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12-9-06: A long overdue update on the iMacThe Windows desktop is my main computer. The laptop I mainly use to backup files to from the desktop, plus preview my web pages in Internet Explorer, since I use Mozilla on the desktop.
My worsening vision makes using the seemingly tiny 15 inch screen of the iMac downright painful. Plus, OS X doesn't work well at all on an old iMac like this with so little RAM. The laptop screen seems to be near identical in size to the iMac's-- but the laptop LCD is easier on my eyes than the flickering CRT of the iMac. I must use a 21 inch plus LCD display on the desktop PC.
I've tried repeatedly to get OS X on the iMac to share files directly with my PCs over our LAN, but with no luck. Everything gets corrupted, if anything happens at all.
It's even difficult to use internet email to transfer files via attachments between the iMac and other machines, since OS X and the available browsers-- including Safari-- seem unable to run well or long with what RAM the iMac possesses. And there seems little to justify boosting the RAM on it further-- even if the RAM itself were free of cost.
No, about the only reasons I keep the iMac around today are (1), no one else in the house can use it, as it doesn't function well as a web browser or hardly anything else (2), I possess several years worth of archives on Mac CDs that seem most reliably accessed from the iMac, compared to my other machines (3), Appleworks, although a pitiful shadow of the ClarisWorks which preceded it in terms of usefulness and functionality, remains one of the few low cost integrated paint and draw programs available in in the world today-- and pretty much justifies the iMac's place all on its own.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
5-31-05: An alternative to hard-to-use $500 graphics softwareBut there is another alternative: an old cheap iMac with Appleworks.
You can use Appleworks to do a pretty easy mix of draw and paint images, then save them as a gif or jpeg as you prefer. Then attach the files to a web-based email like from yahoo.com and send it to yourself. Then pick it up on your PC.
Yes, you will encounter some glitches here and there dealing with Mac files on your PC. For instance the file transfer does best if I use my web browser-based Yahoo email account on the iMac to send it to my ISP-based email account-- but then don't retrieve the file from my ISP email. Rather, on my PC I access my Yahoo account again and save the files from the email message stored in my "Sent" box. For some reason I have extra trouble saving the files intact from my ISP account.
I suppose some might have to set their Yahoo email preferences to always keep a copy of sent mail in that section first. I seem to remember having done so long ago.
I was also disappointed to encounter a file backup glitch when I for the first time ever managed to successfully connect my OS X iMac to my PC LAN, and try copying the new image to a PC over it. As I routinely do among the PCs themselves, for backup purposes. Alas, the PC did not recognize the file correctly after copying, despite the iMac saying it was a standard jpeg file. So I guess LAN transfers between OS X and Windows XP are still a no-no as of 2005. Sheesh!
If you want to see a Mac graphic done this way, check out the 2D "outriggers" image in this page.
Yeah, experienced artists might note that for a black and white line drawing like that one I should have saved it in gif format rather than jpeg. For that would have resulted in less smearing. But this was the first image I've done on a Mac in Appleworks in maybe years, and I'd forgotten a few things. That initial image still turned out well enough to do its job though. In general gif format is best for simple line drawings or charts like that one, and jpeg for photos or grayscale images.
Besides my desire for cheap and easier to use integrated draw and paint software, I also felt able to move the iMac from its previous kid-centric location simply because the kids didn't want to use it. With OS X and the (now) astonishingly old Microsoft Internet Explorer installed, the iMac was simply way too slow for most kid purposes. I'd tried to improve its functionality with different browsers, but no luck. The iMac's limited RAM I suspect is the major culprit, along with OS X's huge appetite for same. Oh well. I don't consider it cost-effective to boost the iMac's memory at this late date. But for simple Appleworks use for my own occasional graphics tasks, it's plenty fast enough.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
10-3-04: The iMac moves againMY SISTER'S IBOOK REVISITED: My sister got her iBook back soon after my last post. The motherboard had to be replaced, according to techs. YIKES! END REVISIT.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
8-7-04: Old iMacs running OS X are at best light duty internet clients-- and for non-game playing adults, not kidsI'd be tempted to say adding more RAM might help OS X run better on this iMac-- but unfortunately OS X is pretty much as unreliable on our G4 with one GIGABYTE of RAM, as it is on this iMac with 160 MB of RAM.
When I say unreliable, I mean applications crash/freeze up, and you have to Force Quit them. Often. Especially web browsers.
Moving to Safari on the G4 seemed to help a little there. But not on the iMac. Safari ran AWFUL on the iMac. So I downloaded and tried the latest Mozilla recommended by some. Mozilla ran no better than Safari. So for now the iMac's still stuck with the ancient MS Explorer 5.2, which is very sluggish running kids' games on the web-- when it runs them at all. Crashes are frequent.
There's also web incompatibilities. LOTS of online kid games these days require a PC. And even where they claim to run on Macs too, they often still run better on PCs (i.e., faster, fewer crashes, fewer hassles). I say this after many, many months of seeing modern PCs and Macs side-by-side on the net, with kids at the helm.
For plain old research and news reading on the web (such as adults, rather than kids, are more likely to do), the iMac and MS Explorer seem to do OK-- but keep in mind the extra hassle of saving news items to your hard disk in MS Explorer on OS X, as compared to MS Explorer on a Windows PC.
To muddy the waters a bit, also recall that Macs aren't usually targeted by viruses and hackers as often as Windows PCs. So the same things which restrict your web browsing on Macs also protects you somewhat from various threats out there.
OS X apparently requires TONS of processing power to turn over at all. I tried to install Bugdom 2 on this iMac and it ran so slowly it could only be used as a torture device, literally. Bugdom 2 DOES run OK on the G4 though.
NEW IBOOK NOTE: At the moment I have nowhere else to post this, so I'll do it here. My sister bought a brand new Apple iBook maybe a month or two ago, and within weeks it was stone cold dead. The main cause seems to have been my sister leaving it on for a week straight without shutting it down. And no, it wasn't running on battery power: it was plugged into a wall outlet. Why no shut down for a week? My sister has a life. A full-time job and husband and dog. Plus that week she was visiting one of our little nephews who was in the hospital for a life-threatening illness. She took the iBook back to the dealer and they said they'd have to ship it all the way back to the Apple mothership, as they couldn't figure out what the heck was wrong with it. So far as I know today my sister has been without her iBook for weeks now. And no idea what the repair's going to cost her. Did I try to urge her to go PC instead prior to purchase? Yes. END NOTE.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
3-17-04: The iMac replaces our G4 PowerMacOne OS X annoyance noticed on the iMac: preferences for display geometry aren't remembered on the iMac. This means the only way we can use the full available display space on the iMac's monitor screen is to painstakingly re-do the geometry settings after every boot up. Bummer!
On the upside though, the iMac hasn't yet crashed a single time I know of since upgrading to OS X. Granted, it hasn't really had a significant workout yet, but in OS 8 and 9 we probably would have already had at least one crash by this point.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
3-11-04: The iMac gets its PRAM battery replacedI've been inside this machine before, but gosh if I didn't have to refer to a PDF manual on Apple's web site to go in again. The URL at time of writing is "http://manuals.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Manuals/imac/0331208IMACII.PDF", to save you 30 minutes of randomly checking the entire spectrum of different iMac manuals there, as I had to.
Of course, if you still have the hard copy manuals that came with the iMac when new, I believe those too show this stuff (I don't know where ours are).
