inform me that Apple now uses "sturdier" cables on their newer adapters, so this problem shouldn’t happen anymore. However, unless they’re talking about a different adapter – maybe one of the new MagSafe adapters, which obviously don’t work with the PowerBook – they’re wrong.

I spent time closely inspecting the original adapter that came with my PowerBook and caused the problem, comparing it to the model Apple sent me as a replacement and another Apple branded power adapter I purchased new from a local computer store. They were all identical. The reinforcing rubber "bootie" was the same. The cable appeared to be the exact same gauge. They even all exhibited the same lack of proper short protection and proved able to arc endlessly without tripping any breakers, fuses or GFCI outlets.

Apple, I love the innovative and alluring design of your computers. I love how Mac OS X integrates the power of Unix with the strength of commercial software like Photoshop all wrapped into a stable, intuitive operating system. But, why can’t you design a safe, reliable power adapter, or at least fix your mistakes?

One theory I have for this trend comes from an experience I had just last night, but the same scenario has played itself out many times over the past year. While at the Apple Store checking out the new Mac Pro there was a guy next to me doing the same. We got to talking over specs and other stuff and I soon discovered he was a recent switcher and was considering purchasing the Mac Pro for his business. He told me his first Apple purchase was an iPod and because of his experience with the iPod, plus the arrival of the Intel Macs and BootCamp, he felt comfortable enough with Apple to buy a MacBook Pro. After the MacBook Pro he picked up an 23″ HD Apple Cinema display to use with his aging PC, but the graphics card was not compatible with his old motherboard. He was now at the Apple Store to return the display and while there decided to just replace the old PC with a new Mac Pro and 30″ HD Cinema display. He also told me he may pick up a Mac Mini for his wife sometime in the near future.

So you see what is going on here?

This guy switched and in the course of a few months went from a PC user to the owner of (potentially) three Macs. And this is not the only story like this I have heard over the past year. Both Victor Cajiao (Typical Mac User) and Tim Verpoorten (Mac Reviewcast) switched and became owners of multiple Macs rather rapidly.

Macs are a disease (and I mean that in a good way). The Mac infects you and spreads like a virus. There is no cure and it will quickly be passed to family and friends. I myself have three Macs in my household which are all in active use and my immediate family, save one, are all own Macs. Now, I am not saying PC users don’t have multiple systems in their homes too, but often times their second PC is more of a toy for the kids and is used to keep real viruses out.

So I guess it’s true. Apple does have viruses. The good news is, the viruses are the Macs themselves.

Ah ha, you see it now too. I guess Apple feels their Pro customers are too busy working to enjoy a little media experience on their Macs?

Now I am sure that to some people who purchase a new Mac Pro this may not be a big deal, but for other customers like Scott it does obviously matter. I think I tend to be in agreement with Scott on this one. The Mac Pro could really serve double duty as a nice secondary home entertainment device. It could be ideal our secondary forms of entertainment like IPTV, video podcasts and iTunes TV downloads. Note that Apple dropped prices on their Cinema displays and many of those buying Mac Pros will also pick up a 23″ or 30″ HD display. Wouldn’t that make a Mac Pro an awesome, and easy, way to add a media center to a spare room or den in your home? We all know that OS 10.5 will have FrontRow built in, so part of this omission will be solved then, but it doesn’t ship until Spring 2007.

There is no doubt that the Mac Pro is the king ca-macho macho of all Mac-dom, but there does seem to be a couple of niceties (FrontRow, Apple Remote, built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi) Apple has decided to reserve for it consumer customers. I would expect things to change when Apple releases Leopard with FrontRow in the Spring, but I guess for now Pro users will still need to rely on the great 3rd party solutions like Media Central to get their Mac media center fix.

Apple’s Mighty Mouse can’t seem to catch a break. I’m still amazed at the bad reviews it gets. And almost all the reviews of the new wireless version seem to have the same ‘Too little, too late’ mantra.

This review may be a little different. I have been using a Mighty Mouse exclusively for the past ten months, and I couldn’t be happier. It seems to address nearly every beef I’ve ever had with other mice. These three points are where the Mighty Mouse shines for me most:

1. Size & Weight
I have a problem with large, bulky mice (I don’t have dainty hands, by the way). The way I mouse, I basically use my thumb and ring finger to move, and index and middle for clicks. I have never liked ‘mitting’ my entire mouse. Too many mice that are ‘ergonomically’ designed seem to REQUIRE you to do a full on, sweaty-palmed wrap around. As a lifelong Mac user, I’ve always worked with quick mousing and lots of keyboard shortcuts. I don’t get stuck into the right-click, click, right-click, click mode that Windows traps you in. That is just too slow and constricting for me.

The Mighty Mouse is svelte, lightweight, and easy to glide. It has a low profile and symmetric Tic-Tac like shape. It’s easy to grab, move the pointer, and get back to the keyboard. You don’t need to conform your hand to the shell of the mouse just to move it.

2. Solid Clicks and no extras
Another problem I have with most modern mice is that the buttons are too numerous and too sensitive. When did it become a good idea to duplicate half the keyboard on a mouse? Do mouse designers really think people hate moving back and forth from keyboard to mouse so much that a mouse needs ten buttons? And to make them ‘less fatiguing’ they make them so clicking a button takes very little pressure at all. This just makes them easier to click ACCIDENTALLY. Having five things start happening at once because you accidentally mashed down on seven different mouse buttons is not my idea of productivity (which is why i always disable them).

The Mighty Mouse basically has one good solid button that requires a deliberate click. The shell is touch-sensitive, so a right click is registered by pushing down on the right side. Rarely does my Mighty Mouse not register a right click. The Mighty Mouse has two other ‘buttons’, the ball-click and the squeeze. I have my ball-click expose the desktop (which might be the default, I can’t remember), and the squeeze brings up Dashboard. The squeeze requires the a little contortion to get it to work, but that is how I prefer it, since I don’t want my Dashboard coming up accidentally. And I always have FAR LESS fatigue with my Mighty Mouse than using any other mouse. It seems the more ‘ergonomic’ and button-ridden the mouse is, the more your hand needs to use its muscles to conform to the shape of the mouse and NOT accidentally click buttons.

Apple has also built in a tiny speaker that gives feedback. When using the scroll ball, there is a tiny, almost unnoticeable ‘click’ for each half millimeter or so you turn the ball. It’s so light that you probably wouldn’t notice it unless it went away. Also, when doing a squeeze-click, there is a small ‘click’ when you squeeze in, and another small ‘clack’ when you release. It sounds so natural I had to unplug the mouse and test it to make sure it wasn’t mechanical.

3. My mouse needs a tail
I never wanted a wireless Mighty Mouse to start with. Wireless mice, both traditional RF and Bluetooth, just don’t have the quick response of a wired critter. When I move a mouse across the screen, I want the pointer to stop when my mouse stops, not 4 to 10 pixels after. I get frustrated very quickly with the jittery re-adjustments required when using a wireless mouse. Many people don’t notice the difference, or don’t care. But I do, and it greatly affects how I work. Apple may have remedied this a little with the new Wireless Mighty Mouse’s new laser tracking. But I’ll bet it’s still not as responsive as a wired mouse.

Also, by design, wireless mice need to be heavier to account for the batteries. This added weight affects how well a mouse glides.

The cord on the original Mighty Mouse is short and light-weight. It comes with a cord clip that also fits over the USB plug (exactly like the one that comes with the iPod). When I have my mouse plugged into my PowerBook, I use the clip to form a loop, which effectively shortens the cord and keeps it completely out of my way.

Those are my thoughts on the controversial Mighty Mouse. If you’ve been holding out on buying one because of bad reviews…don’t necessarily take their word for it. Using mice can be a very subjective thing. Go out and try one yourself. You may really like it.

Well at least Apple finally caught a clue and fixed one of my major complaints about the Mighty Mouse. It should have been Bluetooth from the beginning, especially since every Mac currently ships with Bluetooth built-in. Now, I actually bought an original Mighty Mouse and I was really excited about finally having an Apple designed mouse with two buttons and scrolling. I even used it for a while, but the truth is it now lives life in a bottom desk drawer (a fate I feel many a Mighty Mouse may have met). My reasons for abandoning the Mighty Mouse are unknown even to me. The only answer I have is an esoteric one and it involves knowing that using the Mighty Mouse just never felt quite right. The mouse-ball was fun to play with, but was never really as practical as a scroll-wheel. The “squeeze” button was always awkward to use and the invisible right mouse button never seemed to be as functional as the button on a true two-button mouse. Lastly there was the wire. It just never made sense considering all the great wireless two-button scroll-wheel mouse options available from Microsoft, Logitech and others. So while Apple has lost the wire, and that is a good thing, I think this new revision of the Mighty Mouse may end up being the “Almost but Really Just Not Quite Mighty Mouse with Bluetooth”.

UPDATE: I just read that the new version is also laser based and not optical, which is a nice improvement, but doesn’t really fix the issues I mentioned above.

I use it, you must too
I really hate software that tries to be all things to all people. I don’t need my text editor to also play Tetris. Some developers like to pile on feature after feature not seeming to care that for the 500 MB of extra disk space the feature will use up, only 5% of their customers will care about or use that feature. Now I love Dashboard and Widgets, but I know many people who have never hit F12 in Tiger in their life and don’t care to. Now don’t get me wrong, I know Dashboard is probably more heavily used then some obscure feature in Microsoft Office 2004, but you get my point. What was so bad about needing to install Konfabulator to get Widgets? Dashboard takes up space, memory and processor resources. Why should we assume everyone wants to, or must, use it?

Integration vs Innovation
Integrating features does make things more convenient, but at what cost? Apple only releases major updates and revisions to their OS once a year or so. That means we won’t see major enhancements or improvements to most integrated features for at least a year. Developers of 3rd party software are highly focused on just their product and tend to maintain a much more aggressive release cycle. They can adapt, extend and roll out features much more quickly. 3rd party developers are also much more in tune to the wants and needs of their customers. They can take feedback and act on it much more quickly, getting us what we want as soon as it’s ready.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not at all against integration of new features. I just think we need to be careful. Even though hard drives are larger and less expensive than ever I don’t want an OS loaded with obscure features taking up 50GB of disk space. Think lean, mean and clean. Lets make sure OS X has a highly developed and polished core feature set offering the biggest benefit to the broadest range of consumers. I think there is much more value in seeing a great feature like Spotlight refined, enhanced and improved vs. Apple spending resources developing 10 new features for the OS that we may or may not use. Apple should continue to extend and innovate OS X, but I propose they set a high bar on which features actually make the final cut. Leave the more niche stuff to our great 3rd party developers. Let us tailor our OS X experience how we see fit without wasting processor cycles or disk space on stuff we don’t want or need.

About a week and a half ago my 20″ iMac G5 started to turn off by itself. I thought it was a fluke at first, but when it happened 2 nights in a row I began to get suspicious. So I began the normal troubleshooting procedure: plugged into another outlet, reset the PRAM, ran repair permissions, reset the Energy Saver settings, reset the SMU, etc. Now, this is my main desktop system where I store all my iPhotos and other personal files, so you would think at this point it would have been a good idea for me to make a backup right? Of course it would of, but if I had, I would not be writing this and since I am, I’m hoping sharing my story will allow you to learn from my idiocy.

Fast forward to last night. The issue had become progressively worst and was now at the point where the iMac would shut off one or two minutes after you turned it on. So now I am pretty sure I need a new power supply and can take it in to AppleCare, but I need a backup and the machine won’t stay on. What do I do? I’m the Mac guy, this isn’t a problem, I can solve this, right? I’ll just remove the drive, put it in an enclosure, pull the data off, put the drive back in and take the iMac into Apple for service. Easy. Problem solved. Not quite.

I go out this morning and buy an external USB 2.0 SATA drive enclosure and begin the process of transplanting the drive from my iMac to the new enclosure. I figured it was no big deal since the hard drive in the iMac is a customer replaceable part and Apple even provides instructions in the DIY area of their support site. I print out the instructions and begin the process of opening my iMac and removing the drive. It is going great until I reach step 4. In this step you are supposed to remove a tiny black connector (see image) from the hard drive temperature sensor which is attached to the side of the drive. The problem is the sensor is damn small and as I gently try to coax it out of the socket by the connector I hear a tiny “crack” sound! The top wire pops lose followed by the rest as little tiny bits of plastic around the connector fall away. Crap! I just broke the connector. Needless to say, now my iMac really needs repair and I will be paying for it. The good news is I did get the drive out and was able to make a backup with Carbon Copy Cloner so my data is safe.

I am now off to the Apple Store with my broken iMac in tow and hopefully they will only charge me for the small cable I broke or the temperature sensor part and not more. I should also mention that when I called AppleCare to admit my wrong doings I spoke with a nice rep named Kurt. Kurt informed me that while I will be responsible for the damage I caused, my AppleCare is still in tact for the rest of my iMac and they will be able to diagnose and repair my power issue under warranty.

Geeks, I write this as a cautionary tale to you all. If I had only heeded my own advice I would not have a broken iMac and I would not be paying for what is sure to be a costly repair. Learn from my example and don’t end up like me. Do your backups.

We have all heard (and even been a part of) the rumors that the MacBook Pros heat issues are stemming from the amount of thermal paste applied. Not too long ago an image was released from Apples service manual that pictured approximately 10-20 times too much thermal grease being applied to the CPU in a MacBook Pro and this was all we were going on. I had my suspicions then that this was simply a pictorial and had nothing to do with the actual amount applied (I still believe any Genius worth their position would not apply, or leave applied, that amount of thermal grease). It would seem however that it is true.

That is to say the amount of thermal grease being applied is far too much, but not that it is making the difference. I just ran across James Duncan Davidsons experiment over at MacDevCenter and it is certainly interesting.

As far as the thermal paste issue is concerned, my opinion at this point is that although the factory’s gooey application may look horrible, it’s probably a perfectly acceptable practice given the factory and service center’s desire to ensure proper contact between the chips and heat pipe with a minimum of fuss. After all, I can tell you that it took much longer to carefully apply the Arctic Silver as instructed than it would have to just glob on the stuff. And if the end result is the same, why not?

