Cool Mac Gear

I got the OS X 10.1.4 update installed over the weekend.

Last Friday, reader George Carrington pointed out that the April Security Update that Apple released on April 4th is not included with the 10.1 0.4 update, and there was some ambiguity as to whether the Security Update was required.

As it turns out, you can install the 10.1.4 update directly over OS X 10.1.3 without first installing the April Security Update, but you may have problems installing the Security Update over 10.1.4 later, although some have reported success in doing so.

I decided to take the cautious route, so I downloaded the April Security Update and installed it first. Not a big chore; the installer took about a minute to run.

Running the 10.1.4 update installer took a bit longer, about five minutes, but the whole operation went without any hitches or glitches.

So far, so good. Everything still seems to work. ViaVoice is running happily, and I haven't encountered any problems yet with other software.

I was particularly interested to see if the address of PPP issues in this update would improve my dialup performance, which had been especially flaky and slow to connect and disconnect after I installed the 10.1.3 update weekend before last.

Modem response times have returned to about what they were under 10.1.2 after I installed 10.1.4, but disappointingly, Internet Connect's reliability is still erratic. The Connect/Disconnect buttons now work sometimes, but not always, making use of the freeware PPP Monitor utility a continued necessity, although that's no hardship, because PPP monitor is kinda' cool anyway.

Speed wise, I think Finder response may be slightly improved. Success at this point.

Sure hope I never have to do a clean reinstall, though.

Starting as I did with the OS X Final Release install CD and 10.1 update CD, I have now successively proceeded through:

Mac OS X Install
Mac OS X 10.1 Update
Security Update 10-19-01
Installer Update 1.0
Mac OS X 10.1.2 Update
Mac OS X 10.1.3 Update
April Security Update
Mac OS X 10.1.4 Update

I have all of the installers archived, but it would take a weekend to reinstall them all and then add the various applications and third party utilities.

re: Mail to Eudora

From James Huston

Michael King wrote;

Dear Mr. Moore,

I would like to know if there is a way to convert mailboxes of Apple's Mail application into Eudora-formatted ones? While Mail is, as you say, a pretty face, there does not seem to be much inside the head and now that Eudora's betas are reasonably developed, I plan to switch back (I mistakenly thought that an OS X-native application would automatically be preferable to a "Classic" one).

Mail's mailbox format are mboxes, however they are in the new package format so related items are stored in one package. In your home directory go to Library/Mail. In that folder you should see the various account files, a Mailboxes folder and other needed Mail files.

Open the Mailboxes folder. Select the Mailbox you want to export. control/right-click the mailbox and select "Show Package Contents" from the menu. The file you want is the mbox file from the package, make a copy of that and drag it onto the Desktop, and there's your Mail mailbox in a flat text file.

I'm not sure if it imports into Eudora at all, but that's how you can easily grab a mailbox from mail.

Hi James;

Yes, I had no trouble finding the Mail mailboxes. However, changing the File Type and Creator codes to Eudora specs did not render a mailbox openable by Eudora.

However, see Michael D. Allen's letter below

Charles

wannabe

From Gareth

Hi, Charles

I noticed that you still include Wannabe among the Classic applications that you need. Gentle chiding ahead: use Fink and install Links (not Lynx) and do a text-browser bake-off. You may be happy with the result.

-Gareth Jones

Hi Gareth;

What I would miss frim WannaBe is the one-click transfer of pages to my choice of full-featured browsers and the ability to save page sources, also with a menu selection. WannaBe also works nicely off an alias of my iCab Hotlist folder.

Can Links do all that?

Charles

Eudora

From Wayne Folta

Charles,

I, too, use Eudora. It crashes several times a day for me in MacOS X -- usually when I hit Reply -- but it has one feature that the other programs I've tried don't have: a complete search.

I have many filters that distribute my email into about 30 mailboxes (mostly for email lists) and color code them (mostly for my multiple email addresses). But I don't want to run around to all these mailboxes to read my mail. So I use Eudora's search for all messages whose status is unread and then get one long list of mail I haven't read yet, sorted by mailbox. It's a very fast way to rip through mail.