Some other sites relating to all this I checked out included:
Macintosh Family Batteries and Part Numbers, Part 2 ["http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86181&sessionID=anonymous|11933027&kbhost=kbase.info.apple.com%3a80%2f"]
SAFT 3.65v Lithium Battery LS14250 LS 14250 BAT-2060 ["http://www.welovemacs.com/bat-2060.html"]
Apple Macintosh Desktop PRAM Batteries ["http://www.resource800.com/en-us/dept_27.html"]
Apple Desktop Systems ["http://www.resource800.com/appledesk.html"]
Need a battery Get one FAST from Epower2go! ["http://www.epower2go.biz/en-us/front.html"]
Other World Computing- Item Info ["http://eshop.macsales.com/Item_Specials.cfm?ID=2524&Item=OWCMAC36V"]
Resources For The Older Macintosh ["http://w3.trib.com/~dwood/oldmac.shtml"]
pidRus - Pram Batteries ["http://www.pidrus.com/batteries.html"]
APPLE SERVICE MANUALS ["http://home.wanadoo.nl/manual.man/manuals.html"], Apple Manuals ["http://w3.trib.com/~dwood/mirror.html"], and The Apple Macintosh Service Manual Center ["http://www.macmothership.com/maccontent/service.html"] didn't work due to broken links on Apple's end-- but the pages do offer an idea of the info once available in the world for older Apple computers, but possibly available no longer (from legal sources, anyway).
As discussed on my Q650 page I've had an epiphany about Mac PRAM batteries. It appears that despite all the confusing info on Apple's own site and elsewhere on the internet, there may truly only be two or three different batteries that fit virtually any Mac ever made. I've personally replaced PRAM batteries in a half-dozen wildly different generation Macs over the years (Performa 400 through PowerMac G4), and it seems they were all virtually the same lithium 3.6 volt 1/2 AA battery except for one weird black Frankenstein brick of a thing which went into a Performa 6400.
At least that's how the reality turned out despite getting instructions from all over the place that implied virtually every Mac model ever made required a different type of battery altogether. I guess this is yet another example of American corporations 'gaming' consumers in order to keep us as ignorant and confused as possible, and therefore prime for milking to the max, money-wise.
Anyway, I put a good-sized fairly flat bed pillow on a desk and laid the iMac face-down on it. Then unscrewed the single screw that holds on a curved section of the case's plastic bottom. Next I lifted the section up and away from the computer to expose the innards (there's a built-in handle just for this).
Hopefully after this point you have a grounding strap to wear to draw static electricity off your body, and protect the electronics from same. But whether you do or not, before proceeding further you need to touch exposed metal surfaces in the computer to equalize charges between yourself and it. And keep touching such surfaces all throughout the battery replacement process.
There's several different cables that must be disconnected and moved out of the way at this stage. Three, if memory serves. The reason is that the next step leads to pulling the whole core of the computer up and out of the case like a vertically moving drawer-- and these cables are in the way. You'll need a clear space like a table top close by on which to lay the drawer once it's out of the iMac case.
The cable attached at the highest point has a plastic clip you're supposed to depress for release at the same time you pull the connector loose. I personally used the tiny pair of vise grip pliers I maintain in my pocket tool kit for this (refer to this page to see more about my pocket tool kit, and tool recommendations in general)
Once the cables are dealt with, you remove two screws in the narrow finger handle you'll find at the top of the 'vertical drawer' apparatus. These screws basically hold the drawer in place during normal computer usage. I call it a finger handle because it only provides room for fingertips to pull on it.
CAVEAT: These two screws in the drawer fingertip handle can be pretty annoying. Their heads don't seem to be proper Phillips screwdriver heads, and so prone to damaging slipping. Plus, they're located in a narrow area which makes it difficult to procure them finger-wise after you've got them completely out of their holes. To get mine out I used a miniature mechanical claw on a couple foot long flexible stalk that I keep in my tool box. I've only used this claw to good effect maybe a half dozen times in 30 years, but retreiving these two particular iMac screws is definitely one of them. For there's lots of bad places for these screws to fall in the case if you can't get them out as needed. The narrow gap where these screws live also makes it hard to get them started into their holes again during replacement-- thereby adding to the potential for stripped threads or screws falling into the case. It may be that a pair of tweezers or needle-nose pliers might also do the job of retreiving these screws from their narrow channel as needed. END CAVEAT
SECOND CAVEAT: Before pulling the drawer out, closely examine how it fits into the case. How big the gaps are around the edges, and what parts are actually inside the case and which are not. This will come in handy later when you're replacing it. END SECOND CAVEAT
After you have the drawer out and on a table top, you can use a small flat screwdriver to work loose the tabs holding the top of the little box-like battery enclosure you'll see inside the drawer. Remember to keep touching the metal parts to equalize charge between yourself and the components as you work. And watch out that the screwdriver doesn't damage any of the circuitry.
BEFORE YOU REMOVE THE BATTERY TAKE CAREFUL NOTE WHICH DIRECTION THE POSITIVE END IS FACING IN ITS ENCLOSURE. WRITE IT DOWN OR DRAW A ROUGH SKETCH BEFORE PROCEEDING FURTHER.
The above is important since putting the new battery in the wrong way could cause an explosion(!)
Replace the battery, and then the top of its enclosure. Make sure it's snapped in all the way (for some reason one side of mine stubbornly refused to return to its original state for a moment or two, so I had to fiddle with it some).
Now you go through the reverse process in all this. You may have some trouble getting the drawer slid back in correctly. Just be gentle, and take your time figuring it out. When it's properly inserted, it'll feel that way-- plus, the two screw holes in the fingertip handle will be lined up with the case holes behind them. If you carefully looked all this over earlier as suggested, you'll be glad of it now.
Once you're positive the drawer is in the correct position inside the case, you may need to give it a slightly stronger final nudge to put it in place, and get the screw holes to line up. This may be related to the need for the CD drive shelf face to fit roughly flush with the front of the case. The shelf face is a part of the drawer, and so shows through the slot in the front of your Mac after all is said and done.
Re-connect and place all the cables took loose before. Replace the screws in the fingertip handle.
YIKES! At this point in my own stint I dropped one of those tough-to-deal-with drawer finger tip handle screws RIGHT BACK INTO THE CASE BELOW.
So I had to disassemble it all again (including pulling out the drawer) to fish it out. Darn it!
The curved outer shell of the case, held in place by a single screw, may also give you a bit of trouble to get fitting correctly again. Luckily the shell is somewhat flexible, so you can man-handle it a little to get it to go where it should. There's several little tabs that must correctly go into the rest of the case for reattachment. Take your time with it. Needing two or more tries to get it right would be absolutely normal, as you might not notice one or two tabs not being where they should be, right away.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
3-6-04: A long overdue update on the iMac; An OS overhaul back to the beginning OS 8.6, then upping to 9, then XIf I recall correctly I did have 9 on the iMac for some time, but out of sheer exasperation formatted the hard drive and put everything back the way it was when new. For the crashes and constant restarting just got to me. After the failed attempt to go straight from the factory 8.6 to X, I put the iMac in storage (it was utterly useless in its current state), and went on with my life for months afterwards. I simply didn't have the time to spend on salvaging the machine, plus I was now using a Windows PC for everything which mattered.
Fast forward to today. There's a substantial changing of the computer guard going on at WebFLUX Central, which could really use this iMac, if I could get it to run.
The major computer changes are coming partly due to me attempting to start up a whole new business for the first time in years.
This caused me to bring both the iMac and Compaq 5151 out of mothballs for the first time in months. I was trying to locate and retrieve an archive of my novel-related files which I'd done my best to burn to CD on the iMac DV in a form accessible to PCs years ago. Turned out somehow I hadn't moved copies of those files to the HP PC. Nor were there copies on the 5151. I located the CD that housed them, but neither of my PCs and their software could open the files. YIKES! As the CDs had been burned on a Mac, I brought out the 8.6 iMac, and opened the files in AppleWorks. After that I had to perform lots of trial and error to get the files saved in a format that I could put on a DOS formatted ZIP disk and open on my HP PC. MS Works and its many, many translators never could open any type of file I gave them. Plus, Appleworks for some reason couldn't save the files in HTML format. Fortunately however, saving them on the Mac first in the existing Appleworks format (the files were an older Appleworks/Clarisworks format originally), then saving them again in plain text format, using the DOS ZIP to transfer to the PC, and opening them with HTML-Kit, did the trick. After that I could throw them into MS Works too, via copy/paste, etc.