James removed the thermal grease from his MacBook Pro as best he could and applied the correct amount of Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste which is widely renowned as the best in the business. Otherwise fairly comparing his MacBook Pro with his neighbors untouched yet otherwise identical model showed only a 2ËšF difference both top and bottom of the Macs.

Obviously this is a single case carried out with limited equipment, conditioning and money, and thus is hardly conclusive, but it certainly makes you think there may be less to this whole thermal grease thing than originally thought.

Then again, when the MacCast contacted a representative at Arctic Silver, they more or less confirmed the original theory. They explained thermal grease is designed to fill the microscopic surface imperfections between the CPU and the heatpipe. The heatpipe transfers the heat to the heatsinks and then the fans blow air over the heatsinks to dissipate the heat away from the CPU. According to them you only need a thin almost translucent layer of material to fill those microscopic surface imperfections. In fact, Arctic maintains too thick of an application of grease could act as an insulating layer between the CPU and the heatpipe. Now some will argue that when the MacBook is finally assembled the excess paste is squeezed out hard enough to result in a proper application. No matter what you think it seems the debate will rage on.

Beyond the advantages of efficient heat transfer in cooling James experiment accidentally brought the question of proper airflow into the equation. During reassembly of his MacBook James forgot to re-attach the fan controller (thus it stay on all the time). As a result of the mistake he was able to notice the MacBook remained a lot cooler, even if it did get unbearably loud. So, do we have a second culprit here? Is it back to the drawing board? Can these issues be solved with traditional technologies? Maybe the problem isn’t the technology, but our expectations of it.

We as consumers are constantly pushing for manufacturers to make smaller and smaller notebook computers and they are constantly pushing these boundaries for us. What then is the surprise in that the air cooling system, which relies on space and airflow, is starting to take a hit when confronted with such changes? Perhaps it’s time to invest more in liquid or other such cooling solutions. Either that or stop complaining and embrace our new MacBooks ability to not only encode our latest iMovie project but to also make a nice egg breakfast at the same time.

So ask yourself how you would feel if overnight you were suddenly hated and villified by an entire community just for speaking your mind on a few Mac forums and blogs (the MacCast included)? Well, that is exactly what happened to Jason Tomczak. If the name sounds familiar you probably think you know him as the guy who brought a lawsuit against Apple for the scratching issues with the iPod Nano. If so, you would be correct in the fact that his name did appear as lead plaintiff in the suit brought forth by David P. Meyer & Associates Co. LPA and their representative firm, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP. But, according to Jason, that is the only fact you would have correct. A name on a sheet of paper.

Jason recently posted an Open Letter to the Mac Community and, according to him, he never wanted to be part of any lawsuit against Apple. He claims the law firm contacted him and asked for his “insight into the problem” which he provided. He also maintains he did so with the understanding that he wanted no part in any case they may file as a result of his opinions. So after months of remaining silent and after becoming a target for the hatered and loathing of many Apple fanatics, Jason took action and is revealing his side of the story. He hopes his letter will finally clear his name and expose what he considers to be the truth behind the lawsuit. I hope you all take a moment to read it. It offers a great perspective directly from a main player in the story and goes far beyond all media bites we heard last October. I am sure if I go back and listen to my comments at the time I am probably guilty of perpetuating the hype and guilty of letting my pro-Apple bias prevent me from peeking behind the media curtian. One thing is for sure, Jasons story serves as a reminder to be careful about what we say and, even more importantly, to be careful about who we say it to.

Open Letter to the Mac Community
The Truth Behind the iPod Nano “Scratch” Class Action Suit

Microsoft has released the required system specifications for running Windows Vista. Does this really effect Mac users you may ask? Well yes, possibly. Since the introduction of BootCamp there has been a lot of talk about compatibility with Vista on a Mac and finally we are getting somewhere in the discussion.

There will be two different levels, according to Microsoft, of Vista compatibility; “Vista Capable PCs” and “Vista Premium Ready PCs.” Most modern Macs fall into the latter category barring the x86 processor and of course we now have that covered with all the new Intel Macs.

The specs are complex however and some believe Macs may not be “Premium Ready” due to the integrated graphics and RAM modules used. To be Vista Premium Ready Microsoft lists the basic specs as being:

• 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.
• 1 GB of system memory.
• A graphics processor that runs Windows Aero.
• 128 MB of graphics memory.
• 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
• DVD-ROM Drive.
• Audio output capability.
• Internet access capability.

More information can be found here.

Still the question remains; would Microsoft want to sabotage Windows on Mac? Also would Apple want to sabotage Vista on Mac. I really don’t think either company can see a benefit in that and think Vista will run on all compatible machines as soon as Microsoft can ship it.

I’m a huge fan of the MacCast. There are several reasons why I favour it over pretty much every other Macintosh PodCast – such as Adam’s style and the fact that we seem to largely agree on a lot of things. But that’s not to say that we agree on everything – I know that Adam is not a fan of Apple’s traditional single button mouse format. Sparked by Apple’s new Mighty Mouse – this week, I want to look at the importance of the single-button mouse on Mac’s interface.

We have to first look at why Apple first opted for a one button mouse. The original GUI devised by Xerox PARC used a three button mouse, but Apple made a concious decision when they began to develop their own GUI for the Lisa, to go with a single button format for their mouse. This was an obvious move on Apple’s part. Apple saw the GUI as the ultimate way of interacting with the computer by simplifying how computer and user interact. By removing the barriers between humans and technology, Apple were convinced they would become industry leaders.

To make the operating system as easy to use as possible, it was decided that a mouse with just one button would be far easier for most users – who had never used a mouse before. If you stop to think, using a mouse is a tough concept for most tech virgins. While point and click may seem a pretty simple metaphore, in practice, there is also double-clicking, click-and-holding, and also getting to grips with how to hold a mouse, and how to lift it and reposition when you reach the edge of the work surface. Apple apparently felt that the issue of right and left clicking would add to the confusion of the system. The single button then starts to define how the OS must work – everything in the system must be possible with the press of one button. In fact, Apple did a brilliant job of this, as anyone who used Mac OS 7 or earlier will probably have seen. In fact, Apple nailed the single button interface so well, that it would be 11 years after the original Mac before the argument for a right button would become important.

Many early GUI systems employed a 2 button mouse. This includes my other favourite OS – the Amiga. Like the Mac, Amiga OS featured a fixed menu, at the top of the screen. However, unlike the Mac, Amiga OS used a two button mouse, the main purpose of the right button was to activate the the main menu – something that the Mac achieved with clicking with the single button. Other uses for right-clicking on the Amiga included the ability to choose 2 colours to paint with, and then draw in the appropriate colour by varying which button was pressed, which worked in many drawing applications. AutoCAD, on the other hand, used the left button to navigate its menus, and right-clicking to draw.

But in 1995, the killer argument for the two button mouse, was delivered by Microsoft the contextual menu. Key to the workings of Windows 95 and still a prominent interface feature of Windows XP, the concept is similar to the Amiga’s right-click menu button. The difference is that the menu does not have a fixed position, but rather appears next to the mouse, and its contents can change depending on the item that was right-clicked. The usefulness of this function was to place all the function that a user may require within easy reach simply one right-click awaay. The contextual menu was a massive interface revolution because it was a place to put lots of functions that might not fit on a main application menu. Many Mac geeks note that this function had been documented in Apple’s own research and development department years before Windows adopted it, but on this occasion, there is an element of sour grapes on the part of us Mac users that such a useful idea made it into Windows first. It was not until 1997, and probably after Apple and Microsoft’s deal to share technologies, that contextual menus made it into Mac OS 8.5, in the form of the control-click. At this point the argument for a 2-button mouse came back to the Mac. Mac OS 8.5 did not support this natively, and even the iMac – with its pioneering USB connectivity did not behave as you’d expect if you had seen contextual menu systems working on a Windows PC – though I am sure drivers were available to correct this with some Mac compatible mice. Again, many Mac users became a little sour and the much-used defence for the lack of right button was developed – “Why do you need all these buttons on the mouse when you’ve got all the buttons on the keyboard?” While it worked for many of us at the time – it convinced no-one else. It was not until Mac OS X that right-clicking became a standard feature.

A couple of other innovations had been going on in clicking since 1984. The first of these is also something that Windows pioneered – sticky menus. The original Mac has only one way to use a menu – click-holding it. To open a menu, you would have to hold the mouse button down and move to the item you wanted to select. When the mouse button was released, the item would be selected and the menu would go away. For recent switchers who’ve only known sticky menus – I suggest you try this technique for the menus, it still works in Mac OS X. There are a couple of downsides to this technique of selecting menu items – the first is the obvious issue that it is hard to hold the mouse button down if you run out of space or you might have a dodgy mouse ball and find yourself accidentally releasing the button prematurely and picking entirely the wrong item on the menu. The other big problem with this is that as laptop computers were developed, the track-pad evolved the ability to understand a sharp tap as a click. The traditional click-dragging menu selection was not friendly to the track-pad and required the user also use the click button on their laptop.
Sticky menus on the other-hand work in the way that I would think most of us prefer to use today. Clicking the heading for a menu once will open it up and it will stay snapped open until we pick another option from the menu. This has the advantage of making sub-menus easier to use. With the click-hold method, moving over an option that brings up a sub-menu opens it up, but if you slip and move your mouse over an option that is not on the sub-menu, then it will close again. With a sticky menu, clicking a sub-menu will snap it open.
While Mac OS 8 added support for sticky menus, it may interest some to note that the reason that sticky menus were not adopted earlier in Mac OS was a technical one. In Mac OS 8-9, if you open a menu by clicking once on it, you will find it will automatically close after 10 seconds if you do not move your mouse up and down it. This is because the classic Mac OS did not have the multi-threaded ability to carry on with other functions when the menu was opened – essentially stopping everything else on the system until the menu option had been selected. By forcing the user to hold the menu open with the mouse button, Apple made sure the menu would default to closed and allowed other work to continue.

But even more than the right-hand button, something else new was making waves in the mouse world – the scroll wheel. This was a revolution in input device design – and it had come largely out of the internet. In the past, most people were happy to scroll up and down their documents or folders with the buttons and bars on the computer’s interface – but early web pages tended toward long pages of text that needed to be scrolled through, and in an effort to save those precious seconds it would take to move the mouse to the side of the screen, the scroll wheel was devised. While I cannot discover who first introduced the device, it soon caught on. Microsoft took the scroll wheel a step further with their innovative tilting scroll wheel design, allowing the user to push the scroll wheel left and right to move around a window in both directions. Apple’s Mighty Mouse achieves a similar functionality in a somewhat more dynamic way with a scroll ball. The difference between the systems is that obviously, the Microsoft mouse limits the user to only strict horizontal or vertical movement, while the Mighty Mouse allows movement in any direction. Both have advantages and disadvantages as a result. The Microsoft mice cannot scroll diagonally at all, while the Mighty Mouse requires careful use to ensure you scroll perfectly horizontally and not accidentally diagonally – and while I have not had much experience with either mouse, the choice of which you prefer is no doubt a personal preference.

So why have Apple ignored the input devise revolution for so long? Well, part of it is sticking to their guns, and part of it is a very sensible practice of ensuring the OS will work properly with people using older devices. A Mac single button mouse will plug into a PC, and you can use it on Windows, but because that OS was designed from the outset to use 2 buttons, you will probably get very tired of using it very quickly. The Mac on the other hand has always been designed to have single button simplicity, which as a philosophy is unbeatable. The simplest example is opening your hard disk. Interface experts have studied how human beings perceive a system and what they will try without knowing what they are meant to do – things that people are likely to work out are called ‘discoverable’ by interface boffins. On the Mac, opening your Hard Disk can be done in 2 main ways, the obvious one is by double-clicking, but I think most of us find it easy to believe that this is deemed an undiscoverable method because a computer virgin would not think to try this on their own. The second way is less obvious, but if you’d never seen a computer before, easier to work out – Click the Hard Disk and select Open from the File menu. Of course, you can also right-click or hit Command-O, but these are also non discoverable ways to access the Hard Disk. Baring this in mind, Windows does not have any discoverable way to open the Hard Disk whatsoever, so until you work out right-clicking or accidentally discover double-clicking, a computer virgin would have no way to operate even the simplest functions of the computer. By applying single-button simplicity evenly to the OS, Apple have devised applications as complex as Final Cut that can happily be operated with one button. This leads to much more intuitive interfaces – such as the iLife suite where most options are plainly discoverable on the main interface. Many people will never need to read a manual to work out how to use iTunes, iMovie or iPhoto – even though they are performing quite complex tasks. If you compare this to most Windows interface design, you will find it cluttered and with a focus much more on technical ease than user experience. This is partly due to having a 2 button philosophy, where users are required to set up items by right-clicking. Developers such as Adobe who build applications for both Mac and Windows reach a great position where the interface is uncluttered and functional, but right clicking can yield additional advantages.

Apple have had mixed success in their design of mice. The Lisa and original 1984 shipped with very basic mice that were essentially a beige box with a button sticking out of the top. The first Mac used a proprietary connection which was replaced in 1987 by the ADB port on the Macintosh II. This connection heralded in the Apple ADB mouse which was a far sleeker, if still rather angular affair. This mouse had a laid in button that sat flush inset onto the top of the body. The next model was the ADB II mouse which had a refined rounded shape, angled into a curved button that formed the front of the mouse. While this model was still in beige, it also shipped in a black form to go with the Performa 5400 / 5500 ‘Black Mac’ and also the PowerBook. One problem I have found in years of Mac ownership is this model was hard to keep clean – featuring a twist-in ball retainer that needed a paper-clip end to be inserted before it could be removed for access to the mouse’s innards. In 1998, Apple launched the iMac. With its revolutionary bondi blue and white casing, as well as USB connectivity a wholly new mouse was needed to fit with the system. Sadly, Apple delivered what was their most unpopular mouse ever. The ‘puck’ was a small round shape that had a formed in button at the front and coloured touches at either side. However, being so short, it did not fit happily in the hand of a user and being perfectly round had no defining feature to make sure you were using it at the right angle. Apple eventually added a groove to the button to help keep it straight, but this did not really add any enhancement – this alteration was rolled out with the revised and multicoloured iMac models.

