HotTips 1999-0601 - My first issue
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====================================
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====================================
MacHome Hot Tips – June 6, 1999====================================
A WORD FROM YOUR EDITOR
Andy Ihnatko is back, and in MacHome Journal’s Back-Page!
You will be able to find his humorous insights and observations in
the magazine starting with the August 1999 issue – which will be
distributed in late July at the New York Macworld Expo, and will be
in most major bookstores by mid-July. MacHome Journal’s web site will
also post his columns as they get published.
I really missed him since MacUser magazine folded in 1997, although
one could still read his prose elsewhere (New Media, MacCentral,
Yahoo Internet Life…) He has always remained funny and bitterly
incisive.
Andy’s first article will reveal how he single-handedly revived Apple
by staging a massive slip-and fall accident on the steps of Microsoft
headquarters, and funneling the proceeds of the resultant personal
injury lawsuits to stem the tide of red ink. So Andy, how is the
Macquarium?
There is something new in Hot Tips this month: We are welcoming
aboard the first members of the Hot Tips Alliance (HTA), Mac only
search site MacInstein and shareware Mac games center MGSN. The HTA
was conceived as a way to link quality resources for Macintosh users.
Our partners are dedicated to provide you with the best possible Mac
experience.
MacInstein is a new project that will attempt over the next months to
become a one-stop convenience store for all things Mac: News,
updaters, downloadable software and more. Make sure to download their
Sherlock plug-in. If you feel like filling up your hard drive with
cool fun stuff, MGSN is the place to go. A well-organized depository
of hundreds of great Shareware games, it also offers reviews,
previews, and game tips.
Finally: We are only two weeks away from this year’s Macworld Expo,
the Big Apple big show. The 1999 trade show offers new products from
well-known companies, more than 40 first-time exhibitors, specialized
products galore, and special events such as a National Macintosh
Gaming Championship that will be giving away over $25,000 worth of
prizes.
All this will be launched by steve jobs’s keynote address at 9:00
a.m. Eastern time, Wednesday, July 21. Apple has often waited for
this Expo to release explosive news. I’ll keep you posted.
Pat
====================================
DID YOU KNOW?====================================
Size does matter, but bigger is not necessarily better!
To perform the high-tech audio wizardry for George Lucas’s new Star
Wars The Phantom Menace without being tied down to cumbersome
equipment, such as analog 24-track recorders and mixing consoles, the
production outfit built a mobile recording studio based on a
lightweight and portable G3 PowerBook. The result was amazing, and
both time and money were saved by avoiding costly sound studio rental
fees and travel back and forth from shooting location.
====================================
TIPS AND TRICKS====================================
A SPEEDIER STARTUP
To get the option of disabling Memory Check at startup that in turn
can speed up startup time if you have much RAM installed, hold the
COMMAND and OPTION keys down while opening the memory control panel.
Be forewarned: Your Mac does a memory check at startup to make sure
everything is running well. Allow it to do a memory check
occasionally.
SHERLOCK vs. TROJAN
A new product called ImproveSherlock is not all it seems, and hides
great advantages for its creators. The only difference from the
original Sherlock that I could see was replacing the banner in the
search results with one from marketing firm Aaddzz
(http://www.aaddzz.com/) that pays the guys at Praestare Corporation
20 cents per hit generated!
NETSCAPE 4.6 MEMORY GLITCH
The memory used by Netscape 4.6 is sometimes not properly released
when you quit the application, leading to a necessary restart or even
a system crash. Starting up a small program such as Simpletext and
quitting it should most of the time free the memory. If it does not
work, you should restart your Mac restart. The About This Computer
window will tell you if you were successful by showing available
memory.
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY FAILURE
After changing your keyboard layout from either the Keyboard menu or
Control Panel, Password Security may not accept your password and
lock you out! Password Security, which loads early in the startup
process, always uses the native keyboard layout
As a work-around, try typing your password once as normal before
changing the keyboard, then doing it again after the change.
THE PETRIFIED FIVE
Although they can still be thrown away, five folders on your Mac
cannot be renamed in MacOS 8.5.1 because they are handled directly by
the System They are the Apple Extras, Applications, Internet, mac os
Read Me Files, and Utilities folders.
A solution is to use a utility such as ResEdit, Resorcerer, File
Buddy or Snitch to get information on these folders and turn off
their “name locked” attributes. Once this flag attribute is off, they
can be renamed, although they will also lose their custom icons.
====================================
INTRODUCING: THE HOT TIPS ALLIANCE====================================
ALL WORK and no joy makes Mac a dull boy, so what do YOU want to play
today?
Seth Moyers invites you to visit the Mac Game Shareware News (MGSN)
and get your pick of great Mac games.