YIKES! I came close to losing access to my digital copies of my novel files!
And yes, these files were relevant to the new business startup.
Anyway, the 8.6 iMac was naked as the day it was born OS-wise, when I reawakened it from its long sleep for all this. That is, it no longer had ZIP drivers which would allow me to make DOS disks, so far as I could tell. I tried using an old disk of ZIP tools to fix the problem but the disk seemed corrupted or the software simply too old. So I plugged the LAN into the iMac. Thankfully, 8.6 saw the connection immediately, so no extra config was necessary. But the version of Internet Explorer on the iMac was 4.5, and crashed the whole machine upon loading the second web page in my quest.
I'm extremely rusty in dealing with Mac quirks. But I managed to recall that I needed to locate the true icon for the browser application on the Mac (BEFORE opening the program), click it once to select it, then do a Get Info on it, and change both allowed memory amounts to something several times bigger than the default. Keep in mind the Preferred should be several times bigger than the minimal setting next to it.
This did the trick. This time I managed to get to the Iomega site and download the drivers, and install them. But I still had problems formatting a DOS ZIP disk, as the option didn't appear as I was accustomed to it doing before, upon trying to erase a selected ZIP disk on the desktop. Turned out I had to dig down in the folders relating to the ZIP applications and explore before I finally found the option.
And that's how I finally made a DOS disk to transfer my files from the Mac to my PC.
As documented months before, this iMac has a dead PRAM battery, which means you have to reset the date and time everytime you crank it up. Later Mac operating systems like X also seem more fragile in relation to dead PRAM batteries than earlier systems (compare the G4 log to others).
I also had a brand new PRAM battery still in its blister pack from many years ago, when I thought it wise to buy an extra when both Scotty and I had to replace the batteries in our respective Macs. Now I know that there's practically a different type battery for every different Mac model ever made, and so it's foolish to ever buy an extra-- you might as well just strike a match to that money instead. Since buying that extra PRAM battery I believe I've attempted to use it to fix three different Mac models-- and it wasn't fit for any of them. The third strike out, turned out, was this iMac.
I dug out the pristine shrink wrapped battery to see its specs, looked up the battery info on the web, and viola! Missed again. I'd also intended to inspect the battery inside the iMac itself for comparison, but lord that's an involved mess getting in there. I'd actually forgotten how to open up the iMac case, despite having installed memory in this machine years ago. I couldn't find the iMac's docs here, so went to Apple's site, where it took me 30 minutes to find the proper manual pdf, as they don't differentiate between models in the titles. I got so far as taking off the outer plastic layer held by one screw, then looked ahead in the manual and decided it best not to do this unless I had a new battery ready to install. So I looked up the battery info, found that I didn't have one, and replaced the cover.
Oh well. Try upgrading the OS now, and buying a battery later. After all, if X won't run on this thing there's no need to buy a battery anyway. As it's simply too unstable in 8 or 9 to be worthwhile.
I cleaned the iMac's mouse ball before going any further, as the pointer refusing to cooperate with the mouse was driving me nuts.
The OS X 10.1 install went OK, until completion, at which time a software update mechanism prompted me to make a manual software update, redirecting me to the Apple site for more info. 'More info' confused the hell out of me, as I was redirected to yet another page of gibberish. But the basic message was by upgrading to 10.2 I could avoid this mess. So I pulled out the 10.2 CD and spun her up.
By the way, I made sure NOT to enter a password when X tried to make me do so. This iMac is intended for kids, at the moment. And even if it was for me, I'd prefer NOT having to enter a password every time I started up. Yeah, yeah, I know, office environments and certain others practically MUST have passwords. But WebFLUX Central is not an office complex. Rarely are anyone but family or close friends allowed in the door, and far fewer than that actually get to use the computers under the vast majority of circumstances. We also have a firewall between us and the internet, and the computers are usually shut down when not in use. So here passwords tend to be more of a nuisance than anything else.
My brief stint in 10.1 seemed to indicate the iMac would run at least a couple minutes in X without crashing. I did see evidence of a significant slow down in iMac performance though. So that's another possible Gotcha! here-- if the 333 MHz PPC chip is simply too slow to drive X in a reasonable fashion.
Apparently it takes Apple's installation program(s) around 30 minutes to install X 10.1 atop OS 9, and 2-3 hours to install 10.2 atop 10.1. Don't ask me why folks: I haven't a clue.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
1-1-03: The iMac goes to the kids, and makes the G4 look bad by comparisonThe iMac is now set up right next to the G4. Both are on the Ethernet LAN. This proximity has brought forth some surprising realizations.
For one, there's very little functional difference playing web-games on the two machines, like those available at cartoonnetwork.com or the legos bionicle sites. Despite the vast differences in hardware specs. Except for two things: the old OS 9.x iMac crashes only about one half to one third as often as the much newer, much more expensive G4, running Mac OS X(!) And the iMac boots/restarts considerably faster too.
For a couple days I thought the iMac was crashing/freezing up just as often as the G4, but it really wasn't. Remember that weird aftermarket mouse this iMac uses? The USB Logitech MouseMan Wheel? Well, this thing has a 'thumb' button on it that causes the main mouse button to stop working if you accidentally click the thumb-pad (which is way too easy to do). Since I hadn't fooled with it in a while I'd forgotten about this annoyance, and so when the main button stopped working due to a kid accidentally pressing the thumb contraption, I thought the iMac was froze up and restarted it. I did notice though that the iMac seemed much easier to restart under those circumstances than it should have. I finally realized what was happening, and explained to the kids that clicking the thumb button a second time would re-activate the main button, and all would be well. After that is when I noticed the large crash frequency discrepancy between the two macs.
So how did I prep the iMac for its new role? I took all my desktop junk and hid it in a folder on the hard drive to give the kids fewer things to mess with on-screen (and protect my files). I downloaded and installed the latest Internet Explorer for Mac OS 9.x (5.1 I believe). Then I also downloaded and installed the latest Flash and Shockwave software, which both undergird most web games these days. That was it. I have NOT re-installed the OS or reset the PRAM or even rebuilt the desktop. Another thing I did NOT do was bring the USB hub, ZIP drive, and printer along with the iMac to the kiddie desk, as these items were unneeded and would only face risk of damage and add to the unreliability of the machine under the circumstances.
One weird thing is the time and date seem to be working on the iMac again. So is the PRAM battery dead or not? It's unclear. Just prior to being added to the kiddie roster the iMac spent maybe a week totally disconnected from all power and peripherals. So did that clear up some weird PRAM glitch or something? I don't know. Modern Macs are strange beasts indeed.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
11-12-02: A fork in the road coming for the iMacFortunately this isn't a big hassle because I'm only booting up the iMac maybe once a month now. Why? To retrieve the last few files I find I need during web site editing. I've switched to the Compaq Presario 5151 running Windows98 for site editing now. I'll provide more info on this over time in the Compaq log.
So what's going to become of the iMac? Well, it has to stick around a while longer for me to make sure I've gotten everything I need off it. I also have lots of files in archives on CD that may sometimes require a Mac to check out. I've still got my Q650 that I mainly use for that (HyperCard stacks won't run exactly right in newer Mac OSes like that of the iMac), but the PRAM battery has gone dead in it too, and that entire system is getting pretty ancient and prone to hardware failure itself.
At the moment I'm considering two different ultimate fates for the iMac: One, trade it for the Performa 6400 (if allowed). That way I could hopefully replace both the iMac and the Q650 with a decent PowerPC Mac capable of running OS 7.5.3 and a decent old version of ClarisWorks (the old Mac stuff seems to work much better than the newer). Lately I've found myself especially pressed graphics-wise, since there seems no free or low cost, easy-to-use combo drawing and painting application for Windows to compare with something like an old ClarisWorks 4.0. YIKES!
The other option is to someday put OS X on the iMac and see what happens.
Neither of these options are wonderfully appealing, for lots of reasons. For one thing, I'd have to replace the PRAM battery before either. The continued aging of the Q650 is pressing me on this, as I'd need a working HyperCard platform to run the old Pathfinder if I decided to try porting it to the web. I also need a graphics program. But I'm really time-pressed right now and don't know when I could get to doing either a port or graphics work, even if all the hardware/software was in place. Tsk tsk.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
5-24-02: Turns out the network problem was in the routerApple iMac User's Log Contents
5-20-02: My iMac loses still more capability for no apparent reasonKeep in mind I never install new software or hardware on this machine. Never change preferences. Pretty much never change anything on it. I never even try printing. I also do recommended Mac maintenance like resetting the PRAM and rebuilding the desktop pretty regularly.
Of course, I admit I did recently crank up PhotoDeluxe and a couple other graphics apps that had been on the disk for years, trying to find something that might let me make a picture with the computer. That's about the only thing different I've done since the last time I tried to go online with this iMac.
I took the new OS X G4 offline too, just in case, to rule it out as a trouble source. Seemed to have no effect on the iMac problem.
My Apple Profiler says my Ethernet port is operational. But neither Internet Explorer or AOL can seem to see it. I checked my TCP/IP control panel, could see nothing wrong there. Just to be sure I did try a different config there, but no go. I turned off AppleTalk in case that was a problem-- but it had no effect either.
I went into my Extensions Manager to check things out and got the message that the selected set of extensions did not match the contents of the system folder. This was interesting, as I've not personally changed anything in there via the EM (or manually) for ages. The Mac's changing stuff itself, it seems.
The EM asked me if I wanted to revert to the selected set of extensions or make a new set based on the configuration found at the moment. Since the present config sure wasn't working, I told it to revert to what it thought I'd selected months ago.
That didn't help either. I looked at the different sets of extensions. I've got a dozen or more in there. Can't recall diddly about them. I named them all differently when I made them, but I really should have named them by date created/modified. It'd be handy if the Mac OS offered some sort of 'by date' reference itself for these things, but of course the Mac OS hasn't done anything handy in years and years now.
I did my best to pick a couple different EM sets that might fix the problem (looked at what was different from my present set in terms of enabled/disabled), tried those-- also to no effect.
I stuck in the Apple Hardware Test disk that came with our G4, and the read me proudly told me Apple had worked long and hard to insure that the program would not work with any other computer ever made in history except the G4 it came bundled with.
When AOL fails to connect it says 'Connection Failure could not access network hardware or software'.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
4-27-02: I look forward to the day I can retire this iMacBy contrast, my HP PC hums like a top. Even running Windows ME, which lots of PC geeks consider unstable itself (guess they have no experience with Macs).
For a long time I figured I'd eventually upgrade this iMac to OS X to solve its problems, but now that looks increasingly unlikely. Because we've now got perhaps the most expensive Mac G4 available at time of purchase running the latest factory-installed OS X, and nothing but the apps Apple itself provides for it (like iDVD etc.), and the thing freezes up about as regularly as this crappy old OS 9 iMac of mine(!)
So just imagine how it'll run when we actually install some third party software/hardware on it! The pain, boss! The pain!
How in the world is Apple staying in business?
OS X is also pretty slow, even on the top-of-the-line G4. So I guess it'd be like molasses on this puny 333 MHz G3 iMac. I've seen complaints on the web that Apple isn't optimizing the X graphics drivers for old iMacs like mine. So maybe even molasses speed would be an optimistic estimate. DOH!
So I guess there'll be no upgrade path for this iMac. Its replacement will either be a new or used Windows PC, or a Linux PC.
Normally we pass older phased out computers here to other family members, etc. But modern Macs run so badly I'm not sure you're doing folks a favor even giving them one for free. The substantial sums of money tied up in the things also make it a harder decision what to do with them. It's sort of like you've got this really expensive lemon luxury car that frequently breaks down on you, but there's no way you can get your money out of it, or even trade it in on a replacement. What do you do?
Another factor is the high maintenance required to keep it running. If I pass it to a family member living 30-90 minutes away one way, I'm guaranteeing myself a regular and annoying trip to fix the thing, or else it'll be relegated permanently to a closet somewhere when it quits two weeks after I drop it off.
Perhaps the best thing I can do with it is set it up like our iMac DV is now-- as primarily just a kid machine, for playing web and CD games, here at WebFLUX Central. It'll still crash and freeze up a lot (the DV does in that role), but I'll be around to fix it, and the kids won't (usually) be nearly as distressed by the interruptions as an adult would be. Maintenance and repair schedules will offer more slack than they do now. And there won't be as much valuable data/files at risk either-- or as much software to re-install after a disaster.
I'll likely replace this thing pretty soon-- the main hold ups will be researching the decision between going Windows or Linux in the replacement, shopping for the replacement, and getting the spare time to do both.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
2-24-02: Rebuild those desktops frequently if you create lots of new files or transfer lots of files to your Mac on a regular basisThis also makes me recall the trick of trashing Finder preferences to fix weird Mac problems in the Good Old Days. Unfortunately, it seems that trashing preferences doesn't fix things as often in newer Mac OS versions as it did previous ones. That's likely one reason it slipped my mind to try it during some of the worst trouble-shooting sessions of the past couple years.
The desktop rebuilding solution to start up crashes may be a particular problem on my iMac compared to others because of my usage pattern. Namely, I collect up maybe 500-2500 files at once on a PC, then transfer them via ZIP disk in a drag and drop to a research folder nested several deep on my iMac hard drive. Lately I've discovered I better not try this with more than 1200 or so files at once, or my iMac goes screwy on me.
I also create lots of new file versions during web site editing, as part of my manual backup process. Xnet.3html, xnet.4html, xnet.5html, etc., etc. It's most covenient to keep all these versions (and all the different files of my site) in the same folder under most instances, which results in that folder bulging with 1000-2000 different files (including various versions of same), much of the time.
So maybe these are the circumstances precipitating my bootup crashes. Frequent desktop rebuilding seems to help though.
Folks, it sure is getting to be a pain to perform all the maintenance tasks and lengthy restarts required in Mac OS. It's true that I can't compare it to equivalent PC experiences yet, but I'm getting closer all the time to that ability, as I move more and more of my workload to my PC and off the Mac. As Apple computers continue to not only remain more expensive than equivalent hardware PCs, but actually widen the gap in price too, I can't imagine what Apple could possibly do to get me to ever buy a new Mac again (and I do have some imagination to speak of). The nearest thing to that I can see is Apple maybe resurrecting HyperCard again. I truly loved that software, and that was why I bought my first Mac, period. I still use HyperCard to solve particular problems today, and maintain an old Mac Quadra 650 almost exclusively to run HyperCard wares.
But Jobs has pretty much run Apple into the ground, with a market share only a fraction that of Apple's glory days and apparently still shrinking every year, and major problems and limitations afflict both OS 9 and OS X, so that even if Apple revealed a perfect new update of HyperCard I'd have big qualms about heavily investing in the platform again. Hmmm. Now, maybe if Apple made the mainstream and regularly improved Linux source the underlying code for OS X too, that'd be enough to bring me back. That might also help greatly increase Mac OS X's native software library, and allow some real desktop competition against Microsoft in the marketplace too, for the first time in many years. Making OS X available on PC hardware, and thereby allowing for reasonably priced Macs would help tremendously too.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
2-17-02: iMac changes and statusI do all my web surfing exclusively on my PC, collecting up research info. I then transfer these files via ZIP to the iMac for poring over at lesiure.