As far as I can tell, neither Apple Mail, PowerMail, nor MailSmith can do this, so they'each have their temptations for me, but I can't use them. (If Apple added a Search on message status and a Search across mailboxes, I'd probably switch.)

Re: your note about two weeks uptime in MacOS 9. I'm beginning to wonder if you're not actually an alien with a device from another planet that emulates a Mac. (Except the aliens couldn't bring themselves to incorporate bugs as well, which is the dead giveaway.) Who are you and what have you done with the Wallstreet?

Hi Wayne;

:-)

Eudora certainly has the best search engine of any email client I've tried, but SweetMail's is no slouch either. Nisus Email's is good, but slow.

I've had no stability complaints with Eudora in OS X. Stays up for days.

Speaking of which, the run finally came to an end at 1:00 AM this morning, when SweetMail ran out of memory and crashed. I figure 15 days without a restart -- not bad. I had to quit all applications and restart them four times during the interval, not really a big hassle.

Charles

Mac OS X Stability

From John Threadgold

Charles,

I have been especially interested in your system stability with the Classic Mac OS. I have used and maintain 11 Macs in school, having used Mac OS 8.0 up to OS X 10.1.2. I would summarise Classic stability as flaky - from very poor with 8.0 to somewhat stable with 9.1.

In all I was embarrassed to show off a Mac to a PC user - they were virtually guaranteed to crash the machine within 20 minutes or so. I couldn't stand watching them blithely open applications until they either ran out of memory or one of the apps crashed with a probability of taking the whole system with it. In my experience this was considerably less likely to happen with Windows though a Windows crash was likely to be much nastier. I have never had a hardware problem with Macs (quite a few with PC's) and never had a software problem that I couldn't sort out myself (not the case with Windows at all).

I got to know (and love) the Classic Mac OS and I found it improved to the point where from crashing two or three times a day I had it down to once or twice a fortnight (restarting every morning). I agree with you that when I stopped using IE it reduced the crashes very noticeably. But damn it all, Charles, it was like an old banger that you had gotten to know and love and whose idiosyncrasies you could handle. Let someone else at it though and they would wonder why the hell you drove the thing at all. I know our experiences colour our judgement but I would not be surprised if most readers had similar stories to tell. I am aghast at your experiences with Classic OS and feel that you must be the exception that proves the rule.

As for OS X, hmmmmm... stability is not perfect but in a different league completely to Classic. I restart it rarely and it has to all intents and purposes crashed on me about once every month or so (one kernel panic). I'm not keen on its more 'abstract' nature (that's another story) but in general I've gone from regular and frustrating crashes from a system I treated with kid gloves but loved using, to infrequent and surprising crashes on a system that I can treat somewhat carelessly, trust but can't bring myself to love.

Not yet anyway.

Keep up the good work.

-- John T.

Hi John;

As I mentioned to Wayne above, I set a new personal record. My previous best was 10 days without a restart. Other than the program quits and restarts to clear the memory, I didn;t do anything unusual to keep things going, and to be honest, I had been expecting it to lock up any minute for the last week.

My usual interval between restarts is about five days.

I probably had over 30 different applications open at different times through the two weeks +, including a fair few beta apps., but no Microsoft software except perhaps I may have started up Word 5.1 to look at an archived document.

Charles

OS X/Classic mode, and Mail

From Jim McDonald

Charles:

With 10.1.3 and earlier, I noticed that the Internet Connect application does not start if I opened OS 9.2 on top of X. It doesn't matter whether I close the Classic application that I'm using or not. I.C. simply won't work, although I can still log onto the Internet from the menu bar on the right side.

I just downloaded x.4 and haven't ventured into the Classic game yet.

Regarding the Mail application, I'd like to be able to delete selected email from the server, and can't seem to find the right command to do so. The help file is no help, so I'm assuming that Mail can't do it. This is an apparent drawback of Mail. Also, the filtering/rule module seems to address one filtering function per rule. Bummer. I'd like to abandon the use of O.E. altogether, and haven't yet tried Mailsmith. That may be my next purchase.

Regards,
Jim McDonald

Hi Jim;

Have you tried Nisus Email? It allows you to delete selected email without downloading it.