In 2000, during the massive keynote in which Steve Jobs introduced new iMac colours and the PowerMac G4 Cube, he announced the death of the puck. To replace it, the Apple Pro mouse was unleashed. Jobs thought that many people would think Apple had gone mad – having gone from a one-button mouse to a no button mouse. But aside from its classy lozenge shape, there was plenty of thought put into the Pro mouse. Firstly, by making the whole of the top of the mouse into a button, Apple allowed it to be pressed in a number of ways – from a gentle single finger click to just plopping your hand down on the top. Unlike the majority of Microsoft mice, the Pro mouse is symmetrical – allowing it to be used by both left and right handed users with no problem, and its shape comfortably fits a child’s hand as happily as an adult. Apple had another great logical reason to bring out the Pro mouse – colour. Being black with a clear plastic casing, it comfortably sat next to every colour of iMac as well as the PowerMac series. This saved Apple from producing a large range of different coloured mice. reducing some costs on the product. But the biggest story on the Pro mouse was not on the outside, it was on the bottom – the ball had been replaced by a laser. For the first time, a personal computer from a major manufacturer came with an optical mouse as standard. Jobs proudly noted that PC manufacturers like Dell did not include optical mice on even their most expensive models when Apple were giving them away on even the cheapest model of iMac.

Since its inception, the Pro mouse has changed little. In 2002, its black inner shell was changed to white to fit with the iMac G4, eMac and the updated PowerMac models. Since then, the bottom of the mouse has been cleaned up with the removal of the adjuster and dropped the ‘Pro’ from its name to denote it not being as advanced as Apple’s wireless bluetooth mouse and the new Mighty Mouse.
While the Wireless mouse is much like the standard mouse, the Mighty Mouse is again revolutionary – for Apple at least. As most of you will know, it places sensors on the underside of the mouse’s skin to detect which side of the surface is being pressed. It also adds a scroll ball which allows even more freedom in quick navigation around windows by allowing scrolling in any direction. Most differently, Apple have also integrated a fourth button into the mouse, which is triggered by a squeeze to the sides of the mouse. What differentiates this from other multi-button mice is that it can be configured to operate many of the functions that are built into Mac OS X – such as the much-used Exposé and Dashboard – a great way to trigger these features without needing to touch your keyboard or trip a hot corner.

The Mighty Mouse may signal a new direction for Apple and indicates that they’ve noticed the advances in mouse technology of the last few years. However, they have not as yet made it standard with even their professional computers or even as a build-to-order option. This thankfully shows a commitment to the future of a single-button mouse on the Mac – and the simplicity of operation that goes with this.

A friend of mine recently bought a Wireless optical Microsoft mouse for his Mac following requests from his wife, who has a scroll mouse at work. When I visited him, he soon started asking me ‘Which button do I click with?’ – while I couldn’t believe that after years of computing he would be confused by a two-button mouse, he has now reverted to his Apple Pro mouse because it feels better to use. The ability to right-click did not enrich his experience and made for confusion – and I don’t think the ability to scroll through documents did much either.

The point is this – because Apple have designed Mac OS X to work with a single button mouse, nothing else is needed. Many users do feel the benefit of a scroll wheel, myself included – while I don’t use one at home, my girlfriend has a great mouse on her Windows PC and for a while when I go back to my Mac, I wish I had a scroll wheel. I am undecided on the Mighty Mouse at the moment, but should my Pro mouse break, I would definitely consider upgrading to it. However, I hope that Apple continue to support the single button mouse at least until the end of Mac OS X 10.9 (Ocelot?) because the simplicity and usability that it forces upon the OS is the same simplicity that has become Apple’s trademark in interface design.

Long live the one button – or no button mouse.

Please address all comments to hhggtm@mac.com

This column is written by Richard Tanner for the MacCast and may have many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate. The MacCast is not responsible for any opinions and information expressed in this column.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was written by the late Douglas Adams who was an avid Mac fan and owned the first Mac to be sold in Europe – on which many of his works were written.

With Mac OS X version 10.5, Leopard in the works and Windows Vista, er, having its name unveiled, my thoughts have turned to the future. Mac OS X is the best operating system ever developed – its unique blend of high power UNIX and stylish, easy to use interface mean that the new version of Windows will really have to go some to catch up. We all wait with baited breath for Steve Jobs to stand on a stage and say, ‘Tiger is great, but for all the developers in this room – it’s old hat, because look what Leopard can do…’ Well actually, the most exciting part is what he says after that. New tweaks to the Aqua interface will probably filter in, great new features to make your life easier will crop up – and if they don’t, we’ll all be very disappointed.

So what is to come in Leopard? Well as I gaze into my crystal ball, I am at a loss to speculate what might appear. Better optimisation on the Intel Macs that will be commonplace by then is a strong likelihood. Even more extreme graphics, with support for PDF spec 1.6 built into Preview, more real time effects filters in Core Image and probably some other graphical innovations that none of us can guess.

I’m sure that anyone who regularly watches the reports from Apple Keynotes would have drawn similar conclusions.

There’s only one rumour that I’ve heard that would seem a likely addition to Leopard – making the interface resolution independent of the screen resolution. Back in 1984, the Mac had a 10” screen with 512 pixels across it. That worked out as around 50 pixels-per-inch. As computers evolved and screens got better, the standard definition became 72ppi. The 32×32 pixel icons of the past worked fine at this size, but Apple acknowledged that on high resolution displays icons were becoming very small and in Mac OS X bumped the size of icons up to 128×128 pixels. These days, the LCD technology of screens sets the limit on the maximum resolution. Each pixel generated by the Mac is precisely mapped to a dot in the LCD’s matrix. This is great for precision, and has led to 100ppi becoming the standard resolution for work.

Now, this works fine because Mac OS X was built to look best at this resolution – its menu is about 1.4 times bigger than the Mac OS 9 menu so that Mac OS X’s menu would look about the same on a modern screen as the Mac OS 9 menu looked on a contemporary display. However, the problem comes when people are running screens at different resolutions. My cousin is a case in point. When I visit her and turn on her iMac, I am disturbed to see its 15” screen displaying 800×600 pixels rather than the standard 1024×768 resolution. However, being older than myself and suffering the associated eyesight issues, she finds the lower resolution easier to use because it makes everything look bigger – including the buttons on windows and the menu. But of course, her biggest loss is in image quality – iPhoto might have larger buttons, but the pictures suffer and appear pixelly. The new system of screen independent interface resolution will help people in this case by allowing the menus, buttons and text to scale up and appear larger even when running at higher resolutions. By including this technology in Leopard, Apple will be future-proofing Mac OS X against increases in LCD quality and higher ppi resolutions.

It’s hard to see what else could be done in terms of simplifying the operating system for beginner users. Features like Exposé, the Finder’s side bar, and spring-loaded folders make the Mac’s interface better than anything else out there. That’s not to say that Apple don’t have some really incredible plans for future operating systems to keep one step ahead of the competition – or several steps ahead of Microsoft.

But if we look into the far future – beyond Mac OS X, what could happen. Well, a few years ago, a friend and I postulated on this and developed some key ideas of how operating systems may change beyond recognition. One possibility is that the way we interact with computers may completely change in a few years time. Apple’s Mighty Mouse shows that there’s still plenty of room for innovation in the field of input devices. The mouse and keyboard have been largely unaltered since the 1950’s. The basic technology of mice has improved, but not the way the device is used. The stylus is another advance in input methods, but tablet PC’s have never really caught on. The Apple Newton and other PDA’s have shown that a stylus can be useful. Applications like Painter thrive best when coupled with a pressure sensitive stylus input, but it’s not suited for every day use. Most of us prefer a keyboard and can type faster than we can write.

Those of you who want to experience a taste of the future now might like to head over towards http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/.
Dasher is a completely new way of typing, developed by Cambridge University. It uses an innovative graphical system in which letters zoom across the screen as you move your mouse towards them. Dasher then uses text prediction to help you find the right letter to follow. Dasher can learn words that you frequently use to make them easier to type. It takes some getting used to but once you’ve got the knack, Dasher can become surprisingly quick to use. Dasher was developed partly as an input method for people with disabilities which mean they cannot use a keyboard, one version can track eye movements of the user and translate this into text – this technology may become useful to us all in the future. And, yes, this paragraph is being written with Dasher.

There has been much speculation about computers that can respond to your voice and talk back to you – this will probably come one day, and when it does our whole way of living will change as computers watch and listen to us and can remind us why we came into the room when we forget! In fact, back in 1988, Apple released a movie demonstrating the way they thought computers may act in the future and in particular how it could affect the disabled, making life easier for everyone. (The movie’s called ‘Future Shock’ you may be able to find it online). But this movie also showed some technology that I think will never catch on. The woman in this film uses hand gestures to control her computer – moving her hand up and down to scroll through the menus. Now, I know that computers at this stage will have powerful artificial intelligence, but we all know what computers are like and you can bet that you go out the room for a minute and when you get back your dog has been sniffing the computer screen which has triggered its motion sensor to type half a page of gibberish. A computer that talks to you will require a lot of software to understand the syntax of language. While computers can already translate spoken words to text, very powerful software would be needed to understand what words mean and what switching two words over like ‘It is’ and ‘Is it?’ can do to the meaning of a sentence.
Anyone who’s ever listened to their Mac talking will probably think that this is an area that needs a lot of work done to it – Apple’s speech synthesis is pretty cool, but is a long way from a computer that can carry out a conversation with the user. And face it, anything less than that would just get annoying after the tenth time you hear “I’m sorry, that option is unavailable, please rephrase your command…”

Display technology may also change in the future. One futuristic form of display being developed is called a fog screen. In a fog screen, the images are projected onto a thin column of water vapour that form a wall of virtual screen. It might sound far-fetched but, such devices are already being tested. You’re probably wondering – Why? Well, the fog screen can be used to create a virtual partition between two spaces, and can even have different things projected on either side of it Imagining how this could be used in a couple of example scenarios may help to explain the advantages. The first example, is of a games arcade – the space could be divided up using fog screens and a different game could be running on each wall. Once you finish the game, you could walk through the wall and see what’s playing on the other side. My other example, is an office situation. We all need to collaborate with the other people we work with, but what if the the walls between your workspace and your colleagues were virtual? To show your work to others, you could simply invite people to walk through the fog barrier between offices and look at your side of the screen.

Another futuristic vision of the evolution of screen technology, is building displays into the surfaces of the desks, tables, and even kitchen work tops that we deal with everywhere. Up until recently, there were clear reasons that this could not be done. Traditional CRT displays were far too boxy, and even today’s flat screen have the draw back of needing thick and heat generating back lighting. The technology to build super flat and relatively cool running displays is in its early stage, and relies on the use of thousands of tiny Light Emitting Diodes. To generate coloured images, as most of you will know, requires using red, green and blue light to approximate all the other colours. Blue LEDs were in fact fairly hard to produce until recently, because blue light has a much shorter wavelength than the red or green LEDs that had been most common up to a few years ago. If you’ve bought a stereo or DVD player recently, you’ll probably know that LEDs now come in a multitude of colours. The next technical barrier to building screens from micro-LEDs was to provide a system to control each of the tiny components simultaneously when they are arranged into a grid. One of the first devices to use this type of display, is a digital camera – they are already available, but such screens are currently very small. Once more companies develop this technology, the screens will become larger, and cheaper to produce – much cheaper than current LCD displays. Because each tiny LED emits its own light, there is no need for hot and power hungry backlighting. Eventually such displays may become thin enough to fit on any surface or even be woven into a flexible membrane that can be fixed to any surface – like wrapping paper. By taking the display out of the traditional monitor format, the way people interact with computers can be freed up to allow for more innovative designs, and greater integration of technology into our lives. Imagine the kitchen of tomorrow where a micro-LED display could be integrated into your work top for quick access to recipes. Maybe there will be a form of electronic wallpaper that you can put up in your living room, and then change the colour of the walls – or even define a space on the wall to use as a TV or computer work area. In fact there would be virtually no limit to where you could have a display, and accessing the internet will become as common as checking the time on your wrist watch.

However, the biggest advance in display technology to come will be three-dimensional. 3D monitors could be powered by laser systems, or with the projection of images into a parabolic mirror, which would create the optical illusion of a 3D image out of them. However this is achieved, a whole new dimension to working with computers will be possible and an interface to get the most benefit out of this will have to be created. Layers in a Photoshop document could actually have depth if looking at the screen from the side. Apple’s trademark cube transition may take on a whole new level. If Apple were to design this innovation, then they would be in a position to become industry leaders.

But beyond all this, the operating system as we know it could evolve . Looking at iLife, it is possible to demonstrate how integration makes computers easier to use. If all aspects of working with a document were integrated, it would improve the workflow for the end user. The only way to do this, is to break with the traditional application-based operating environment and developing instead a document-based system. Here a document could be edited with a variety of tools. Say for example, that I am editing a photo in Photoshop and then decided to apply an effect, using Painter. Currently this would require me to save my project and then open it in the other application. In a document orientated operating system, the image being worked on would stay constant while the toolbars of the corresponding applications could be loaded in around it. This would lead to an entirely new form of operating system without any applications but rather a series of tools that could be used to edit the current document.
In place of iPhoto, would be a system-wide image viewer built into the OS, which could flick from photos to movies to music and even work as a substitute to the Finder. Documents that the user is editing could be broken down into sub documents, and because tools would be application independent, any part of a document could be edited with any tool. For example, the OS would ship with a number of utilities built-in, such as a text editor and photo editor. If I was writing an email, the tools of the text editor would be available to me, but if I also had bought HTML editing tools which would compare to Dreamweaver in today’s terms, then I could use those tools on my email as well. In fact, with PDF technology becoming so predominant these days, and the lines between media type blurring, a document would generally start out as a blank canvas and what was created on it would largely depend on the tools used upon it. Going back to the example of sending an email, I would simply create a new document in the main OS. At this point, it could be a picture, a document to print, or even the start of a desktop publishing document. Next, I would call up a text editing tool – possibly the one included with the OS, or if I preferred, maybe a custom tool from another developer – this tool may include the basic typing system, font selection, and dictionary systems. Once I’d typed my document, I would be free to do with it what I wanted – I could turn it into a sticky note, embed it into another document as a column of text or send it as an email, just by choosing a different tool to operate on the text. This would remove all boundaries between documents such as Word, Text Edit and even Mail, because they would simply edit aspects of a document. An even bigger example of this would be that I could type a letter, but then decide that I wanted to add an effect to the heading. Rather than being bound by the tools of one application, I could dynamically select this text and edit it with something else – in this case maybe I could load in Photoshop’s tools around my heading and use effects to place a shadow and colour effects onto the heading. One last example may help you understand what I am describing, is that of a page with both text and images. I could use it much like a current desktop publishing application, but if I decided to, I could select a picture within the document and call up a different set of tools to alter the colours, or even completely retouch this section – all without leaving the page that I was originally working with.
It has multimedia advantages too – since the nature of documents and file types would have to become much more flexible, there would be no explicit difference between a movie and a document of images and text, and one could readily be transformed into the other simply with the application of tools. In this case, I could create a picture, and then choose to animate it, or build a slideshow with it – and by simply loading the appropriate tool, this would be possible. Of course this technology would need to employ a complex series of plug-ins to power it and all files would need a full resolution composite embedded into documents to ensure that your documents would work on another computer even if it didn’t have the same range of tools as your computer.
This approach will never make it into Mac OS X but may come to be the trademark feature in operating systems that follow it.

Whatever the future of operating systems in general and Mac OS X in particular holds, we can rest assured that Apple will be where they belong – where they’ve always been – at the cutting edge of computer innovation.

Please address all comments to hhggtm@mac.com

This column is written by Richard Tanner for the MacCast and may have many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate. The MacCast is not responsible for any opinions and information expressed in this column.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was written by the late Douglas Adams who was an avid Mac fan and owned the first Mac to be sold in Europe – on which many of his works were written.

Taking a break from the Mac itself, this week the column is going to focus on something that may have been the PodCasting of its day.

By his own admission, Steve Wozniak – Apple’s cofounder and original engineer was a phone fanatic. Back when answering machines were relatively new and had to be rented from the phone company, he set up a ‘dial-a-joke’ service.

The idea of this service was that Woz would record a joke onto his answering machine every day and then distribute the number to anyone who may want to listen to it. People could then phone his number to listen to the recording.

Woz did not invent the ‘dial-a-joke’, but rather set up his own rather popular service. It was so popular in fact that he was forced to change the phone number for the service a number of times. Even when he managed to get hold of very easy-to-remember numbers, he would still get complaints from others who had similar numbers and were on the receiving end of all the misdialled traffic.

The idea of a dial-a-joke service in many ways precedes the PodCast. A PodCast is a system that allows you to listen to something that you choose when you want to. The phone system similarly placed the power into the listener’s hands – they could dial up the number when and often as they chose, or if they wanted, find the number of a different dial-a-joke machine to try.

Of course there are some technical drawbacks to this. For a start, the length of the message cannot be very long. To advertise your service, there was no easy way to get your phone number out to everyone who might want to listen to it – in fact the best advertising was word-of-mouth. Even if word of the service reached people at long distance, they would have to pay their phone company to make the calls to the machine. And on a technical point, only one person could get through to the machine at any one time.

Podcasts get around all this with international distribution over the internet and large directories to allow people to find the right Podcast for them. The internet allows free and easy simultaneous downloads to people all over the world.

Telephone based broadcasting sadly never took off. This may have been down to technical reasons but unfortunately, signs of another cause for it’s demise can be seen in the form of sex chat-lines. While Woz’s use of telephone recordings was purely non-profit making and wholly innocent, others saw the potential to make vast amounts of cash. The people who got hold of telephone recording technology used it commercially to appeal to the male tendency to turn all new inventions to a method for distributing adult material. This, however, stopped the development of the telephone recording as a mass broad casting medium. Many believe that Apple already have a solution in place to commercially distribute Paid-for-podcast-subscriptions through the iTunes Music Store and while many of us would probably be happy to pay a small fee for a few Podcasts from established broadcasting companies such as the BBC, it is a good policy for Apple to allow the medium of Podcasting to become established before introducing charges. Beside this the relative cheapness in putting together a Podcast and the abundance of people with something to talk about mean that the future is safe for the type of free podcast that we’re all getting used to.

Steve Wozniak’s fixation with telephone technology led to many change in his life – it was through his dial a joke machine that he met his wife, when she called the service and Woz happened to pick up. It also led to his first business with Steve Jobs. As with Apple, Woz served in a technical role, with Jobs taking care of the marketing and sales side of the operation . The operation in question being a device for hacking the phone system that Wozniak built and Jobs sold to students at his university. Dodgy as it may sound this money helped the pair when starting their next company to sell the computer that Woz had come up with.

Next week in the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Macintosh, we will take a speculative look into the future of not just the Mac, but the operating systems of tomorrow.

Please address all comments to hhggtm@mac.com

This column is written by Richard Tanner for the MacCast and may have many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate. The MacCast is not responsible for any opinions and information expressed in this column.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was written by the late Douglas Adams who was an avid Mac fan and owned the first Mac to be sold in Europe – on which many of his works were written.

This week, I’ve been in the mood to reminisce and have been thinking about all the Macs I’ve owned, used or lusted over. Hopefully, this week’s edition will spark a nice thread in the MacCast forums because I’m sure all us Mac Geeks love to gush about which model is our favourite ever Mac.

Way back in the 1980’s when I was young and the Mac was just a little younger, I didn’t know much about computers, I was happy pottering with the Toshiba HX-10 machine that my grandparents bought me for Christmas when I was 4. Even at that age I could just about manage the simplest elements of the BASIC programming that it required – though I will apologise to my Mum for the hours of copying code into the computer that she was persuaded to do on my behalf.

My next move came several years later, while Macs were still prohibitively expensive for most people. My father enquired in a computer shop what would be the best computer for graphics – other than the Mac. He was pointed toward a machine that I still have plenty of affection for – the Amiga. The Amiga 500 that was subsequently purchased taught me more or less everything I know about the Graphical User Interface and served as a step up into the world of the Mac.

But it was not for a few years that I actually encountered a Mac running in person. The machine that introduced me to the world of the Mac was the most powerful of all the classic Macs – the Macintosh Quadra 950.
For the simple reason that it was the first Mac I’d got up-close-and-personal with and of course it boasting some impressive stats – like a 25Mhz MC68040 processor and 256Mb RAM – I adopted it as my top Mac. Sadly the prohibitive price tag meant I would never get any closer to one than watching the operator retouching some images with it.

A few years passed, and the Amiga had sunk – my thoughts of upgrading to a better model to keep up with technology went with it. By now, I was dealing with Windows PCs on a regular basis at school. Being used to full-on Amiga OS, I found Windows 3.1 to be totally useless, and when Windows 95 launched I saw it as a poor clone of the Mac’s interface. It now made perfect sense to me where to go next – I wanted a Mac.

Deciding to plunder the savings account my parents had set up for me, I spent a hefty portion on a computer for myself with the justification that this machine would get me to the end of my school and college career. I bought my first Mac at the time when the PowerPC had completely taken over, but there were still a few older machines floating about.
I chose to go for a high-end consumer model – the Performa 6320. This Mac shipped with a PowerPC 603e processor running at 120Mhz, 12Mb RAM, a 1.2Gb Hard disk and Mac OS 7.5. With a sense of ownerly pride, this became my favourite Mac. I still hold that it has the best styling of any beige desktop case ever designed – though I am painfully aware that it had a badly designed motherboard and suffered from Apple’s budget restrictions at the time.

This machine taught me how to use a Mac, and lasted well – like all Macs should. I upgraded it to 40Mb RAM and Mac OS 8.6 by the time I was at University. But of course by now there were new machines to lust after.

The first Mac that seriously turned my head was the Twentieth Anniversary Mac. Apple had phased out my desktop Performa and replaced it with what to me was an unattractive tower – the Performa 6400 / 6500 series. But in 1997, they launched the Twentieth Anniversary Mac. This was a gorgeous silver grey machine with an LCD screen, a flip-down CD-ROM and a sound system engineered by BOSE. While it shared the guts of the Performa 6500 machines with a PowerPC 603e chip, it had every optional extra going – including a TV card as standard.

The next truly desirable Mac was of course the 1998 original iMac but for me for whatever reason it just didn’t hit the right notes. It may be partly because I was still happy with my Performa and that the iMac’s new USB ports were somewhat daunting, but my eye was still on the beige PowerMac G3. That was of course, until it was replaced with the blue and white model. I thought that this machine looked like a pillow when I first saw it in profile on Apple’s website.

After this machine came the updated iMac with it’s multiple colours, firewire ports and slot loading CD drive. This machine with its refined look and in its graphite coloured Special Edition became the most lust worthy Mac since I had bought my machine.
But the updated look of the PowerMac G4 was also pretty appealing, largely down to the extreme power the new machines had .

Personally, I preferred the fruity colours of the iMac over the brighter primary colours that were introduced in 2000 – but my next dream Mac was launched at the same event – the PowerMac Cube G4 . This is still revered by Mac Geeks as the coolest Mac ever. It measured a tiny 8″ Cubed and sat in a clear plastic casing. While the Mac Mini is actually 4 times thinner and almost 3 times faster than the Cube, the Cube’s gorgeous fan-less design still mark this Mac as something really special. It had great design points like the system for lifting the guts of the Cube out of its outer case with just one handle, and the pop-up DVD drive.

The Cube was much sexier than its full size brother but its lack of relative power led to its sad demise. What was needed in my opinion was a machine to replace it with the design appeal of the iMac but a fast G4 processor. Thankfully That is precisely what Apple delivered next. My next candidate for my favourite Mac is the iMac G4. I am probably somewhat biased because I am writing this article on one right now.

The iMac G4 had a flat-panel screen attached to the gorgeous white dome shaped base with a cool movable chrome arm. This design made the iMac look like an overgrown angle-poise lamp. The best part though was that the iMac was comparable with the full on Power Mac G4 in terms of performance.
When Apple updated to a 17″ screen, I couldn’t resist any longer and chose this as my first Mac with OS X. But they didn’t stop that and made the iMac G4 even more lickable with a massive 20″ LCD screen on its metal arm.

But of course, being Apple a machine to supersede the iMac G4 in both terms of sex appeal and performance -the world’s most desirable computer; the iMac G5. Where its predecessor was cool, the iMac G5 is super chilled. Some people like to point out that the newest iMac lacks some of the design appeal of the previous version, which – being an iMac G4 owner myself, while I partly agree with that – the sheer kudos of packing so much raw 64-bit power into a 2″ slim casing more than makes up for this. Besides the iMac G5 has enough quality design touches to make even the iPod look like it was thrown together in a few minutes. This includes a metal strip in the top for magnetically mounting the iSight camera and having the innards of the computer perfectly balanced so that it can be angled at any direction without any mechanism to hold it at in position. If not for my Mac already being perfectly adequate I would be desperately saving to buy a new iMac.

So is the iMac G5 my all time favourite Mac… No.

There’s another Mac I’ve not mentioned yet- the PowerBook G3. Now, am a huge fan of the new iBooks and the PowerBook G4, and would love one of the most incredible notebook ever developed, which is undoubtedly the 17″ Power Book G4. However, when the titanium G4 PowerBook first came out, I was sad at the loss of the most stylish device that a human being has ever created. The PowerBook G3 went through several incarnations. The last model had firewire ports, and can keep up with current Macs as it can run Mac OS X, 10.4, Tiger. It was thinner than the original ‘Wall Street model’.
The PowerBook “Pismo” had a classy black finish with sensuous curves, though many people note that bizarrely the illuminated white Apple logo on its lid appears upside down when the machine was in use.
This aside, it is my opinion that the professional black stylings of this Mac make it the sexiest piece of plastic ever made, and my top Mac.

So to recap, taking factors such as performance as well as looks into account… my choice for top Mac would have to be the iMac G5 . My award for best looking Mac must go to the PowerMac Cube G4. The Mac closest to my heart is the superb iMac G4, but as far as I’m concerned the PowerBook G3 has the style to beat all others.

I love the PowerBook G3 – I borrowed a ‘Wall Street’ model a while back when I had a lot of work to do, and I loved its curvy shape as well as the rubber finish. I loved having a Mac with more power than most modern day PC laptops and of course the best operating system in the world. For this reason, earlier today, I finally gave in to myself – I went on eBay and I bought one.
A few columns ago, I said that I wanted an iMac G5 – I still do, but the raw sex appeal of the PowerBook G3 was strong enough to make me actually pay out. So now, anyone who donates to the column will be helping my pay off the cost of this. I cannot wait for the machine to arrive – and to write future editions of HHGTTM on it.

I’m interested in other opinions on the best mac ever, and have now set up a poll so that readers can vote http://www.aslk49.dsl.pipex.com/hhgttm/hhpoll.htm
Also feel free to email me your stories of why you fell for a particular Mac, here hhggtm@mac.com

Please address all comments to hhggtm@mac.com.

Welcome to the HitchHiker’s Guide to the Macintosh.

Firstly, I want to say thanks to all the people who emailed me or left feedback on the site in relation to my six-part history of the Mac feature. Hopefully many of you will keep reading the column as I move on to other topics.

It is human nature to anthropomorphise the objects around us – we all like to think that our pets have the same sort of thoughts as we do and we like to think that the objects around us have personalities. Can you honestly say that as a child you never looked at a car and thought of the headlamps as eyes and the radiator as a mouth with an expression?

Well, in this column I want to explore the aspects that give the Mac a distinct personality and ask ‘What is the soul of a Mac?’

The first thing I can imagine readers shouting at their monitors is, ‘Mac OS X, duh!’ so I will start there. In fact, I will start at the beginning – back in 1984 when the Mac was born.
As most people will know, especially those who read Episode 2 of this column, the Mac was Apple’s second attempt at creating a computer with a graphical user interface, rather than a complex and confusing command line interface.
Various things marked the original Mac from not only the other personal computers of its time, but also the Apple Lisa, which it succeeded. The refinements to the OS were many and subtle and it boiled down to not only extra experience on the part of the engineers, but also the huge number of influences that went into the Mac. The biggest influencers to the project were the father of the Mac – Jeff Raskin, who originally developed the name as well as the concept of a multi purpose home computer, and Steve Jobs who took over the Macintosh development team. If you’ve not already done so, check out original Mac engineer Andy Hertzfeld’s site www.folklore.org, in which he features stories from all those who worked on the Mac.

The operating system that was developed was revolutionary and much of what we work with today owes its design to it. The original Mac’s System Software flourished over many years as the Mac family grew and became Mac OS 9. Looking back, the versions of the classic Mac OS 7-9 that I used had a few problems – but I still preferred Mac OS to Windows. Mac OS was always more elegant than Windows, in fact until 1995, it was the most popular true GUI in existence. Where Mac OS 9 was occasionally prone to spectacular crashes, Windows always seemed to me to crash far more frequently. But the worst part of Windows for me has to be its unresponsive feel that grates on my nerves and makes me feel like I’m trying to hack my arm off using a nail file.
Back in the 1980s there were other competing operating systems – such as Acorn’s RISC OS and Amiga DOS. In fact, back when the Mac was only showing black and white, the Amiga had a full colour display and offered a truly multi-tasking, multi-threaded operating system. However, the Mac had some major advantages – one of the greatest being the consistent design between applications. Every application on the Mac uses the same menu and the same style of windows. The Mac’s operating system was somehow more refined and polished than the competition.

This is still true to this day, when the biggest selling point of the Mac is that it doesn’t run Windows. It is amazing how Apple managed to completely change the Mac’s operating system and still keep the essential soul of the Mac. Mac OS X has nothing in common with the classic Mac OS aside from its name and a few system conventions that were copied over – partly for consistency and partly to keep the Mac geeks happy. While Apple caved to popular demand and made the ‘Apple’ menu functional rather than the pointless eye candy that was originally planned, it does something totally different in OS X to what it did in the old Mac OS. The menu bar itself however, stayed at the top of the screen where it had always been. These are just some obvious examples to show how different the systems actually are – but how there are still some similarities. Mac users for the most part took the new OS to their hearts, because even though it was very different, it had been designed with the same ideals as the system it replaced – and of course is technically supurb.
Because Apple were still focused on creating the best operating system in the world with the same ease of use, Mac OS X still feels like a Mac should.

Apple have adopted a brilliant strategy in recent years with the advent of the ‘digital lifestyle.’ By building the best applications for managing your digital music, pictures and movies, Apple have found away to make life easier for current Mac users and encourage switchers to the Mac platform. This means that not just the operating system, but the whole experience of using a Mac for day to day tasks is flawless.
The user experience of the Mac is a large part of what defines its personality – smooth and fluid to use, with most things working the way you’d expect them to and everything being simple to work out. Apple’s policy of a one-button mouse might be unpopular with many users – but it forces the interface to be easy to use, and good enough to perform every necessary function without the use of right-clicking. This is something that Microsoft should definitely look at because on Windows, some tasks cannot be achieved at all without right clicking – there is no menu option or alternative button on the interface, and that makes things hard to use.

But the OS is not the whole story. Another factor in the Mac’s make-up is the hardware. The original Mac was ahead of its time and over the years Apple have introduced some amazing technologies, such Floppy Diskettes, SCSI ports and of course USB. Of course, the area of design innovation that Apple are most famed for tackling is the aesthetic appearance of the machine. Now it seems so obvious that to appeal to the consumer market it is a huge advantage to have a machine that looks as good as it works – but this though apparently never occurred to the likes of Dell, who even now produce some of the most eye of ending apparatus on the market. Steve Jobs had recognised the importance of great product design back in the 1980s when he enlisted top industrial design agency, Frog Design to develop a uniform look for the Mac product family that could be used on every model. Remember that the Apple II was the first desktop computer with a plastic case in history.
Apple don’t just design cases to look good – contrary to popular myths, the looks of the Mac follow the essential design mantra – “form follows function”. Devices like the iMac are created from the ground up as a complete solution, based around the needs and expectations of the target market. The iMac G4 is evidence of this – when Apple decided to upgrade the iMac, they could have simply bolted a TFT display onto the front of an existing iMac, but instead, they went back to the drawing board and came up with an entirely new solution. The iMac G5 is even more proof – looking at the previous model, Apple scrapped the expensive arm to deliver a cheaper machine – an obviously popular move in the consumer market – and designed an elegant machine that fits in with the way people live and use their Macs.
Apple’s design practice is exemplary – where most computers are fabricated from standard components to keep costs down, Apple design many of their own components that allow for more innovative designs. The circuit boards inside the iMac G3 were shaped to fit perfectly inside its curved casing which shows that the whole product was developed with this in mind. All too often in the design industry (and I know about this stuff) a company will develop the guts of a product and then call upon a design team to simply hang an external facade on it to hide away the inelegance of what is underneath. Windows PCs are most often square boxes with a shaped plastic front – there has been no real innovation in PC design since the first beige towers – despite the introduction of iPods, the internet and digital photography bringing the computer out of the office where it can be happily hidden away and into the living room where a design that looks good can add to the style of your house. The way we use computers has evolved – but Apple’s answer to this is not an evolution of existing designs – but revolutionary new hardware, built from the ground up to suit the end user’s needs.
Hardware quality and design innovations are a major aspect at the heart of the Mac.

Another element in the soul of the Mac is the people who use them. Whether it’s a power user designer, student or just some one who wants an easy to use digital experience, there’s something cool about Mac users. More often than not Mac users can spot each other – though this may, of course, be due to the stickers that Apple gives away with their products. I have always enthused about the Mac and encouraged a number of people to adopt Apple computers. From my experience it seems that most of us Mac users love or machines and want to promote them to others.

However, the key ingredient that gives the Mac the quality, reliability, and power that it is famed for is fact that the same company engineers both hardware and software. In other words – the Mac is an integrated system. The problem faced by Microsoft is in building an operating system that can run on the millions of possible PC configurations available. To give them credit for this – they somehow manage to pull off what should be a nearly impossible task of producing an operating system that runs on computers built by companies they’ve never heard of – but not knowing what your operating system will be run on means that it must be very vague in its optimisation. Apple on the other hand control the make-up and quality of every machine they make, and can ensure that the operating system is fully optimised to get the most out of each model of Mac.
The soul of the Mac is something very hard to trace, but is based firmly in the passion of one company to create the best computers in the world. Because our expectations of computers keep changing, Apple keep innovating and in that way the soul of the Mac evolves. In pursuit of the goal of making ever more amazing products, Steve Jobs recently announced the switch to Intel processors. It may seem that changing something so fundamental in the platform might take away part of what makes it so great – but as long as the company’s spirit remains, be assured – the Mac’s soul will be preserved.

Watch this space soon, when next time I get personal in my quest for the most desirable Mac ever.

Please address all comments to hhggtm@mac.com.

Welcome back to my column – I imagine that many readers will be wondering when this insight into the past of the Mac will end – well this is the final part of the saga. The story flows much like Star Wars if you’ll allow me to recap with a strained analogy.

The first part of our story was the discovery of computers and the growth of Apple computers with the Apple II. Next came the action packed ordeal of developing the Mac, but this ended in the sad loss of one of the Mac’s parents – Steve Jobs. No clones though, they didn’t attack quite yet.
By part three, things had gone seriously pear-shaped with Apple doomed to financial and technological purgatory.
In part four, a New Hope was revived with the purchase of NeXT. Last week, I covered the story of how Apple took that and rebuilt the Mac OS – and this is largely where the analogy falls down – no-one gets their hand cut off. However, The Mac Strikes Back would be a fitting title for that section.
But in this final part we will see how the story unfolds up to now and word count allowing, even ponder the future. This is the story of the triumphant Return of the Mac.

2001 was a landmark year for Apple, releasing Mac OS X after a successor to the Mac OS had eluded them for so long. The iPod had been released and the iMac had rescued the company’s finances. This great looking machine was selling well and had revolutionised the computer industry.

Sadly, Mac OS X uptake was slow and at first Apple shipped computers with the capacity to boot with either Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X – in fact the default was Mac OS 9, making OS X an optional extra. Apple were also upping the hardware stakes too, and by 2002 had upgraded the PowerBook and the iMac to G4 processors while steadily increasing the top speeds of the PowerMac G4. Setbacks with Mac OS X lead Apple to re-introducing single processor G4 machines at higher speeds.

The iMac G4 is said to have been inspired by sunflowers in Steve Jobs’ garden. The solution to building a computer with an integral LCD screen was not to just stick it on the front of an existing iMac, but to make it float in mid air, suspended on a chrome arm. It wasn’t a cheap solution, but was very elegant. The iMac G4 yet again pushed back the boundaries of computer design, and eventually 17” and 20” screen versions were introduced and the speeds moved up. This column is being written on one of these machines, which was my first venture into modern Macintosh having lived with beige machines up until then. It didn’t disappoint.

Building on the technical success of Mac OS X 10.1, Apple introduced 10.2 Jaguar in 2002. It introduced a huge number of improvements and new features, making it probably the first version of Mac OS X that was actually usable as an operating system. With Jaguar, Apple had cracked it – they had built an operating system better than anything else on the planet and on which they could continue to innovate.
The killer feature of Jaguar, from a technical point was the Quartz Extreme graphics technology. While Mac OS X had inherited its graphics philosophy from NeXT step, it substituted PDF as the graphics system in lieu of a full postscript graphics engine. What Jaguar introduced was nothing short of groundbreaking. While Mac OS 9 allowed each application to render its own content, Mac OS X first combined everything on screen and rendered it together. With Quartz extreme however, this compositing was done not by the computer’s CPU, but by the graphics processor. For the first time in an operating system, the graphics card’s power could be captured for things other than fragging seven shades of thargoid out of your mates in 3D games – which I believe was still popular at the time.
If Quartz Extreme was Mac OS X 10.2’s killer technical feature, its best marketing feature was the name – Jaguar and the faux fur marketing that would accompany it would suddenly make the Mac’s software seem as cool as the great designed hardware.
Mac OS X 10.2 soon became the default operating system on Apple’s computers, giving people the confidence to switch to Mac OS X. Mac OS 9 development stopped with the last ever version, Mac OS 9.2.2 shipping in 2001

But with Jaguar, the Mac lost something that had identified since its birth in 1984; something that would be mourned by the Mac community and missed by users as they sat down at their new Jaguar Macs. The smiley Mac face that welcomed us when we turned the computer on had been replaced with an Apple logo. RIP Happy Mac, 1984-2002.

The eMac was introduced in 2002 and originally only sold in the education market. This was probably due to Steve Jobs’ remarks that CRT is dead following the discontinuation of the iMac G3 which for a time had been produced simultaneously with it’s G4 successor. But huge demand for the budget system – especially given the price of the iMac G4, persuaded Apple to release the eMac for everyone once they had built up a large enough supply.
The Xserve was announced a month later and started Apple’s push into server technology. Apple had not sold a server configured system since the Workgroup Server 9650 – a variant of the PowerMac 9600, the biggest of the G2 machines. Apple’s selling point of the server technology was genius – the machine came as standard with Mac OS X Server, QuickTime server software and other server software. This differentiates it from PC servers where software solutions tend to be licensed separately from hardware on a yearly basis.

2003 saw the launch of iLife. Apple had launched iMovie well before, and had brought out iTunes, iDVD and iPhoto, but iLife saw these applications packaged together and with integration for the first time.
Other advancements were the 12” and 17” Powerbook G4 replacing the Titanium case with aluminium, new iMac revisions and the Safari web browser – which aimed to overthrow Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the top browser for the Mac.

The third generation iPod was announced in 2003 and it now included the solid-state touch wheel, backlighting and came in sizes up to 30Gb. It even worked with Mac or Windows – up until that point, Apple had sold separate iPods for Mac and Windows. What made this even more exciting in April 2003 was the iTunes Music Store. iTunes 4 allowed US Mac owners to buy music for 99c, and the rest of us to browse music and get very frustrated that we couldn’t actually buy anything. The rest of the world had to wait until 2004 for the first international iTunes music store, though I pity all those in unsupported countries still waiting.
By October, the iTunes Music Store was running on PCs and Windows based iPod owners could stop fiddling around with Music Match and get to grips with the real thing. So began the Apple domination of the digital music age.
The 3G iPod was the device that really started the digital music revolution. Thinner and with more functionality than its predecessors, it added the must-have ingredient to the iPod. Indeed, I had to have one but Apple were short on supply and I did not manage to get my hands on one until the models were revised to have larger 40Gb hard disks.

The biggest news in 2003 came with the introduction of the PowerMac G5 – the first Mac with a 64-bit processor. Unlike Windows PCs, the PowerPC architecture had been designed with this jump in mind, allowing Mac OS X to run natively on these new machines with little alteration. This was incredible because it suddenly allowed massive memory in these computers as well as more efficient data handling. Where Windows was founded on 32-bit technology, the Mac was able to instantly work on 64-bit.
The G5 was also marked by its striking new metal enclosure and hundreds of holes through which to cool the processor. It also had an incredible new system architecture that made fully use of both the processors in the high-end models.

Panther arrived a few months later, bringing even better performance and 150+ new features. With Mac OS X 10.3, Apple were indisputably ahead of the competition in the OS wars. This version introduced the current Finder as well as useful functions like Exposé, iChat AV and fast user switching. These were demonstrated to me at a Mac show in London where I caved in and forked out £99 for the upgrade.

By 2004, iLife ‘04 had it’s fifth family member, GarageBand and the iPod had a little brother, or maybe a clone – iPod mini me. Everyone was expecting great things from Apple in 2004 – the actual twentieth anniversary of the Mac.
In many ways, the real twentieth anniversary Mac was the iMac G5. Somehow Apple had managed to create a machine even more desirable than the iMac G4 (if you like the column, maybe you’d like to buy me one – please?). Apple’s industrial design department had outdone themselves, with a machine that fitted the guts of the computer behind the screen in the thinnest desktop design ever. It oozed delicious design touches like the piece of metal in the plastic case in just the right place for a magnetic iSight mounting, and perfect balance so that it would sit wherever it was angled on the aluminium foot without the need for the iMac G4’s complex metal arm. The simpler design allowed Apple to drastically lower the price of this model – making it even more attractive. (again, contributions to the column are welcome – PLEASE?!)

A new version of the iPod appeared with the iPod mini’s click wheel and the U2 iPod Special Edition and iPod Photo followed soon – adding to the iPod’s ongoing success story from a possible dud to Christmas stocking essential to cultural icon.

Bringing the story up to the now, the iPod shuffle, Mac mini, iLife ‘05 and Tiger were launched in 2005.

The technology of the Mac has evolved from its humble 8Mhz beginnings to almost 3Ghz 64-bit silicon beasts that require liquid cooling. Technology is progressing so fast that no-one batted an eyelid at the Mac mini fitting a processor almost three times faster than the Cube G4’s into a case around one quarter of the size – and if that’s not incredible progress for just 4 years, I don’t know what is.

Apple’s future could be pretty good. With a massive slice of the Digital music scene with both iPod and music store, Apple are making a comeback into the public eye. Hopefully this will introduce more people into the world of the Macintosh.
The iLife suite and now iWork are making the Mac more and more suitable for first time computer owners and those who don’t want to dip their toes in the digital lifestyle without having their lives taken over by computers. The Mac is still stable and reliable for all the existing professional users and is carving itself a huge market in professional video production and distribution.
Mac OS X is now the most popular UNIX operating system – largely because most users don’t even notice the UNIX is there. But for Universities and research labs who like UNIX, it has everything they need. To be honest, I’m sure that even in the most serious labs they like nothing better than listening to iTunes at the end of a long day.

Steve Jobs recently announced the switch to Intel processors. This could be a make or break move for the Mac. This could be a great opportunity that may eventually lead Apple to rival Microsoft in terms of software suppliers. In time, Apple could even open Mac OS X to run on third party Intel machines – though current plans are to allow Mac OS X to run on just Apple hardware.
Though it may mean a premature lack of support for users of older machines, and initial problems for early adopters of the Intel system this could be a great move if Apple are right and Intel are offering the best processors in the future. Apple are not just going to abandon the PowerPC, with some new PowerPC products coming soon, but the transition could be a problem period for the company and despite any efforts will cause confusion and complications. I wish Apple all the luck for the future and look forward with interest to the new products to come in the next few years.
Apple have built the best computers for the last 28 years, and intend to carry on leading the industry for years to come.

I hope you found this series informative and interesting. If you did, email me with your questions. If you didn’t – you may enjoy next week’s column, where I will start on a new topic.

Read this column next week for something completely different…

Please address all comments to rickt42uk@yahoo.co.uk.

The first time I heard that the Beatles’ AppleCorp had sued Apple Computer, Inc. back in 1981 over the “Apple” name, it stung. Then when AppleCorp and Apple Computer settled another lawsuit in 1989, I was somewhat disappointed that the Beatles felt entitled to additional financial compensation from Apple Computer. And now that AppleCorp is planning to take Apple Computer back to court for a third time, I am absolutely outraged.

As a product of the final years of baby-boomerdom (1960), I grew up listening to my two older brothers’ hand-me-down Beatles’ albums (ancient large music discs made of black vinyl plastic). When I was very young my older brother, Ted, had me convinced that Paul McCartney was the greatest man on earth (behind God and himself, of course). My friends and I would often pretend to be the Beatles, and I proudly took on the role of Ringo Starr and used an old tree stump as my drum set.

Continue reading at macfriends.com …

Welcome back to my column – by now I’m sure only the dedicated Mac Geek will be with me so I can probably say whatever I like. Knickers.

Last time, we left the Mac in 1997 preparing a comeback, having bought NeXT, and in so doing regained Steve Jobs. The new PowerMac G3 had been launched and the PowerBook G3 was on its way.

But, what people were waiting for – well, what I was waiting for anyway – was a consumer Mac based on the G3 processor to replace the Performa range of computers. The machine we got was not what had been expected.

A few years before this, Apple had recruited a young British designer, Jonathon Ive to their design department to work on projects like the eMate (a laptop computer for schools based on the Newton) and Twentieth Anniversary Mac. Jobs approached Ive with plans for a machine that would return to the Mac’s roots and revolutionise the computer industry yet again. He wanted Ive to design the future – and it was going to be Bondi Blue.

Apple, it seemed had not been as idle on the hardware front as it had appeared. They had been an integral part of the development of USB, a new technology for device connectivity. It had plenty of advantages over older ports such as SCSI, because it could support up to 144 devices using a hub, and also could recognise new devices when they were connected, rather than after a restart.

The iMac debuted in 1998 and sent ripples through the computer industry. The Mac community were generally in favour of anything that looked this cool and what it might do for the Mac as a platform, but most people knew they would miss their SCSI ports because few people had ever heard of a USB port and there were no printers around that had them at first. It didn’t take long for the computer world to go translucent Bondi blue crazy and printer companies like Epson building new products with USB ports in matching colours for the iMac.
A few people might have missed the floppy drive on the iMac and it was true that the loss of removable writable storage was a problem for some. The iMac was the first Mac not to use ROM instructions loaded from a chip on its motherboard, instead loading them into memory – a process that allowed Firmware updates. This process incidentally could also be used to load things like microkernels into memory – which may give you an indication of Apple’s future plans.
The original iMac with its PowerPC G3 processor at 233Mhz, 4Gb Hard Disk, funky design and unusable round mouse was an instant hit that began to turn around Apple’s fortunes.

Soon, the whole product range went Bondi, with the Blue and White PowerMac G3. Apple were making a huge statement – USB was the future, and you had to move with Apple or get left behind. In 1999, Apple introduced their fully line-up of products with the iBook – their first consumer targeted laptop. The product range was so simple, iBook and iMac for consumers, PowerBook and PowerMac for professionals.

1999 was also an important year for Apple’s operating system as it saw the last version of the ‘classic’ Mac OS – Mac OS 9. In itself, it did not provide much innovation that we could see, but it was designed to pave the way for the transition to a wholly new Mac OS, based on technology bought from NeXT.

The first previews of this operating system were code-named Rhapsody, and ran only on Intel based PCs, which many thought was strange, as NeXT step was already designed to run on the PowerPC architecture used in the Mac. Rhapsody was basically NeXT step with a Mac OS 8 style Copland interface. But Apple was getting to grips with the issues facing them in overhauling NeXT step into Mac OS X.

Apple surprised many people in 1999 with Mac OS X Server 1.0, which managed to combine parts of Rhapsody with Mac OS 9 in a bizarre mishmash, and came with WebObjects as standard. But despite the roman numeral in its name, this did resemble the Mac OS X that any of us now know.

Mac OS X as we know it was shown for the first time to developers in May 1999 and featured the first view of the Aqua interface with its Dock and flashing blue buttons. There were a bunch of things wrong with it including an ornamental Apple logo in the centre of the menu and the Dock didn’t initially look promising. However, Apple finally had an operating system that boasted the features they’d been promising since the early 1990s.

1999 also saw the relaunch of the iMac. The redesigned model had a slot loading CD drive rather than the tray loading drive. It also had a truly translucent back; the original iMac had metal shielding inside the casing which hid the actual guts of the machine. But more importantly, the iMac became the first consumer computer to come with FireWire ports. This move was due to several things. Apple had been largely behind the standard and wanted to push it at much as possible and also digital video cameras were beginning to gain popularity. Putting the two technologies together in the iMac, Apple created iMovie – the first of what we now think of as the iLife applications.

In 2000 Steve Jobs delivered a huge keynote in which he announced that most of the Apple range was being overhauled. The G4 machines that they had been selling for some time now (and had been stuck at a maximum speed of 500Mhz) were all getting dual-processors in preparation for Mac OS X. Apple must been confident about this strategy, as there was actually no advantage to the second processor in the machine while running Mac OS 9, apart from in specific applications like Photoshop when using plug-ins to allow it to utilise both chips.
The iMac range was also completely updated and the fruity colours were replaced with bold primary colours. Apple even introduced a replacement for its universally unpopular round mouse – the optical Pro mouse and keyboard, which have been largely unaltered since. At the same keynote, the new Apple Cinema displays were unveiled – Apple showing that LCD was the way they intended to go.
Apple also announced a new machine to fit in between the PowerMac and iMac. The gorgeous PowerMac G4 Cube was one of the most incredible machines Apple had ever engineered – somehow fitting the 500Mhz G4 processor into a tiny 8” cube suspended in a clear plastic casing and featuring a slot loading DVD-ROM that popped up like a toaster.
Sadly, the Cube didn’t offer the expandability of the PowerMac G4, which made it unsuitable for professionals, and the extra power was not enough to make iMac buyers want to pay the extra money that it cost. I remember being in a shop once and some people were looking at the Cube and seemed confused. They could see the monitor, the keyboard, and the mouse – but were somewhat confused where the computer was and what the little box with the Apple on it was. The remarkable machine sank into oblivion after less than a year.

A developer preview of Mac OS X shipped. I saw this at university on a friend’s G3 where it crashed badly and all he could get up was a Unix command line, which he didn’t quite know what to do with.
Mac OS X had also added the same API that had been quietly slipped into Mac OS 9, developed for Apple’s Copland OS it had now morphed into Carbon – a type of application that would run natively on either Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X. This sat along side the Classic environment which allowed Mac OS 9 applications to run on a virtual machine – albeit slowly and with lots of crashes, and the new Mac OS X applications using the new Cocoa API.

Mac OS 9.1 shipped on the next revision of iMacs that came in garish Blue Dalmatian and Flower Power designs. This added something that the Mac had not had before – support for CD-Burning built-in. It was needed for the CD-RW drives in these machines. But Apple also realised that these machines would be used for music. To respond to this, they built a jukebox application that would easily integrate with the iMac’s CD-RW – iTunes.

iTunes arrived in 2001 and with iTunes version 2, released at the end of the year it paved the way for another Apple innovation. The iPod.
For those who don’t remember, the original iPod could hold 5Gb – around 1,000 songs. It did not have the iPod connector that we use today, instead used straight forward FireWire. On top of this, the wheel actually physically rotated as you turned it with your finger – the solid state scroll wheel was added later. The other buttons were mounted around the outside of the wheel.
It was an obvious design triumph, but the cost of the device and relative cheapness of Personal CD players meant that it was little more than an expensive novelty for total Apple fans. Personally, I wondered what Apple were up to because it seemed such a strange new direction to take – the future of music was not as clear back then. I remember attending a Mac show in London and being pursued by Apple staff wielding headphones trying to get people to listen to the new device. It was cool – but it would take some time to catch on.

March 2001 saw the launch of Mac OS X. Version 10.0 bares most of the elements we would know today but was actually little more than a beta version. It didn’t stop the Mac geeks from queuing outside stores to get their hands on a copy of the new operating system. Of course when they actually got it home and installed, they realised it would probably be a good idea to use Mac OS 9 instead because there weren’t actually any Mac OS X applications at the time.

It wasn’t long before the launch of Mac OS X 10.1 in September 2001, and with it many refinements to the operating system. Partly to make up for the wasted money people had spent on Mac OS X, Apple offered this as a free upgrade to early adopters. Microsoft had built their new Office suite to take advantage of developments in Mac OS 10.1, and other developers were soon following – Adobe refreshing their whole product line to use the Carbon API so they would be compatible with either system.
Apple had all the ingredients in place, and now it was only a matter of refinement

Read this column next week as we bring this series to a close with the current Mac lineup…

Please address all comments to rickt42uk@yahoo.co.uk.

Welcome back to my column – and if you’ve followed the story this far then you are truly a Mac Geek. Last week, under the control of Michael Spindler, Apple had not managed to do anything to improve it’s aging operating system and were bleeding money.

With the arrival of Gil Amelio, Apple entered its make or break era. In his short reign Amelio presided over some of the things that have made Apple what it is today. But this part of the story starts not with Amelio, but with catching up with Apple founder Steve Jobs.

I know you were all waiting for his comeback, so I’ll get on with it. After being ousted from Apple, Jobs had been busy. In 1986, he bought the computer division of George Lucas’s Lucas Film. This company cost $10 million and became Pixar. Pixar are still the leading company in computer rendering graphics and technology as well as producing 5 blockbuster movies with Disney.

Jobs also set up another computer company. His new vision was to create a computer that was elegent inside and out in every way. Everything from the motherboard design to the interface was created to make designers cry with joy. The company was called NeXT.

The computer that NeXT produced was to be based in wholly modern computer thinking. It would use an object orientated programming approach, which was something previously unheard of in the personal computer market. Jobs managed to lure seven developers from Apple’s Mac division to join him at NeXT and also brought Avie Tevanian into the company to head development of its operating system.

From its beginnings back at Bell Labs, many people in the computer industry had taken up the UNIX operating system, but it was at Universities where it fully developed. Numerous flavours of UNIX existed and different companies had devised their own shells. At the University of California, Berkeley, they created one of the most popular flavours of UNIX – Free BSD.
But at Carnegie-Mellon University they used this as the basis for Mach – a micro-kernal operating system, in which the Unix operating system creates a super efficient interface between hardware functions and any other software.

Avie Tevanian had been one of those working with Mach and Jobs wanted his NeXT computer to utilise this technology. The other breakthrough in NeXT’s operating system was PostScript. While the Mac was already using PostScript to describe graphics for print, the leap in NeXT was to use this technology for on-screen graphics. The resultant operating system was called NeXT Step, and the computer that ran it was the NeXT Cube. It was a perfect cube made of magnesium built in a fully automated factory. It arrived in 1988 and was powered by the same MC68030 processor as in contemporary Macs. It had massive 8Mb RAM and instead of a floppy disk, used a Canon 256Mb magneto-optical drive. It was applauded by the computer industry for it’s innovation, but like the Lisa before it, failed to sell in great numbers.