I regained my AOL access on my iMac, via a Bring Your Own Access account at AOL, whereby I don't dial in, but simply log into AOL over my broadband connection. I do NOT keep the iMac regularly connected to the net, but rather about twice a year move the PC's Ethernet cable over to the iMac for an hour or so to do some maintenance on my AOL-based web site. I regularly access my AOL email via the web on the PC.
NOTE: I make sure both the Mac and PC are shut down when I transfer the Ethernet cables. I don't know if I could fry the Ethernet connections if powered up during such changeovers, but I definitely don't want to confuse my router. And the instructions accompanying two new Sony VAIO PCs I bought specifically stated that accidentally plugging a modem connector into an Ethernet port could fry the port(!) This can be especially easy to do on certain models of iMac like mine-- both I and Scotty, both pretty tremendously experienced with computers in general, have come close to commiting this error on an iMac. Plus, Roger says he sees Ethernet cards go bad frequently for no clear reason. Why give them an unnecesssary extra reason, like changing Ethernet connections while powered up? And if your iMac's Ethernet port got fried, that's a motherboard component I reckon (unlike the usual case for a PC)-- YIKES! END NOTE.
Note that I could buy an Ethernet hub or take other measures to avoid the physical connection switching between the iMac and PC-- and may actually do this at some point. But I have little desire or need for the iMac to be continuously online, and I so rarely do the switch it's not that big of a hassle so far.
I may drop my AOL account soon, as AOL is raising the price too much for what little service they provide me. I've already created a new free email account at Yahoo.com to replace my AOL email's functionality on the road.
I seem to have discovered a new glitch in Mac OS 9.x regarding the numbers of files it can deal with at one time, especially when those files are being copied from a folder on a PC formatted disk. If you get up into the 1500-2500 file range the iMac will lock up, guaranteed, it seems. I'm working from memory here, since after the first several times I started trying to consciously avoid transferring so many files at once, although reducing the file number is a pretty big inconvenience for me. But I can't take the solid day or two of trying to fix the desktop corruption that follows such freeze ups.
Back in the Good Old Days, Macs got through large file number transfers with ease. Sigh.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
12-30-2000: (Somewhat) happy days are here again...It's now run literally for several months with no serious problems. My productivity is up (six times faster for some things), and my convenience level is up too, with Sherlock content searches of my research database. It's annoying to have to let Sherlock spend all night updating its index, and also a bit too difficult and inconvenient to set Sherlock to index only certain things on the drive-- but I can live with it I guess.
For the first time in years I'm allowing a computer's energy saver software to turn off the display after 10 minutes of inactivity or so. Previously this seemed to cause so many problems I'd never allow it.
Note that we've run a new phone line into my office which allows me to max out the iMac modem at around 50k now too-- so no longer is it restricted to 33.6k. (luckily I still had my notes from before for inputting the original high speed prefix). It looks like we're going to try to go broadband soon-- I'm working on installing an Ethernet LAN to share a cable modem.
Yeah, I still freeze up occasionally on the web. I lost my access to AOL on the iMac because it won't allow me to maintain two different net accounts (I mainly use Earthlink now)-- so I must use a PC for AOL. The iMac still freezes up randomly upon boot up maybe every 18th-30th time I turn it on (no, I have no idea why).
My main software specs are Mac OS 9.0.4, MSIE 5.0, MS Outlook Express 5.02, PageSpinner 2.1, and Earthlink ISP. I occasionally use AppleWorks 5, Simpletext, and Sherlock too. Java is enabled in MSIE prefs. This too is relatively new for me. In previous Mac OS and MSIE versions leaving Java enabled was just asking for frequent crashes and molasses-slow surfing. I know for a fact it still crashes me occasionally, but it's fairly rare, and also isn't nearly the speed hit it once was.
Note that I've also adjusted the memory settings on my apps as necessary, and enjoy 160 MB of physical RAM to play in. I have my virtual memory set to 512 MB. This leaves me roughly 2 GB free on my 6 GB hard disk (there's quite a bit of old software and files still left from the previous owner, that I'll wait as long as possible to erase, just in case they need it; I also have a considerable amount of text files on disk from my research efforts and web authoring duties, much of which was transferred from my Q650).
In the hardware department I regularly use an Iomega USB ZIP drive, Logitech mouse, and entrega USB hub4U. I almost never use anything else, in hardware or software. I also never ever play games, rarely view video clips or play streaming radio, and often go for years without installing new apps or peripherals onto my personal machines.
I use the Extensions Manager to disable absolutely every extra extension I can. For example, I have an Epson printer installed, but normally keep all its related extensions disabled, as I'll only rarely be using it.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
10-31-2000: One of my site visitors asks if I'm a happier Mac user these days than before, and how I feel towards Apple and Steve Jobs todayBelow follows my (slightly edited) reply to him:
Hi Michael!
I've finally been having somewhat better luck the last couple weeks with my own iMac, though it required several months worth of research, tweaking, and experimentation to accomplish it.
Some other happy notes include me finally finding a few subtle new features in the newer OSs to like, plus my iMac being 5-6 times faster on many routine tasks than my OS 7.5.5 Q650.
I also finally got the chance (and time) to try out Sherlock for local disk content searches (I don't like it for net searches so far), and got yet another speed up in lots of my research jobs. Unfortunately, it can't do incremental updates of the database and so requires a full 6-7 hours to index my research folder every time. In one bizarre case it wanted 30 hours to do an update-- and this was after it had already been working on it for 2-3 hours! But so far that seems to have been an anomaly.
I've not yet had the chance to update my logs about all this-- plus, two weeks of happiness is a pretty short thing compared to years of misery-- so I hesitate to log such stuff until it manages to last a bit longer than that.
Upgrading to 9.0.4 from 8.6 and switching to Earthlink from AOL seemed to help my iMac most, though it still crashes online occasionally and hangs on boot up for no discernable reason about once every 24-36 boots or restarts (previously it was every 6!). Plus, I didn't like losing ALL access to AOL in the switchover-- I intended to phase out that account over time, but I can't get the iMac/Remote Access/Extensions Manager to allow me to switch between the ISPs at all (and there is NO Airport on this Mac to complicate such matters). So I continue to use AOL on a PC we have here instead.
Our iMac DV is heavily fraught with problems though. Admittedly, the DV's problems are strongly related to its owner being a Mac enthusiast with money to burn, and trying all sorts of installs on the DV-- plus kids between 2 and 12 use it frequently for their own programs. But heck, isn't that likely the profile of half of all the Macs in use today? It should run better than it does, in my opinion. I have to spend way too much time fixing stuff on it. I believe we've had to restore its hard disk and re-install a huge mass of after-market stuff twice already. Plus, the DV's display has at least once showed a worrisome wiggle problem that I'm afraid may be due to overheating (it has no fan).
And talk about SLOWWWW...OS 9 is super slow to boot. 8.6 was much faster. Add Firewire and DVD to OS 9 (like on an iMac DV), and you get one of the slowest booting machines I've seen in years.
And don't get me started on USB. That's been maybe the biggest source of problems we've had here with our newer Macs. Practically every USB peripheral you get demands that no hub be used-- which is CRAZY! You gotta have a hub! And the glitches....I never in my life had so many problems with SCSI peripherals, AppleTalk networks, etc., as I do with Mac USB today. Sure, you can hot plug/disconnect without frying your stuff-- but that's the only advantage. And your Mac usually crashes/freezes when you do it.
And yeah, in theory you can add lots more USB peripherals than SCSI-- but in practice I bet few people ever manage to get it to work (more than 7 or so USB peripherals permanently attached and functional (not counting hubs)). And remember that SCSI is a fast bus like FireWire, rather than slow-- much faster than USB.
But there is one good thing I can say about the iMac DV: its butt panel for adding RAM and Airport is pretty neat. I had to take my own older iMac completely apart to put RAM in it. Not so the DV.