Charles

RE: Converting OS X Mail app. mboxes for use in Eudora

From Michael D. Allen

Charles,

mboxes created by OS X Mail application are packages (hidden folders) not files. That's why your ResEdit trick didn't work. If you control-click on any .mbox icon the popup menu will display "Show Package Contents". If you chose this option, the package will open to reveal four files: Info.plist, table_of_contents, mbox, mbox.SKinde. If you drop the file mbox onto TextEdit it will open. This file looks exactly like a standard mailbox file used by Unix mail readers. This format is almost exactly what Eudora wants to read. All you have to do is convert the Unix newline (lf) characters to carriage return (cr) characters. In Tex-Edit, I did this from the Special menu by choosing Quick Modify, LFs->CRs (UNIX->Mac) and saved the file as the original mailbox name minus the ".mbox". You can just drop it into or save it directly to ~/Documents/Eudora Folder/Mail Folder/ and Eudora will be able to use it. You don't even have to change the Creator code unless you want a Eudora specific icon. This is a pain in the butt, if you've got a lot of mailboxes to convert. If I was going to return to Eudora, I'd write a application to convert all my files or put together a shell script to do the job from a terminal window. Hopefully, Qualcomm will add Mail to its Import Mail menu in a future release.

When I first started using Mail, I didn't like it too well. I've been using Eudora for years and really liked it. However, I've become fond of Mail during the month and a half that I've been using it. It renders HTML message much better than Eudora, and seems a little faster to me. I also find it easier to read. I still can't decide if I like the multipane interface or not. Of course, I've never really meet a software product that I did want to change at least a little.

I've only started running OS X since my new iMac arrived in late February. As my first Mac was a 512K, I've had a lot of years to get used to the old way of doing things. Therefore, the transition has not been total smooth. But have used UNIX make investigation like the one above a bit of fun. I just launched the Terminal app. and started poking around. Having a knowledge of cd, od, hexdump, more, etc. lets you peek under the hood.

Word, Excel, and Photoshop Elements are just about the only Classic applications that run anymore. I've trying to decide if I can convert may Word and Excel files to Appleworks and be happy or find some other replacement. I was Microsoft free for a number of years, but a consulting job forced be to install and use Office 98. I've always liked Excel even with its un-Mac like interface, and I've never really liked Word at all. However, I've started using Explorer and like it better than Netscape 4.7 or 6.x. I don't think I've booted 9.2 native during the last 3 weeks and may never again. I'd like to give up Classic as well but until Adobe updates Elements or I get rich and by Photoshop 7, I alway need Classic.

The 10.1.4 upgrade when in without any problems, then so did the 10.1.3 before it. The only 10.1.4 thing I noticed is the Sherlock really is faster. If only Apple or Epson would support shared USB printers so the I could use the printer on my wife's B&W G3. It works just fine from Classic mode.

Mike

Hi Mike;

Thank you kindly for explaining how to convert those mailboxes. I would never have figured all that out.

Glad OS x is working well for you.

Charles

Classic Mode

From Doug Glenn

Charles:

In today's posting about Classic Mode slowdowns you printed:

"Be careful not to run Classic under OS X unless you absolutely have to. I have found the performance hit to be enormous. a perceivable System slowdown for many things. It is tempting to keep the old standbys at hand but better to move onto something native..."

  I use 10.1.3 on a 500MHz iBook with Classic mode just fine. Be SURE, however, to do the following:

1. via System Prefs - TURN OFF the magnification effect for the dock (!!) (a HUGH CPU drain)
2. run Classic with ALL EXTENSIONS OFF or ONLY those absolutely required to support the classic apps running. This would, of course, include the video drivers, color sync, etc... anything that is already supported by X
3. employ other (previously published) tips and tricks to speed up X, such as using the SuckIn or Scale animations in lieu of the Genie effect -- turning off font smoothing for both X AND Classic is useful as well.

Lastly, use the (free) SwapCop utility by J. Schrier [ http://macupdate.com/infolphp/id/7153 ] to place the swap file on a smallish partition (0.5 - 1 Gig) with NO OTHER FILES. This is the UNIX way, and does help when writing to VM because (among others) the directory for that volume is only 1 item deep -- which translates directly into rapid access.