TIRED of scrolling through pages after pages of PC hit results from
your favorite search engine? At MacInstein, Macintosh is already a
keyword! Get straight to the information you want, and keep abreast
of the latest Mac news.
====================================
Q&A====================================
Q: Is possible to write Mac files to a CD using a PC and still have
them readable on a Mac? Our office has a CD writer on a PC and I
would like to archive some work filling up my Zip disks. Is this
possible?
A: Files saved as .BIN or .HQX onto the CD should be no problem as
long as you use the ISO 9660 format to master it. You would just have
to expand them once the CD is mounted on a Mac. Note that by using
this format your file names will have to conform to the PC naming
convention: a limit of 8 characters followed by a period and a 3
character extension (such as FMAKER78.HQX), and that Resource fork
(used by the Finder to match files with their applications) will be
missing, forcing you to open them manually
instead of double clicking.
Q: Is it possible to do a macro for one’s password?
(Submitted by Meg & Doug Miller)
A: It depends both on what is used for password protection and as
macro application. In the case of startup security, the password
request would come before the macro application loads, so the answer
is no. Otherwise, just do a record of your data entry actions, and it
should work.
Because macro files are not protected nor encrypted, doing this means
anyone with a bit of skill can access your passwords and use them. Not
very secure, and it defeats the whole purpose of having a password!
As a middle-ground alternative, you may want to record only part of
the password and enter either the first or last (or both) few
characters, Again, a breach in security, but better than having the
whole thing in the clear (i.e. not encrypted) if you really must.
My advice: Don’t.
Data protection is a big issue. Passwords are there for a good reason – to protect you. Would you want to see someone impersonating you in a
spending spree, using your account? Even it this is not a credit card
number or a PIN, a fraud artist could take your identity and cause
havoc under your name and responsibility. What would happen if your
computer got stolen, or if you sold it and someone undeleted the
drive’s content?
Q: I have a Performa 638CD, with OS 7.5.5. It has Motorola 68040 @ 33
MHz CPU and the Current total memory is 35864K. There is 272.6 MB in
disk now, and 73.1 MB available. If I do not want to buy a new
computer (iMac or G3) what would be the best way to go to add more
drive space? Zip drives? Iomega drive? Buy an auxiliary external hard
drive? I do want to install Microsoft office to use Power Point, as
well as upgrading my Netscape 3 to Netscape 4.
(Submitted by Dr. H. Kopel)
A: Your 68040 is the fastest non-PowerPC processor, but 33 Megahertz,
the speed of the processor, is not very fast by today’s standard. The
new G3 not only uses an improved processor, but now can run it at
over 450 MHz … (Processor speed grossly represents how many
calculations a given CPU can do in a given lap of time.)
Iomega’s Zip drives are available in both 100 MB and 250 MB but are
slower than a hard drive, too slow to run large applications. You
could probably pick up a small external hard drive (500 MB or so) for
less than $100. That would more than double your available space.
You can also clean out your drive and reclaim some space. For
instance:
1) Do a FIND (Command-f) for each of: TeachText, SimpleText, and Read
Me; You probably have multiple copies of these using up unnecessary
space;
2) Rebuilt your Desktop files by restarting your computer and holding
the COMMAND and OPTION keys. You should reclaim a few K that way, too.
3) Remove unnecessary fonts from the system folder. Look at disabled
Control Panels and Extensions and delete unused files.
3) Have a look at the applications already installed. When is the
last time they were used? Keep only what is necessary. You can always
reinstall the others later if you absolutely must.
All things considered, I don’t believe you will be satisfied about
the speed of the applications you want to install. They need A LOT OF
RAM and a faster processor to be well behaved. You would be happier
with older (and smaller) versions, or looking at alternatives such as
replacing Office 98 with AppleWorks.
====================================
THE EDITORS OF MacHome JOURNAL ARE HAPPY TO OFFER THE IMAC BUYERS’ GUIDE!====================================
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====================================
NEW RELEASES====================================
A new version of the Firewire drivers (Firewire 2.1) is available
from Apple:
Read about new features and download from
mac os ROM Update 1.0 is out. It is needed for all iMac, Power
Macintosh G3 (Blue and White), and PowerBook G3 Series (Bronze
keyboard) using MacOS 8.6.
Make sure to read about it first:
http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n60408
Then use the following URL to access the download directly:
http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11476
====================================
NEWSBYTES====================================
THE NET: HACKERS HIT NET’S DOMAIN SYSTEM SITES
Hackers struck major linchpins in the Net’s address system,
redirecting Network Solutions visitors to another site and
apparently attacking servers operated by the Net’s new
technical administrator. (July 2, 10:55 a.m. PT)
COURTING IMAC’S GOOD LOOKS
An iMac knockoff released last week at PC Expo in New York has
attracted much media attention – and drawn a lawsuit from Apple. A
complaint has been filed against Future Power and Daewoo for
illegally copying the iMac’s design, asking for actual and punitive
damages resulting from this infraction.
====================================
PRODUCT REVIEW====================================
NETCONTROL
By GREG HURRELL
(Freeware)
NetControl is a small and simple application that allows you to
quickly access and change the configurations for AppleTalk, TCP/IP,
Modem and Remote Access in one place, letting you save and select
“sets” of configurations to simplify switching. NetControl is
designed to work on all Macs using Open Transport but for now only
works with English-language versions of the MacOS. I found it to be a
great time saver in a multi user environment.
====================================
KEEPING UP WITH THE APPLES====================================
Ever wondered where I got my information? Once source is Apple eNews,
a periodic news communication from Apple Computer. Subscribe to Apple
eNews at:
If you want to learn about doing business online, Apple is offering
FREE E-commerce Solutions for Small Business Seminars, featuring a
variety of products that will help you set up a fully functional
e-commerce site quickly and inexpensively.
To find out when a seminar will be conducted in your area, visit:
http://www.seminars.apple.com/series/ecommerce/
====================================
EDITORIAL====================================
It’s too hot to think or be serious. We all had long weekends, our
livers and slowly getting their colors back, so lets have some fun
instead. That’s what summer is all about.
CLASSIC GAMING
As a kid, I have spent many hours pumping quarters into flashing,
beeping machines at my local arcade. I probably spent more money in
some of them than the whole Defense budget!
Now I can all play all of them for free.
Thanks to the strength of the PowerPC architecture, the mac os can
support the most powerful emulation technologies with ease, and the
PowerMac has become a great platform for emulating all kinds of
older, slower processors. I even ran a Mac Plus emulator on mine!
So what if it does not compare with MYST or Starcraft: For those
nostalgic for games such as Frogger, PacMac, Galaxian and Moon
Patrol, MacMAME
MacMAME is part of the Multiple Arcade Macintosh Emulation project, a
non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the history of arcade
video games through emulation by running the original program code
(ROMs) found in the arcade games. Much more than a reproduction, it
is essentially the ORIGINAL game running by way of an emulated layer
inside your Macintosh.
ROMs are required by MacMAME to be able to play the games. However,
they are not free, and you must own or have license to each ROM set
you wish to use. The catch is that most companies won’t sell you ROMs
or provide a mean for you to buy them. For these companies who own the
copyrights, these ROMs aren’t making them any money, and they don’t
seem to have any desire to cater to emulator users by selling them
the ROM images.
This is a great shame. People worked hard to create these games, and
they are an integral part of our common history. If we let these fall
into oblivion, what will happen of today’s technology once newer,
better storage solutions, programming languages or faster but
incompatible operating systems come along? All of human knowledge is
slowly migrating towards electronic storage. Who will decide what is
worth migrating to the new medium? We have already seen this with
records and CDs, with old TV broadcasts, with movies. If you have a
PowerPC running MacOS 8.5, how can you retrieve that old poem you
wrote and stored on a 400K disk?
The larger issue represented here is how much of our history will be
allowed to degrade and vanish into dust or unclassified warehousing.
Books can last hundreds of years; A CD will only last until the
technology to read it is made unavailable.
(OOPS! I got serious again. I’m sorry, bad habits are so hard to
break.)
Anyway, keeping all that in mind, there are some places that provide
ROM images for download, on the understanding that you have the legal
right to download them, that is, you own a set of these yourself. For
obvious legal reasons I cannot provide any links to these, nor answer
any requests to that effect. On the other hand, a good search engine
should provide you with a long list of positive URLs.
For other emulators running on the Mac, have a look at EMULATION.NET
a site dedicated to emulation on the mac os. If offers the like of
True Reality (a Nintendo 64 emulator), Virtual Gameboy, iNES,
MacV9T9 (a TI99 emulator), Atari emulators, and much more.
====================================
ROLL CREDITS====================================
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
NANCY, for reading this and keeping Michel F’s head from exploding …
TREY, for the South Park movie. If I could just get the obscene theme
song out of my head …
OLD MAC MILT, for supporting older Macs and being a cool guy;
DAVID SAMIS (of Potomac, MD) who sent me money when I had forgotten
the deal!
And all the Hot Tips subscribers!
HOT TIPS STAFF:
Editor: PAT ST-ARNAUD
Associate Editor: KRISTI KOUCHAKJI
Nota: Kristi couldn’t make it this week, so please don’t blame her for
my numerous spelling and syntax mistakes…
====================================
Hot Tips © 1999 MacHome Magazine====================================
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