But Airport (on the DV and a Powerbook) is enough to drive folks absolutely nuts. As of this moment it's not working, and we don't know why. One of the reasons we switched from AOL to Earthlink was because the Airport instructions said it couldn't work with the biggest ISP on the planet (AOL), but it would with others. And since Earthlink is Apple's annointed ISP, we went with them. But even the Earthlink install was a no-go due to an installer bug that demanded our phone number but wouldn't allow us to enter it in any humanly possible format (!). Being an Old Computer Geezer I finally got around that to get us online, but I didn't enjoy it (the glitch happened on BOTH the DV and Powerbook).
Plus, even when Airport does work, it requires so many steps switching between net configurations to use it (between an ISP and a plain computer to computer link for file copying) that the user has to have a NASA-style checklist, being unable to remember the process unless they do it every day. And the process often forces you to add in new passwords at spots you don't want and don't need, too. Maintaining zillions of passwords is a supreme hassle just to be able to get around having no floppy disk to transfer files....another fine Steve Jobs innovation.
Michael, I've been a network administrator for a decent sized company before, designing, building, and running internal computer networks incorporating over a hundred individual computer nodes inhouse, and remote links to others, plus wrote the manual/created the kit and gave tech support for 13 counties of Mac users in Tennessee back in the geeky days of internet connection, and all that never caused me as much trouble as running Airport on just two machines.
Could it be I'm just getting older and dumber and less patient? Maybe. But who isn't getting older?
****************** One of my biggest complaints about Steve Michael is that he doesn't use Macs for his own personal machines. At least this was true in the last mention I ever saw of what he used-- a PC laptop. If Steve used Macs as much as we do, I believe many of the present problems would get fixed. ******************
Don't get me wrong-- I hate Windows PCs. But Macs have caused me so many problems the last several years that I'm almost as close to a platform agnostic as you can get and not be 100%. I wish something decent would come along to replace BOTH the Mac and PC.
I hate living in the Stone Age of computing. I've personally been in it since around 1975, and it seemed much more fun and wonderful 15-20 years ago than it does now.
But at least now we have the net (when we can get our computers to log on that is). Maybe the net will save us.
Michael, one thing that does help a Mac (or a PC) run better these days is to be dedicated to a single user rather than many, and if that user is conservative-- i.e., doesn't install new stuff willy-nilly on the system, but is discerning in what they add. It also helps if they do heavy research into an app or peripheral BEFORE buying it, so that they can avoid obvious lemons which might wreak havoc with their system. The iMac DV here is in almost the worst case scenario in that regard. The owner thinks they can just buy whatever looks good in packaging/promotion and try it out, like it was a new music CD to listen to or something. Computers don't work that way-- literally.
Sorry if my response focused primarily on personal experiences rather than the 'bigger picture' of Apple hardware/software strategies Michael-- but I've had so many Mac problems the past years that I had to withdraw from even considering the bigger picture any more-- I've been up to my ass in alligators!
However, I do think Apple made a terrible mistake letting HyperCard wither on the vine. HC was why I bought my first Mac, period. And now it's not even on life support apparently, so far as significant further development is concerned. I put tons of effort into learning HC only for Apple to relegate it to the basement. Super easy programming I believe will be a killer app at some point, and Apple clearly had the lead there in HC, but is just throwing it away.
I repeat, HC was the reason I got into Macs in the first place.
I have read some about OS X-- and it worries me. I don't like Steve changing the interface so radically. And I have no use whatsoever for the display gymnastics Steve thinks is cool. Will the gymnastics and PDF-in-everything make it too slow on G3 macs? I also read about a 128 MB RAM requirement, minimum? That sounds nothing like the wonderful NextStep OS Ten is supposed to be based on. What happened?
I don't see any quick switch to OS X for me. Heck, the only reason I upgraded to 9.0.4 from 8.6 was because I couldn't take the crashes and 20 minute restarts anymore. I was ready to nuke the thing.
And the reason I finally switched from my 7.5.5 Q650 to the 8.6 iMac for my main work platform was it appeared my biggest hard disk on the Quadra was flaking out on me. It sure wasn't because I thought the iMac was more attractive.
Michael, my cousin Edwin has 9.0.4 on an 8600 plus a cable modem, and virtually never installs anything but high end $500 apps like Adobe stuff (the highest quality, least buggy apps available for Macs). Plus, Edwin usually does his homework before buying new Mac stuff-- reading the reviews, etc, etc. He also keeps all his software and device drivers meticulously updated (which almost any geek will tell you is very important to optimizing your system).
Edwin's 8600 platform consists of older, well known hardware for which Apple software engineers should have learned everything they need to know years back in order to make it hum-- unlike the case with the everchanging iMac platform.
He's the sole user of his Mac too (he has a separate Mac for his wife and kids). He also backs up his data files religiously, and keeps careful track of his original CDs, manuals, and registration numbers in case of trouble.
He's almost the perfect Mac user, in terms of keeping his Mac in optimum condition.
He also swears all the time that his Mac never gives him any problems like we have here. Edwin's a bonafide Mac enthusiast, and will instantly leap to the Mac's defense if anyone says an unkind word about it.
Unfortunately for him, his mom is also a Mac user. And I turned her over to him for tech support years back, since he seemed to have all the answers.
Edwin's boast of supreme stability and problem-free operation gets big holes in it everytime his mom has problems. Because then he has to admit he's had similar problems, and then tell how he fixed them (or didn't). In case after case, it turns out he's had problems just like us, despite all his 'just right' circumstances. It's just that he won't admit them until he's backed into a corner.
Plus, at least once he had such a severe problem that he had to ask me for help-- despite his own considerable Mac experience and capabilities, and being himself a very accomplished electrical technician to boot. It's documented in my logs.
Well Michael, all the above is the best snapshot I can give you of my own present Mac situation and perspective. It's not pretty, but it's true.
I can only envy you your own hassle-free experience. And wish for you that it continues. If I had a Mac running that well I'd try to make sure to change absolutely nothing about its configuration, for as long as possible. I've personally went through and read every scrap of Apple technical papers and read mes, and through the MacFixit web site and forums, and others, collecting every tidbit I could find to make our Macs run better, and applied them, to get to this point. And they still aren't running nearly as well as yours. I also get email from other Mac users having problems like mine (or worse), who I try to help as I can.
Keep in mind that folks with the worst problems simply disappear online, because they can no longer log on.
-- JR
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
6-1-2000: The iMac Revison D covered in this iMac User's Log has joined my personal desktop computer club(Of course, there's lots more work also involved in configuring the Mac OS 8.6 iMac D so that it'll run more often than not-- but I'll get to that later)
Naturally, the peripherals of scanner, printer, modular tower Belkin BusStation USB hub, and old style-Mac serial and ADB ports in another Belkin USB serial adapter didn't accompany the used iMac to my desk, going instead to the new iMac DV-- but I did get the USB Iomega Zip and an Imation SuperDisk drive, Logitech Mouseman Wheel mouse, plus a basic entrega hub4U USB hub. And recall the iMac D had a 128 MB RAM upgrade too(!) So no complaints here!
Before getting this iMac windfall I was on the verge of buying something altogether different perhaps. Like a new or refurbed Windows98 PC to which I could attach my external Hewlett-Packard CD-RW drive. There was a USB Zip drive here at WebFLUX HQ I could borrow to convert all my old Zip backups/archives to a few CDs, with some effort (theoretically anyway). I would also have my choice of maybe half a dozen different free 56k internet access acounts on such a machine. Or maybe I'd have bought a cheap used PowerMac 8100, plus extra software, memory, and drives for it bought with the money saved on the system comparable to a newer machine.
My possible purchase was complicated by the increase in both PC and Mac prices over the past year, from what they were before. Earthquakes in Taiwan cut chip supplies for months, even as the net has been making consumer demand go through the roof for PCs as surfing stations, and booming cell phone sales also devoured many of the same chip supplies. The psychological rejuvenation of Apple by Steve Jobs has also pushed up used Mac prices considerably over the past two years, pretty much independent of the chip shortages.
Add to all the above the newer, more expensive technologies and higher capacities anyone should have in computers they intend to use for the next several years (CD-RW, lots of RAM, lots of hard drive space, USB, Ethernet, etc.), and you get some pretty expensive choices. And based on news I've seen over past months, this ramp up in PC prices may not lose much strength for another year or two.
Then there's the oodles of things looming just over the horizon in terms of practicality, versatility, and cost-effectiveness. DVD-RAM drives. Firewire. Firewire-comparable USB. Mega quantities of cheap RAM and hard disk space. Standardization on optical mice in bundling (imagine never having to clean a mouse again). Portable computers that really are portable. Giveaway PCs and set top boxes bundled with free net access. Windows2000. Mac OS X (if it turns out better than I expect). The list goes on.
After much consideration and research I'd reached the conclusion that there was little good reason to make a big investment in what new or nearly new hardware is available in mid-2000, either Mac or PC-- especially considering the temporary spike upwards in prices. So I was likely going to simply configure a decent PowerPC Mac from an older model, or get a reasonably equipped low cost new or refurbed PC, trying to stay well below $1000 for the whole shebang.
I also considered simply sticking with my old Quadra, plus buying a basic new or refurb Windows98 PC, and configuring my generic Pentium PC into a Linux machine. But there were problems with that plan. My workhorse Quadra's badly hurting for storage space and the cost to upgrade its SCSI drives looks ridiculous compared to PC wares or newer IDE-capable Macs. A PowerPC Mac also needs at least 32 MB RAM-- probably 64 MB or more-- and RAM for old Macs is outrageously expensive. Configuring Linux on the GenPC would apparently involve roughly the same commitment as the first year or so marriage (but without the fun parts), based on the scary stuff I found in my research regarding the matter. Free time is my most precious asset, and I cannot afford to give it all up for a year or more just in order to end up with a computer system that might do what I need. Windows98 is also still a pain in the file name and management department, compared to a Mac. I'm uncertain as to how much time I'd have to invest or lose just dealing with/learning how to work the Windows file system. Heck, I can hardly stand the short 31 character (or whatever) limit on filenames in the Mac OS right now-- how could I abide the five or eight character limit in Windows? (Yeah, I thought I read somewhere a year ago that Windows98 now allowed longer file names, but my recent experience with W98 PCs belies this. Maybe there's a setting you have to change or something-- I don't know).
So anyway, I've ended up with a deal on an iMac that no PC available to me could match. Yeah, I realize this is practically a miracle.
I've not yet had time to do a lot with it. But we discovered with the new iMac DV that it actually is possible to run near to 56k on the net for an hour or more at a time without disconnects, at WebFLUX Central. But to do it we had to install a new heavy duty phone line straight from the building's basement connection to the phone company to the iMac modem port. Since then we've installed a second direct line to my office too. And as of today the old iMac has stayed connected as long as three hours at a time at somewhere between 49k and 50k. It seems that anything around a hour or more means a pretty decent connection. With noisier lines our connection would typically last only 5 minutes, but sometimes as long as 20-30 minutes before spontaneously dis-connecting.
I'm again using a 15 MB RAM disk for the 14 MB browser cache to speed things up, but AOL always changes the preference to the hard disk when it's opened, so I have to manually reconfigure the cache settings in the browser everytime I go online (using AOL 3.0 with standalone MSIE 3.0 on a 7.5.3 Mac didn't require this manual resetting everytime you went online, to use the RAM disk with the browser, so far as I recall).
I downloaded and installed MSIE5 on the machine, and finally, after maybe a year, I have a Mac that can upload files to my web site again. Mac MSIE4.5 had bad problems in this area.
I've disabled every extension I dare on the iMac to try to increase its stability. So far I've only used it on the web, and even that only maybe a total of five or six hours so far (I've been incredibly busy the past month or two). But it seems to be doing pretty good so far. I also moved lots of fonts from the fonts folder inside the System folder to elsewhere, because the typing glitch reported previously had reappeared on this iMac in recent weeks-- likely from too many fonts added in new software installs. Unfortunately, after removing the fonts I got the jaggies in my text onscreen, and had to do much trial and error regarding fonts used in the MSIE5 browser too. I tried switching off then on again the Adobe Type Manager, to no avail. I had also NOT allowed the MSIE5 installer to install the new fonts it wanted at install time either, since this Mac already had a surplus fonts problem. As of this writing I have not yet solved the jaggies problem to my satisfaction, but the iMac is still usable-- and at least the typing glitch is gone again.
Hopefully I can strip the extensions and installed-applications-on-disk down to the bone, optimize memory and disk space, apply bug fixes as available, and just plain avoid certain actions to get things like the bundled AppleWorks 5 to work on the iMac. I know from experience that may be a daunting task. But I'm hopeful.
Even if I can't get the iMac to run anything else like AppleWorks or other non-web stuff acceptably, it'll still be worthwhile as a somewhat modern web client for my limited needs. I don't need Flash or Java or stuff like that, as my research mostly involves web text and very basic graphics.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
5-11-2000: I'm contemplating a new computer purchase......I may be buying a new computer soon-- when I get the time to do the research/comparison/shopping....
It's a tough decision what to do. I considered setting up a Linux PC but the config is still far too time-consuming for me, and the interface is also still in the DOS-age for the most part. But it may be the future-- plus its hardware requirements are quite modest for great performance.
(NOTE: Some Apple programmers abandoned Jobs to create an interface for Linux. Their company is called something like Eazy I think. Unfortunately, it could be years before their stuff is ready for prime time.)
The main two reasons I paid $thousands for a Mac in 1990 don't exist today-- far superior ease-of-use and a state-of-the-art HyperCard at least supported on all Macs. In 1990 MS only had Win3.1-- something like GEM windows from an Atari 520 ST. And HyperCard Players (or the full development environment!) came bundled free on all Macs, and HC was acclaimed everywhere for its cutting edge features. Yeah, the Mac cost $hundreds more than a PC then, but it was worth it. There was no easier platform to use OR program on, and many of the latest and greatest software apps came out first or ONLY on the Mac. Maybe once every several months my Mac would crash on me. It booted at least as fast as today's iMac-- maybe faster.
Now candy coated tints are considered more important at Apple than ease of use or programming or reliability or third party software development.
Pretty much of all I've seen and experienced of 8.0, 8.1, 8.6, and 9.0 has pained and annoyed me. The Mac interface slips further and further away from its Golden Age with every release. Mac OS X promises to be the final straw. Apple has let HyperCard wither away to a laughing stock-- while industry experts have pointed out HC was originally essentially a prototype world wide web that Apple let slip through its fingers.
Jobs has angrily denied that Apple has done this, as HC fans pressured the company. And yet it's official knowledge that Jobs killed the scheduled major HC upgrade and reassigned all the HC project programmers elsewhere-- even as Apple continues to milk the poor delapidated program in sales with no major updates in years and (at least for a time) discontinued the bundled HC Player support that used to exist on all Macs.
There's lots more regarding the downsides to Macs these days, but I'll stop there.
Of course, PCs are pretty awful too. So far as I can tell, they are roughly as bad as Macs now, except that they and many peripherals may be $hundreds cheaper than Mac equivalents, and there's a much greater array of options to choose from.
But the biggest significant difference may be the internet edge PCs possess over Macs as web clients. More web services cater to PCs than Macs-- many exclusively. Stuff that matters, like free net access for instance. Apple also can't or won't keep Macs updated with necessary web software like Java and other things, which means Macs are essentially cut off from many web sites now. Heck, WebTV's in a similar boat, but there's been times even WebTV would let me access a site that I couldn't on an iMac.