These effects and flourishes, like proverbial pennies, DO ADD UP. As I said earlier, the original iBook/500 runs Classic mode just fine when so configured. Some programs seem to run even better in Classic -- go figure!

The slower one's machine is, the more improvement one will see from using these ideas.

Also:

"With the classic Mac OS, I could simply copy everything to a larger partition, boot from it, and be on my way (well, a few prefs might need to be tweaked). But I don't know if you can do that under OS X."

I advise all to use the wonderous Carbon Copy Cloner tool by Mike Bombich, [http://software.bobmich.com/ccc.html ] to clone your current X installation to any selected partition/drive. Then you can easily use the standard Startup Disk control panel to select which partition to boot from. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS have a 'spare' or 'backup' of your X ( and 9x) system installation(s)!

An obvious scenario would be as follows...

1. backup (using CCCloner) your X install 2. use Software Update to upgrade to 10.1.4 3. decide that 10.1.4 sucks? fine, REBOOT from the 10.1.3 copy you just made 4. use CCCloner to restore the 10.1.3 install to your original boot partition -- no harm, no foul.

BTW -- apps (generally) do not need to be on the X partition (as a rule) so create and use a partition just for apps

Also, use the excellent Monolingual utility by J. Schrier [ http://homepage.mac.com/hiksoft/ ] to remove any/all unwanted language files from the X partition -- 150MB in all!! Who really uses conversational Babylonian anyway? (a word to the simplemined: retain those languages you need, DUH!!)

OK...

Doug Glenn

Thanks for the tips and links, Doug.

Charles

Odyssey 90 Re File Damage

From dxtr

Hi Charles,

In Odyssey 90 you wrote

" I've been told that hard-rebooting Unix can cause problems, but there didn't appear to be any viable alternative. I'm also informed that left to its own devices, OS X might eventually have sorted itself out, but life is too short, and I'm too impatient for that. I executed the three finger salute, and the Pismo rebooted."

The following is from Apple Disk Utility when run from the StartUp disk

" Disk First Aid cannot verify or repair the startup disk or repair a write-protected disk, a CD-ROM, or a disk with open files. The startup disk was verified, and repaired if necessary, at boot time. In order to repair or verify the startup disk, please boot from the Mac OS X Install CD and verify the disk using Disk Utility from the Installer Apple Menu."

Looks like it was written by a lawyer but as you can see first aid has already taken care of the problems it can. Not knowing about this I had already utilized the salute a couple of times and have had Zero problems as a result. It just takes a little longer to boot. Apple has apparently put some thought into protecting us older users from ourselves. Hope your upgrade to X v1.4 over the weekend went as smoothly as mine.

seeya
dxtr

X rules!

Hi dxtr;

It did, thanks.

Charles

OS X Open box dialog problem

From Thomas England

I see many discussions about Finder window problems, but am I the only one who is unhappy with the Open dialog presentation?

Here's the problem: Let's say I'm using Amadeus and I tell it to open a mp3 file from a folder of songs by Bob Dylan. Most of the files' names begin with "Bob Dylan" and then go on to have the song title.

I get a dialog box which has panels so narrow that the file names are truncated. My only hope is to scroll down looking at the last 3-4 letters of the filenames, trying to pick the one I want.

I can't find any way to resize the panel, since unlike a finder window, there are no little double-column tools. If I resize the window, I just get more blank panels.

One last note: I do find that if I hover my mouse in just the right way (and I'm not yet sure what that is) the full filename appears.

This is a basic function of the system. Does it have to be so difficult? I keep thinking that there must be an answer that is not apparent to me.

Tibook 667, running OS X 10.1.4.

Thomas S. England

Hi Thomas;

Not that I know of, but our readers may be able to suggest something.

Charles

Classic & OSX

From Philip McDunnough

Hi,

I have been using OSX on a variety of systems since the public beta. I normally leave Classic on (even though I only use one program and that rarely). It goes to sleep after a couple of minutes and I really don't notice a difference in performance (on or off).

Philip

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore