Cool Mac Gear

New G4 Quicksilver Woes

From Dennis Schilligo

Hi,

You may want to pass some of this on to your readers that are considering a new Quicksilver PowerMac.

I am a professional graphic designer and illustrator and have been using Macs since 1989. I bought my first in 1990 and currently have six networked in my home. I have always been quick to recommend, defend and praise Apple products, the have always been and still are the best. Over the years, the reliability and compatibility has been nothing less that amazing. It has allowed me to maintain my older software and Macs and set up this very nice network for my home-based business and for use by my family.

I do Mac trouble shooting for all of my Mac based friends as well as some professional clients, I'm the guy that gets called on weekends to find out how to do some uncommon Mac thing or fix a sick Mac. I was happy with my Blue & White G3 but realized that I needed to start to learn about OS 9 and OS X so I could answer some of the questions I was starting to get.

Photoshop is my primary tool and the fact hat Photoshop 7 would be an OS 9 and OS X based application made me feel that it was time to either upgrade the G3 or buy a new G4.

Like many artists I struggle to make ends meet and I knew I could not afford any significant down time. I weighed out the cost of the G3 upgrade and the possibility of major down time that would accompany it and opted for the new 933 MHz Quicksilver G4 so I could fall back on the G3 if I were in a deadline pinch.

I probably would have saved time and money upgrading my G3 or by getting an older used G4 that would run OS 8.6. This is the most disappointing Macintosh experience I can remember. The 32 bit clean problems that accompanied System 7 and the printing problems with my first PCI PowerMac 8200 seem minor in comparison.

This has been the most costly and difficult Mac transition I have experienced and I still haven't even got to the half way point in fixing the problems and upgrading my hardware and software to bring me back to a level of productivity I was experiencing before I made the switch. I'm a month into the switch and I'm still not up to full speed and there are still things to be fixed that will require some major investments. I addition to the $2300 initial cost, I have already spent an additional $800 on upgrades and to get back to where I was in terms of software and peripherals I'm looking at another $1500 or more.

Mac OS X is stunning...an absolute technical marvel. I love it and if all I did was play with a computer I would be happier with it than a pig knee deep in strawberries. I understand the need to move forward with technology and I am even quite impressed with the way that Apple has incorporated the Classic Environment into OS X. But it is way too ahead of it's time, has way too many drastic departures from previous Mac Systems and I realized that for practical purposes...Mac OS 9 is a better choice for production at this time.

But even OS 9 coupled with the new hardware architecture has created significant down time.

If it were not for the speed of Photoshop on this G4 and the prospect of not being able to run PhotoShop 7 under Mac OS 8.6...this G4 would be back in the box and on it's way back to Apple.

I will not discourage any of my clients or friends from purchasing Apple products but I will be honest about their needs and steer them toward the most logical and economical choice. If I feel they will be more efficient and cost effective with an older mac and OS 8.6 or 9, I will be compelled to advise them in that direction.

This is also the advice I received from other Mac User Group members and other graphic pro friends.

Critiques on features:

- The Apple Store web site says this G4 has dual monitor support. Too bad the fine print isn't clearer as to what that means. I had to buy a second ATI video card to hook up my second monitor. An adapter would have been nice...the ATI Radeon 7000 I bought from MacMall had a VGA adapter for the flat panel port.

- The optical Pro Mouse is beautiful but actually not as stabile as a clean ADB mouse. It tends to jump around unless the mouse pad is very uniform in color and texture.

- The Apple Pro keyboard is really substandard in my opinion. The tops of the keys are slightly larger and too close together, the key tension is too stiff, the F keys are too close to the alphanumeric keys and the dark keys with reverse white letters is difficult to look at. It is strenuous typing on it but I am forced to use it because I can't afford an after market keyboard...and there aren't really any available yet that open the CD tray. The CD button on the keyboard is nice but one on the front of the CPU would be a good idea too.

- The little speaker on the front is a bad idea. Too easy to poke with a small finger...Apple needs a 3 year old in the test lab. I notice the speakers on all of the G4s at CompUSA are badly damaged. Bad idea...looks cool..but a bad idea.

- USB is okay but Apple really should have put on about four or five ports. I have had all sorts of problems with brand name USB hubs and have resorted to just unplugging and replugging devices as needed...so much for modern technology. I'll try a USB PCI card as soon as I can afford one. USB also rendered my ADB devices useless...$350 for a new USB Wacom when there was really nothing wrong with my old ADB Wacom...ouch.

- The lack of a start button on the keyboard is also a rather bad idea in my opinion. Hard restarts from the keyboard are gone and with all of the hardware and software incompatibilities it would be nice to be able to restart from the keyboard instead of reaching for the reset button all the time.

- Fonts are extremely problematic depending on the applications you choose to use. Some do not recognize Type 1 fonts unless it is a Truetype or there is an AFM file present in the font folder. Who would have thought Apple would mess with font integration in such a serious way.

In the past, when defending the high price of Macs to Windows users, I always said that the ease of use, extra productivity, accessibility and visual logic of system software and compatibility more than compensate for the extra up front cost. From now on I'll just say that I have too many years on a Mac to switch now...but who knows about the future.

It would have been helpful if Apple warned potential buyers of all of the changes. Offered some sort of options to allow buyers make a slower transition or maybe lined up the after-market folks to start offering solutions.

I sure hope that Apple's plans for future improvements to software and hardware address some of the concerns and issues I discussed here.

Hey Apple...thanks for the "memories"!
Dennis Schilligo

Hi Dennis;

I hope Apple is listening. I don't blame you for being disappointed. I guess I've been lucky -- all six macs I've used as production machines have been great, but then, I opted for a used Pismo instead of a new TiBook or iBook for my most recent upgrade.

I agree with you about the Pro mouse. The one I had with my Cube looked cool, but I hated the way it worked, and after a day I switched to a Countour Perfit 3-button mouse, which is excellent.

Likewise the Pro keyboard looks spectacular, but is functionally deficient. A hint: I'e been very happy with my MacAlly New Wave ADB keyboard, which was dirt-cheap ($55 Canadian, I think), and has a nice action. The current USB version has similar keys I think.

As for ADB compatibility, Griffin's iMate is a wonder, and allows me to use all my favorite old ADB stuff with the Pismo (and with the Cube when I had it) including the MacAlly keyboard, which has two extra ports and serves as an ADB hub.

My KeySpan USB hub has worked perfectly.

However, I agree that having to hassle with all this peripheral stuff is a pain and unwelcome expense. Apple should have kept an ADB port (already there on the B&W G3 so no hardship) in the PowerMacs. Two USB ports ain't enough by a wide margin. My four port USB hub plus the other port on the Mac are pretty well always full. Ditching the keyboard power button was dumb, and don;t get me going on the lack of an analog sound-in port (Apple has apparently seen reason on that faux pas and restored real sound-in ports on the latest TiBooks and the eMac).

Hang in there, and let's hope for better things in the future.

Charles

Deliberate destruction of file archives?

From Michael J. Lew

Dear Charles

I recently "upgraded" my Office suite (Mac) from 4 to X and I am horrified to find that PowerPoint X will not open any of my PowerPoint 4 files! This leads to potential and real problems for me personally, and for the community more broadly.

In the old days one could reasonably expect archives of information and lecturing resources to last forever: paper, slides and overhead projector transparencies are robust and persistent. Now we rely on continued access to computer files for the viability of our archives. When a software company disappears or abandons a product it is easy to understand that one might lose that access, and I have some archived files that I can no longer open because the software that made them no longer runs on my computer (I still miss MindWrite and Thought Pattern). However, it is regrettable that one can also lose access to archived files simply by "upgrading" superceded software to a current version. What other old file formats are being silently destroyed? Is it appropriate for Microsoft to not only expunge all mention of their own old software versions, but effectively expunge our old files as well?

As a lecturer and scientist, I have hundreds of PowerPoint 4 files that are both archives and current resources that I frequently update and re-use. If I can't access those files from PowerPoint X then I cannot really use PowerPoint X. There is no mention of its inability to handle old files either on the box, in the help files or in MS Mactopia support files. Even if I had upgraded several times between PowerPoint 4 and PowerPoint X it would be inevitable that some of my old files would be now inaccessible. I can't think of any reason for Microsoft to omit such an obviously important feature and I think that the limitation on file formats supported by PowerPoint X should be very boldly proclaimed.

I think that this issue would be the basis for an important column.

Regards,
Michael Lew

Hi Michael;

Ah, the joys of working with Microsoft software.

Howeve, in fairness, this sort of thing is not unique to M$. I fear that complete backward compatibility will never be something we can count on.

It is, however, a lot worse problem with proprietary formats like Microsoft uses.

I keep all my important stuff in plain text files, but of course than won't work for multimedia data like your PowerPoint files.

I agree that software developers should be up front about backwards incompatibility.

For now, all I can suggest is downgrading back to PowerPoint 4.

Charles

System 7 boot disk?

From Andrew Nagy

This evening, I want to replace the hard disk in my PowerBook 520 with a larger one. However, the Finder on the larger disk is corrupt. It goes through the entire extension-loading bar, but just as the desktop appears, it says "Sorry, a system error occurred", and I have to restart. Turning extensions off didn't help. Any advice? Thanks.

Hi Andrew;

What type of disk?

Is the larger disk installed in the machine?

Will it boot from a disk tools floppy?

System reinstall?

Charles

Problem email link

From Cameron Graubart

Regarding the problem email link where "-at-" is put in the place where "@" should be check out this Applelinks page: http://www.applelinks.com/pages/contact.shtml

This is what is at the top of the page:
"*** Note: When Sending email you
must replace "-at-" with @ ***"

Rather strange I must say.

Sincerely,

Cameron Graubart

Hi Cameron;

Ah, now I see what you're getting at. This is a foil for address-trolling robots of spammers.

The "mail to" links from the bottom of my articles works fine.

Charles

Re: Anti-Apple "Christian" Web Site A Hoax

From Michael Wills

Hello again Charles,

I want to thank you for the article. If your friend has more writings or links to others I would like to peruse those as well. I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you on this.

I haven't done much biblical research on this and I have had a scientific background from my youth. I've been a Christian for about 12 years now and in the last few years one passage has intrigued, especially in regards to our scientific understanding. You asked why would God design an apparently old universe to deceive us? I can't say that this is exactly what is going on, but more ...rather... well... I have to look up the reference for this. Hmm...

When I look at 2 Thes 2:11, in essence I see it saying that because of our wickedness God will send a strong delusion so that we who refuse to love the truth would believe a lie. Sort of like putting the two, truth and error, before us. Just as your friend mentioned there is both a teleological argument *for* the existence of God and also a dysteleological argument *against* the existence of God. The facts are there, so to speak, to believe one or the other. Is it a "young earth"? Or is it an "old earth"? Is it possible that it is a in fact a young earth, again to use the analogy, "painted" so as to appear to be an old earth so that those who do not want to believe in God are able to be more comfortable in the delusion? I don't know how to phrase it precisely... but can you see what I mean?

With that being said, I do not mean to imply that accepting a young earth or old earth is the basis of salvation, rather it's simply a means for those who don't want to acknowledge God as a way of... helping them accept more deeply what it is they want.

This is actually the first time I tried to write these thoughts out so they are very incoherent. For the sake of those whom I discuss these things with I will try to make them more clear. :-) If you have the time I would appreciate your feedback but I can imagine how busy things are there. As I mentioned before though, if your friend has other writings that he is willing to share, I would be quite happy to read them.

Thanks again for reading my email and taking the time to forward the article.

Peace,

Michael

Hi Michael;

Interesting point about 2 Thess 2.

However, taken in context, 2 Thess 2 is talking about the end times, and if 2:11 is applied to the young earth/old earth debate, the implication would have to be that those who affirm an old earth are wicked.

I think it's a bit if a stretch. ;-)

Charles

CM

Charles W. Moore