The NeXT cube does have one massive claim to fame. It was used by Tim Berners-Lee to create the protocols on which the internet depends.

Following the NeXT Cube, came the NeXT station. But only 50,000 units ever sold and Jobs made the decision to focus on developing the NeXT operating system. It was ported to work on Intel chips as well as the PowerPC and other architectures. However, it still did not have much commercial success.
NeXT eventually were forced to focus on an operating environment, rather than a whole operating system. The mach kernel was removed and it was adapted into OpenSTEP, which ran object orientated software on top on another operating system. NeXT also developed WebObjects, a powerful web server application that is used today to power .Mac services and the iTunes Music Store.

Apple probably wondered how NeXT were doing it, because their attempts to build a new operating system for the Mac had come to nothing. The blue, pink and red strategy had failed, a lot of other code names had been banded around, but not produced anything productive.

Star Trek was one of these efforts. Working with Novell, Apple tried to get Mac software running on Intel chips – a solution that may have enabled Mac software to run side by side with Windows on existing PCs. But having committed to the PowerPC, Apple abandoned this approach.
Raptor was probably the red project – a highly ambitious OS that would run on a variety of hardware. The plan was for Apple to develop their own mach-style microkernel. This project ran out of money and was eventually cancelled.
Nukernal was an obvious name for the successor to Star Trek and Raptor, but that too never got off the ground.
Tal OS was the pink project – an object-orientated operating system devised with IBM. It ended up spawning an object-orientated environment to run on top of other operating systems such as Windows and the proposed Apple Nukernal. Eventually, IBM took it over wholly.
Gershwin was another codename and seemed to have a lot of solid ideas behind it, but no-one at Apple ever claims to have worked on the project.

The most likely effort for revolutionising the Mac was Copland. Apple put full support into the project, aiming for this to become Mac system 8. Sadly, the important features like protected memory, symmetric multiprocessing and using a microkernel had to be axed, but a lot of the technologies developed for Copland did make their way into the system later.

In a last ditch effort, Michael Spindler had resorted to the desperate measure that he had previously ruled out – and opened up the Mac to other companies. It was at this point that the name Mac OS was born. Mac OS 7.6 was the first version to sport the name and was used on Mac clones by companies such as Power Computing. Apple were shocked when Power Computing used cheaper PC parts to build inexpensive computers that could outperform Apple’s own machines. Apple was pushing the PowerPC 604e to 300Mhz, but Power Computer had a 350Mhz machine in the works.
Mac OS 8 delivered a few innovations from Copland, including an enhanced interface and further integration of Apple’s graphics and networking technology. By Mac OS 8.5, it had been rewritten to by fully native on the PowerPC processors. Mac OS 8 also featured an API designed for Copland to allow Copland applications to run.

But Apple still needed a wholly new operating system. Gil Amelio realised his best option was to simply buy someone else’s operating system. After much consideration, Apple had only two choices – BeOS or NeXT.
Apple chose NeXT and bought the company for $402 billion. With it they inherited NeXT step, with its mach kernel, Web Objects, and of course Steve Jobs.

Also in 1997, Apple created one of the most notable computers it has developed – the Twentieth Anniversary Mac. It was an upright, curved machine with built-in LCD display and a flip-down CD-ROM. Rather than the usual beige, it was made of silvery grey plastic and came with a BOSE subwoofer that also contained the power converter for the machine. It shared most of its innards with the top line Performa machines and featured a PPC 603e processor and built-in TV card. The Twentieth Anniversary Mac was the biggest design revolution since the original Mac; the strangest thing about it was its name. 1997 was a year late for the twentieth anniversary of Apple Computers, and seven years early for the anniversary of the Mac.

Amelio bowed out of Apple and left CFO, Fred Anderson in charge until Steve Jobs became interim CEO.
Jobs made several big changes to the company’s organisation. He cancelled any further work on the Newton, and refused to renew the licences to companies building Mac clones. In fact, Apple bought out Power Computer, the most successful of the cloners.

Steve announced the new plan called Rhapsody. It involved turning NeXT step into the new Mac OS. Apple started talking about coloured boxes, but essentially, the operating that was proposed would be founded entirely on NeXT technology and include an application that would allow applications from the existing Mac OS to run in their own environment.

Jobs also unveiled a new and simplified range of high-end Power Macintosh G3 machines based on the PowerPC 750 processor – the third generation of PowerPC.

There was plenty of speculation about when Apple’s new operating system would be available, as well as if Apple would bring the PowerPC G3 to its Performa range of home computers…

Read this column next week and discover the shaky origins of the modern Mac…

Please address all comments to rickt42uk@yahoo.co.uk.

Welcome back to my column – I am surprised you’re still reading this given last weeks warning. Read on, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. In last week’s column, Apple had unveiled the Mac which was rapidly becoming a huge success in the design and graphics industry.

Following Steve Jobs resignation from Apple, John Sculley took on complete control of the company, and hoped to get the most possible from the Mac. He oversaw the Mac product line grow from the original Mac to a whole family – the all-in-one Macs such as the Mac SE/30 that improved on the orignal Mac with a more powerful MC68030 processor and had a built-in hard disk – and also the Mac II series of machines that came in large boxes with separate monitors. The SE/30 was the most powerful of all the all-in-one Macs and I actually have one. My SE/30 hasn’t worked since a month after I bought it in 1998 for £20 from my college Maths tutor, the problem is that no-one fixes Macs that old these days.
Anyone who’s ever had a beige Mac will know the SCSI port, ADB port and Apple serial port used for printing and networking – these were pioneered in the Mac Plus in 1986. The most innovative member of the new Mac family was the Mac portable – the world’s first, um… not really a laptop. In 1989, this machine was released – it was big and bulky and not much lighter than the all-in-one Mac. It did pioneer the use of an active matrix LCD screen on a Mac though.

But having seen the Mac, Microsoft decided they wanted to build their own graphical interface. Windows 1.0 was a poor attempt at developing an interface that worked on top of MS-DOS, but the fact it was no competitor to the Mac (at that stage anyway) didn’t stop John Sculley from taking legal action against Microsoft. This was in fact a highly costly mistake for Apple – Sculley didn’t even seem to realise that Apple hadn’t invented the graphical user interface, but had simply copied elements from Xerox PARC.

Even the introduction of the Mac Classic and bigger Mac II models in 1990, could not hold back the simple fact that Microsoft was become unstoppable. Thoughts of licensing the Mac’s operating system to other companies or porting Mac OS to work on Intel based machines were rumoured for the first time .

In this time, progress at Apple had focused on improving the Mac with new versions of the MC680x0 processor and revised versions of the Mac’s operating system. By 1990, the Mac was already on version 6 of its system software. A lot of progress had been made here, by allowing the Mac to now support larger disks than the 400Kb disks that the original had used, and also work with folders inside folders. Yes – a surprising as it may seem, the original Mac had limited folder use. Folders could only exist in the first level (root) of a disk, and you couldn’t store one folder inside another. In fact, there was no ‘New Folder’ command, just a folder called ‘untitled folder’ on your disk – which when renamed would automatically spawn a new empty folder. While the system interface was still in a simple black and white, the Mac II could display images and work in colour. While the original Mac would only run one application at a time, a program called MultiFinder was added to System 6 to allow several applications to run at once. This solution was somewhat bodged on to the rest of the system however, and meant that a simple task like clicking a menu would stop progress of anything running in the background. While in its time System 6 seemed perfectly adequate, some of the problems it had seem positively stone age today – including the fact that Apple had to produce different versions of the system for different members of the Mac family. You would have to make sure you bought the right version for your system.

Apple were becoming increasingly aware that while the Mac was their greatest asset, the lack of innovation that had gone into keeping the Mac up-to-date would be costly. The problem was that most of the code from the 1984 Mac was still running the machine, and by System version 6 it had been augmented by additional code to allow it to do other things. But there was no hiding the fact that the original Mac was designed to run one application at a time on a machine with 128Kb RAM. The original Mac was never meant to last this long. A plan was devised to do something about this. Microsoft had proven that old hardware could be revived with a new operating system, and Apple decided that rather than devise a whole new computer, they would develop a new software system to bring the existing Macs up to date. Three strategies were developed for the new Mac and they were given colours. Blue was the short-term strategy of continuing to add to the existing system and would lead to Mac OS 7. Pink was the long-term strategy of building a whole new operating system that would bring the Mac up to date with features like true multitasking and other modern features. Red was the extreme-term strategy for any ideas that would be nice to put in pink, but seemed too ambitious.

Sculley’s reign at Apple did deliver a few interesting technologies and two of Apple’s most important products – the PowerBook and the Newton. Sculley must have thought the Mac was Steve Jobs’ contribution to history and decided that his would be a hand-held computer that would recognise the user’s handwriting and in so doing invented the PDA. But by 1993, the board demoted Sculley and installed Michael Spindler in his place.

Spindler’s period at the top covers the height of the classic Mac, although very little innovation was actually achieved and the company began its decline. In 1990, Apple introduced a new series of machines to the family – the LC range. LC stood for Low Cost and reflected not only that these slim-line Macs were cheaper than other models, but they also had LC processors. The all-in-one Mac configuration was rebranded as Mac Classic, and three new lines were introduced. The Centris line was the mid-range professional machine, while the Quadra range was the top-of-the-line Mac and featured MC68040 processors. The Performa line were essentially rebranded LC or Centris machines aimed at the now flourishing home computer user. With the choice of Classic, LC, Performa, Centris and Quadra machines – and even the PowerBook, not only you reading this, but also the buying public were finding it hard to keep track of what Mac to get. New technologies were appearing, such as the CD-ROM, Apple were initially slow to respond. The biggest of all the classic Macs was the Quadra 950. Running at 33Mhz and vastly expansible up to 256Mb RAM, it ran the software of the day lightning fast. This machine is actually special to me because it was the first Mac I ever saw, running in a design agency that my father used to work with. It was watching a designer working with Photoshop 3 that I formed my love affair with Apple.

At Apple, the sense of slipping behind in the technology battle culminated in dropping the MC680x0 family of processors in favour for something new, developed joined with old rival IBM and Motorola. Based on the Power processor used in high-end mainframe computers, the PowerPC processor was a revolutionary chip when it first appeared in 1994. Unlike the MC680x0 or the Intel x86 processors that powered PCs at the time, which used CISC (Complex Instruction Set Code) technology, the PowerPC used RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Code) technology. This was essentially a completely new approach to how a processor should work.
Apple managed to convert the Mac over to use PowerPC processors. The first of which was the PowerPC 601 processor used in the first PowerMacintoshes, the 6100, 7100 and 8100. The 601 processor was based on the Power 1 core and boosted the Mac to 110Mhz in the biggest specification 8100.

To run on these new PowerMacs, Apple had to develop System 7. It had coloured tints on the interface and more importantly one version could run on a number of different Mac models, as long as they were powerful enough and had a hard disk. Getting rid of the MultiFinder, System 7 was rebuilt to natively allow a form of multitasking, Virtual memory and support for PowerPC processors. It also introduced the Extension – small files that loaded up with the system and added functionality. While they allowed the Mac to do a lot of new things, in other ways they were a curse – causing conflicts with each other and leading to crashes.

By 1996, Apple owed $1 billion and could not keep up with the demand for machines. New models were blighted by trying to use a PowerPC chip with components designed for a 680×0 Mac. My first Mac was one of those affected. The Performa 6320 was one of the machines to use a PowerPC 603 processor. However, it’s motherboard used parts from a Performa 630 and it had 32-bit memory even though the processor had a 64-bit bus. This meant that the processor had to spend much of its efforts just keeping the motherboard running, before it could even get on with doing any work.

The PowerPC 603 got a bad reputation from problems like this, but its big brother, the PowerPC 604 was used in wholly new high-end Macs. These two processors were the second generation of PowerPC.

It was starting to look desperate, with nothing coming from the Pink software strategy, Mac hardware unable to respond to the ever growing PC – largely due to budgetary problems, a confusing product-line, and poor finances. Anyone who tells you Apple are in financial trouble and are about to go bust have not read the news since 1996, because as Michael Spindler resigned, Gil Amelio was appointed to save Apple.

Read this column next week to discover how Apple escaped from the abyss…

Please address all comments to rickt42uk@yahoo.co.uk.

Welcome back to my column, where last week I left you all hanging in the story of the Mac. Appologies to anyone who felt cheated that we didn’t get as far as the Mac last time don’t worry, we’re getting straight there this time.

We left the story in 1981, when IBM introduced its PC and threatens the market share of the Apple II. The PC was open to many manufacturers to improve with an architecture that allowed the computer to get faster as new chips were produced. Apple needed to step up its game with a new machine that would offer more.

Apple was already on the case, proposing three new systems in 1979. Two of these systems would be a successor to the Apple II and a new high-end work machine.

The third new system was to be a games machine and was given to Jef Raskin for development. Raskin, however was far more ambitious and started developing ideas for a low-cost, general purpose home computer. Raskin’s favourite variety of Apple was a Macintosh.

It is worth noting that at this point in time, all computers – the IBM PC and the Apple II included used a command line interface. This obviously meant typing commands into the computer to get it to do things and less obviously meant learning these commands – which to many people has more difficult than learning a foreign language. This was largely due to the fact that while you can point at things and use sign language and shouting to convey concepts to a human being, whether you speak the same language or not you can generally put across at least some of your point, whereas computers at the time didn’t understand pointing. In fact, you had to know exactly what to tell them and how – something overlooked in numerous 1980’s movies where programmers were able to give computers complex instructions in plain English.
My first computer was a Toshiba HX-10 MSX, a machine that had to be programmed in BASIC language which was far from basic to learn and caused confusion for me in later life because while the computer uses the command color, the usual UK spelling of the word is colour. I found myself misspelling the word at school and later unable to get my programs to work.

10 CIRCLE (70,100),20,2
20 PAINT (70,100),2
30 LINE (110,90)-(150,140),5,BF
40 GOTO 40

This was about as far as I got – it draws a filled green circle and a light blue square and then locks itself into a loop so that you can actually see the circle and square rather than just ending. This code is illustrative, as my BASIC is somewhat rusty, please don’t deluge me with complaints if this code is wrong!

Raskin’s ideas for his Macintosh had probably already been coloured by work being done by Xerox. Founded in 1960, the company had built their empire with paper – literally. As computer technology developed, Xerox feared greatly for a future in which paper would be obsolete and all offices would be entirely electronic. Since all Xerox products were designed to print or copy onto paper this would spell disaster, unless Xerox themselves could be the innovators in the paperless office.
From these thoughts the legendary Xerox Paulo Alto Research Centre (PARC) was born. Many of the developers here had already been working with Douglas Engelbart, who as you remember invented the mouse and had been busying himself with theories on how to make the computer easier to use. Rather than typing instructions for the computer, the mouse allowed you to work with the computer graphically. Nothing like this had ever been seen before – the Graphical User Interface or GUI as it is rather unpleasant-soundingly abbreviated was revolutionary.
Early concepts had involved breaking the screen into sections and allowing items to be manipulated within these frames with the mouse or even dragged between the frames to perform tasks like copying and moving files. The vital inspiration came at Xerox PARC by allowing these frames to overlap, move and resize – in other words, a window. Other graphical technologies were invented here, such as pull down menus.
These elements were developed along with more technical innovations such as the Small Talk programming environment, Ethernet networking, WYSIWYG text editors (for anyone unfamiliar with the term What You See Is What You Get, this refers to an application that attempts to approximate how a printed document will look on screen, as opposed to what was frequently the case at the time where the printed document’s formatting was decided by the printer and bared no resemblance to the computer’s formatting) and amazingly, even a graphical page description language called Interpress that preceded PostScript and PDF technology.

Following a visit to Xerox PARC in 1979, the engineers at Apple were enthusiastic to bring these innovations to their products. With the Apple III in development, the Xerox technology was to be used in Apple’s high-end machine. Bill Atkinson was given the task of developing this machine, but wanted Steve Jobs to visit Xerox himself and see what was all the fuss about. Jobs was so impressed that he asked his engineers how long it would take to create a computer that would do these things – not realising that it was already in the works.
After that Jobs decided to take charge of the project and get some experienced managers in to take control of his company, but he ultimately proved to be a poor project manager. The machine that came out of this was called the Lisa, which stands for Local Integrated System Architecture, but is co-incidentally also the name of Steve Jobs’ eldest daughter.
The Lisa implemented much of what was learned from Xerox PARC, but had many problems that stopped it from becoming commercially viable – the $10,000 price tag probably being one of the greatest problems. On top of this, users were limited to the seven built-in applications and the 5MB external hard disk was optional. Still, the Lisa had massive power for the time, with a huge 1Mb RAM and a 5Mhz processor. It came with two 5” floppy drives and a built-in 12” monochrome screen. It was also the first commercially available machine to sell with a mouse, have a graphical user interface and introduced the concept of a Trash. Despite its lack of success, the Lisa made many refinements and innovations to the graphical interface technology.

Having been removed from the Lisa project by the people he had appointed to run the company, Jobs looked around for another project to work on and settled on Raskin’s Macintosh. This time he was determined to create a product to outclass the Lisa. The development of the Mac would make a very good column and maybe if Andy Hertzfeld is a MacCast listener we could offer some of his anecdotes from the original Mac development team (see http://www.folklore.org/)
But as these aren’t my stories to tell, I’m just going to cover the story of the first Mac briefly. When Raskin originally conceived the Mac, he wrote a guide that covered everything from technical specifications to marketing strategies. Bill Atkinson of the Lisa team introduced him to Burrell Smith, who was appointed to built Raskin’s Macintosh. The machine that was initially produced was nothing that we’d recognise today. Gradually Raskin’s ideas were eroded and he left Apple in 1982. Bud Tribble was a programmer on the Mac who suggested upgrading it’s processor to the same as the Lisa. Smith managed to develop a motherboard that used fewer parts than the Lisa and was cheaper to produce, despite having the same MC68000 processor and even upping the processor speed to 8Mhz. By the time Steve Jobs arrived on the scene to put his stamp on the machine, it already had a 384×256 black and white screen, the first 3.5″ floppy drive developed by Sony, and Andy Hertzfeld was starting to port over the graphical aspects of the Lisa’s operating system.
Jobs enlisted pixel artist Susan Kare to the team to develop the Mac’s fonts and icons and asked Jerry Mannock back to design the case. He also got involved in micromanaging various aspects of the Mac. From reading the stories on Andy Herzfeld’s site, my impression is that Steve would just pop his head into the Mac development offices, look over programmer’s shoulders, and then tell them what to change and picking at items seemingly at random. Jobs is famed for motivating his team with what has been named the Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field. As he was in charge, a lot of his personal thoughts on the GUI made it into the Mac – including his design for the Mac OS calculator.
The Mac was not just the sum of its parts but also shaped by all the people who worked on it.

The machine was hyped by an enigmatic advert, directed by Ridley Scott. It was shown during the advert break for the 1984 Super Bowl for maximum coverage. It showed a future world where a Mac T-shirt wearing hammer-thrower freed people from the tyranny of a faceless and sinister ‘Big Brother’ style leader. Most people were confused. Looking back many people think that it was having a pop at IBM and the dominant PC. At the time, Apple implied that it was really taking a stand against the hard-to-use command line operating systems of the time. Personally, I think it went over the top with George Orwell’s 1984 references. Whatever the advert was about, it created a media storm in the computer world and when the Mac was unveiled on January 24th 1984, people could see what an amazing machine it was.

Its graphical interface and WYSIWIG support suddenly allowed it to be used for things that computers had never done before. Easy to use and powerful, it was not surprising that the Mac was the first computer to move into the design and publishing industry. This was largely due to the introduction of Aldus Page Maker software and Adobe Postscript that allowed Mac users to create documents and print them. Phrases like Desktop Publishing started to be banded around and everyone was very impressed.
The Mac spawned a family, starting with the Fat Mac – a Mac with 512Kb RAM rather than the measly 128Kb that had been supplied in the original model. In fact early Mac demos had been made with prototype Mac 512 machine because the 128Kb version couldn’t cope with a long demo. The Mac Plus followed this as well as the Mac II – which borrowed the separate case and monitor configuration favoured by IBM PCs. Apple then started tacking letters on to the name in a rather confusing way to produce a huge variety of Macs – the most powerful of which was the Mac IIfx. Apple even sold some machines called the Mac XL, which were actually Lisa machines, adapted to work with the Mac’s operating system.

Jobs recognised the power of a strong product design ethos even then. Working with Hartmut Esslinger of Frog Design, Apple developed the ‘Snow White’ look for its products. These products were beige, but had an elegant simple style and featured grooved lines running over part of the item. This look was used on every part of the machine from the computer case to the monitor, mouse and even the power plug.

But behind the scenes, things were all going somewhat Pete Tong. Woz had left the company in 1981 after being injured in a plane crash and Steve Jobs was finding it difficult working with the man he had invited to become Apple CEO. John Sculley had been in charge of Pepsi, but Jobs convinced him that he could change the world if he joined Apple, which must be better than selling fizzy water to kids. But the two men clashed. While Sculley was keen to build on what Apple already had, Jobs was determined to innovate further. Sculley believed that Jobs was a liability to the company while Jobs believed that Sculley didn’t know anything about the computer industry. Jobs was sent into a kind of isolation and it all climaxed in a head on confrontation in which Jobs was essentially sent packing when the board sided unanimously with Sculley.

Read this column next week with caution, because what happened next wasn’t pretty…

Please address all comments to rickt42uk@yahoo.co.uk.
This column is written by Richard Tanner for the MacCast and may have many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate. The MacCast is not responsible for any opinions and information expressed in this column.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was written by the late Douglas Adams who was an avid Mac fan and owned the first Mac to be sold in Europe on which many of his works were written.

Welcome to the first column in my series. I would at this point like to tell you what the column is going to be about but sadly I can’t really at the moment. I did ask Adam for some guidance on topic, but he said he’d leave it up to me – which was probably a big mistake.

All I can tell you is that this column is not going to be useful. However it may be interesting, informative and occasionally controversial – though if it is please don’t send too much abuse my way.

One thing I have always found incredibly interesting about the Mac is not just how it is now, but also how we got here. Apple have revolutionised the world of computers time and time again in terms of software and hardware. Not ambitious enough for them, they’ve now revolutionised the whole music industry.

The History of the Apple company is probably well documented in scraps around the internet and several other ‘brief history’ guides out there – most of which are better written. But here is my take on the whole sordid affair – serialised over 6 parts.

However, if you’ve not read about the History of Apple, sit back – but not so far back that you can’t comfortably read your screen – and enjoy the sometimes-dramatic history of a company that has done more for technology than you might think.

Our story starts way back in 1856. It starts as most computer stories start (in England at any rate) with a man called Charles Babbage. Babbage was an intellectual performer. He would invite wealthy people to his house and try to impress them with the wacky machines he had come up with. Soon he came up with the grandest scheme of all. While all the machines he had previously come up with were designed to do a single task, he wanted to devise a machine capable of doing a multitude of tasks depending how it was configured. Babbage’s machine was known as the analytical engine and was powered by a series of highly complicated gears. Alas, it was not completed in Babbage’s time – although boffins in London’s Science Museum built an analytical engine from Babbage’s original plans in 1991.

Others had been enthused by Babbage’s idea of a ‘thinking machine’ that could handle tasks that humans found complicated. However, it took an extraordinary leap of imagine by an extraordinary man working under extraordinary conditions to take the next step.
War is always a massive catalyst for technology as scientists on either side work to outwit scientists on the other side. Around 1940, during the Second World War, the British government set up a research facility called Station X to try to decipher the codes used by the German military. It was here that Alan Turning – who many would describe as the father of modern computing – developed an electronic machine in do much of the de-coding automatically.
Alan Turing was a genius, but what should not be overlooked is the contribution of a telecoms electrician called Tommy Flowers. While Turing had the idea and could work out much of how the machine had to work and what it could do, it was Flowers who actually built the computer – called Colossus.
The machine was so successful that the intelligence that it deciphered helped win the war. Of course, all of this was top secret until fairly recently. Indeed, when in the mid-1950’s, British Telecom (then the GPO) asked Tommy Flowers to work on a computer for them, he could not say that he had worked on such a machine before.

In the following decades, it was largely efforts in America that began to capture the power of the electronic computer. Soon the bulbs used in early computers were replaced with more reliable transistors. These in turn were replaced with the revolutionary silicon microchip, invented by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce while working at Texas Instruments in 1964.
By 1965, Gordon Moore came up with theory that in the number of transistors on a microprocessor would double every two years. This prediction is in fact freakishly accurate even today.

Computers were generally huge machines that filled rooms until the late 1960’s when Digital Equipment Corporation among others developed the mini computer. In this time devices such as CRT displays, page printers and graphing devices were developed, but people did not consider the use of computers outside of the business applications such as accounting, automated payrolls, ordering and billing.

Strangely enough however, another piece of the puzzle that I promise you will start to resolve itself into the history of Apple was developed years before this, in the mid-60’s by Douglas Engelbart. In 1970 he was awarded the patent for a wooden shell with two metal wheels. The patent outlined the use of this device for inputting x,y position data into a computer system. If you haven’t already realised, we’re talking about the first computer mouse.

In the late 1960’s, several computer companies and academic constitutions came together to try to work on a solution to the increasing problem that plagued computers at the time. Up until this point, every new and different computer that was built was unable to run the applications that had been designed to run on other equipment. This was largely due to the lack of a universal operating system that could run on a number of machines – each machine had to have it’s operating system developed along with the hardware.
The team included people from MIT and Bell Labs and the produced an operating system called MULTICS. This effort fell on its face and after some experimentation, Bell pulled out of the projects. Forced to downgrade back to an older system, a group of engineers at Bell, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Doug McIlroy, and J. F. Ossanna, decided to come up with their own operating system. It 1969, the team set about developing what would become UNIX. With this another massive innovation was introduced in the form of the C programming language.
The History of Unix could form a whole other series of columns, but will crop up again later in our story.

This brings us to the 1970’s. It was around this time that the personal computer that we know today was beginning to take shape.
It is at this point that we can introduce the hero of our saga – if you can really call him that. He is of course Steve Jobs.
Dropping out of school, Jobs worked for Atari where he worked on a game that a lot of people might know – Breakout (or if you have an iPod you will probably think of as Brick).
To help him with this project, Jobs enlisted the help of a high school friend – Steve Wozniak. Woz had been dabbling with computer electronics and had built a small personal computer. Impressed by this, and looking for a good opportunity, Jobs persuaded Woz to start selling this machine.
Apple Computer was born on 1st April 1976 to sell these machines – the Apple I. The Apple I actually came as a circuit board and the owner had to build their own casing. Most Apple I cases were made of wood, and most looked pretty different.

Building on this success, Woz came up with a new and improved design for his computer. It was marketed as the Apple II. I’ve not been able to find out from any of my online sources or magazines, but I have a hunch that it might have been Steve Jobs that made sure the biggest feature of the Apple II – it’s plastic casing.
The Apple II could probably claim to be the first modern personal computer, because while its applications were far from personal, it was the first computer to come with the notorious beige case – designed by Jerry Mannock. It also had a built-in keyboard and remarkably can boast to be the first personal computer to offer colour graphics. These features combined with the funky striped logo designed by Rob Janov made the Apple II an instant hit. Sales escalated as various programmers created great applications for the Apple II including VisiCalc.

In 1981, IBM introduced their personal computer. Running with Microsoft’s DOS, this soon became the Apple II’s biggest competitor. The problem was that the PC’s architecture was developing at a much faster pace than the Apple II, and it was clear that Apple would have to bring out a new machine to compete with the fast evolving IBM machine. Again, the history of the PC would probably make a nice weekly column, but not on a Mac related website.

Read this column next week to discover the first Mac…

Please address all comments to rickt42uk@yahoo.co.uk.
This column is written by Richard Tanner for the MacCast. Any errors or opinions included are entirely my fault and nothing to do with the MacCast.