(Jobs seems to be letting QuickTime wither now too just like he did HC. QT seems to be losing marketshare at a rapid clip to MS and RealMedia)
Of course, since the Mac marketshare is so small, much fewer viruses appear for it than for Windows. But the same could be said for Be or Linux too. And PCs can be configured to be immune to the stuff as well, by savvy users. But someone like me might not even use the apps or services than make a PC vulnerable anyway (like MS Outlook). So the point may be moot in my case.
I'm really quite unhappy with all the available choices. It's very much like choosing a presidential candidate to select from among these computing choices (the lesser of various evils). You can make lists of cons about all the platforms that go on forever-- while the lists of pros for all would be quite short.
It's a truly sad conundrum.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
4-17-2000: The iMac log gets excerpted on Epinions.comI also posted Epinions.com - A Pain in the USB Port ["http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-131A-8958B01-37EBBE6C-prod1"] from this log too-- a review of the UMAX scanner described elsewhere in this log.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
3-23-2000: The steadily deteriorating nature of the MacUnfortunately, the reverse is what happened to me and many other long time Mac users, the past few years, in terms of computer power.
You see, some of us Old Geezers were on Macs during the Golden Age-- when PCs were still Etch-a-Sketches compared to the Mac-- and when all the best apps usually came out first on the Mac, and it was so damn easy to use it almost brought tears to your eyes.
And stability? It was so rare for the Mac to crash on you that you'd forget what a crash was like before you ever encountered the next one.
To be fair to Steve Jobs, the Mac industry, community, and platform had indeed begun to deteriorate substantially before he returned. And he did manage to build Apple's stock price back up by cancelling virtually all its R&D into future products and downsizing the company. Heck, for some reason some folks even thought putting motherboards in transparent cases was something special too ((?) I still don't get it myself).
Unfortunately, I used Macs in the Mac's Golden Age, and so notice everything about the current bad times on the platform. Jobs is really screwing up the OS. Things are getting harder to use and more unstable all the time, as of 8.6.
One example: ClarisWorks used to be a real workhorse of a program. The most stable program on the Mac. Extreme difficulty-of-use only in relatively deep and little used functions, like doing weird text wraps around graphics, or fooling around with the telecommunications application. Now, it's been renamed AppleWorks and crashes pretty much immediately after you open the program and click on a button. Like to save a file or whatever. DUH! Recently I wanted to create one very simple cartoony graphic for my web site, that would have taken only a few minutes on a 7.5.3 Performa 6400 with ClarisWorks a couple years back. But I made the mistake of starting out on an 8.6 iMac with AppleWorks. It took me all friggin' day to make that graphic, because the *&%$! Mac kept crashing on me and having to scan its disk to recover, over and over again. Yeah, this particular iMac has had a multitude of third party software installed on it since purchase, and yes, installing anything on a Mac or a PC these days seems to push the whole machine closer to death --- but technically owners are supposed to be able to install extra apps on their machines-- or why buy it in the first place? And, sadly, Windows98 seems to be much more robust in this area than Mac OS 8.6.
And worse yet, there's nowhere else to go. Mac OS 9? Are you kidding? I've been so horrified by 8.0 through 8.6, each version much worse than the last, that I shudder to even think of OS 9. And 10? OS X? Yeah, right. A total break with the real Mac OS. Totally new learning curve. Just what all us time-short folks need these days. The 90's NextStep OS, prettified but downgraded from its previous cross-platform and high end development environment status. Just another UNIX with a GUI. And practically zero native applications. Oh wow. Linux seems pretty much as attractive as OS X to me. The fact Linux requires less costly hardware than X puts it ahead. The fact it's Open Source puts it ahead. The fact it'll probably be more stable than OS X helps too. So what about Windows? The nightmare continues. Yes, it may run better than Mac OS these days, but only somewhat. It may be nearly as easy to use as a Mac, but not quite.
No, my machine of choice these days for my primary work (authoring my web site) is a 7.5.3 Mac Quadra 650. But guess what? The ever increasing bloat of software and the constant upgrade pressures from the web pretty much requires newer hardware/software than this to surf or update web sites (One example: install AOL 4.0 in Mac OS 8.1 on a Quadra like this and you've got yourself a time machine-- time stops. Or at least your suddenly molasses-slow web surfing will make it seem so). So I use the 8.6 iMac for 50% of my surfing, and a WebTV for the other half.
I have to use a Windows98 PC to upload my web site files though, since neither the WebTV or iMac are capable of doing it.
If someone had told me in 1990 that this is how I'd be living in 2000 I'd have told them they were crazy, and that Macs were going to rule the world. Now I just pray that somebody will create a decent net client that we can use to replace BOTH the Mac and PCs with, pronto. Maybe it'll be a game console. Or a Linux PC. Hopefully it'll be soon.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
2-3-2000: How I solved the iMac's web crashes regarding Yahoo visits and the browser's 'Back' buttonApple iMac User's Log Contents
11-14-99: The iMac suddenly develops a pretty severe typing glitch, as well as other problemsIt was within such email typing (via America Online 4.x) that I first encountered the glitch. It seems to get worse the longer the iMac is used, and especially if there's any idling time. Little boxes and/or several blank spaces will replace one or two of the characters typed in, during realtime, sometimes several times in the same sentence. This happens across-the-board in any and all programs currently open apparently, as I tried several.
I mucked around with the iMac's extensions inside the System folder, but could find only a couple of suspect items to remove there. That seemed to help some for a week or so, but then the problem returned strong as ever.
I've checked the MacFixIt site but found no references to this problem. So it may not be widespread. One obstacle may be knowing what key words to search for-- I used "typing glitch" and a few others, but if it's referred to by some other phrase there's no way I could find it.
UPDATE on typing glitch: Due to yet more problems arising on the iMac, the owner asked me to get rid of some of its fonts. A Mac can develop pretty bad problems if it gets more than 128 or so fonts installed on it-- which can happen with a single program install, or perhaps a Mac can even arrive from Apple itself in this sorry shape (depending on the pre-installed applications bundle).
Anyway, one of the best maintenance things you can do with a Mac is remove excess fonts every once in a while. There might be an alternative of paying out an extra $20-$200 for some sort of after-market font manager, to try to get the functionality you'd expect the OS itself to offer built-in, but I can't recommend it. Why? In my experience some of the font managers seem to be clones of Apple's own Extensions Manager (but for fonts), complete with similar problems and hassles required to get the desired features out of the thing-- if they work at all. Often as not you'll probably end up having to manually clean out your fonts folder regardless of whether you have a font manager installed or not-- so why shell out the bucks?
So I went into the Fonts folder inside the System folder on the iMac and tried to select fonts that seemed the least essential and least likely used by the iMac owner. I moved these fonts to a new folder on the desktop rather than throwing them away-- just in case I end up having to put a few back later (some programs may demand their own custom font be available or else they'll crash or not run at all). Rarely is there good information available about how essential (or not) a particular font might be. A few programs make important fonts clear with their own name on the font suite itself. But typically you're operating blind in this area. If you know what your favorite fonts are to use in publishing, avoid moving them. It also is best not to move any of the basic Mac OS fonts, like Geneva, Times, Courier, etc. (Chicago used to be the Finder menu font I believe, but that may be changed in newer OS versions). The OS will either not run correctly with these fonts missing, or it will automatically replace them-- so at best you're wasting time moving them, and at worst you're hurting the stability of your Mac.
After doing this chore, it seemed the iMac's typing glitch too cleared up! At least so far. I've done less typing than usual on the iMac lately, so I may not have been on it long enough for the glitch to appear. But I'm hopeful.
Another recent iMac problem is Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x freezing up on the web. It happens when you click on a link or the back button sometimes. It can also occur for other reasons, although those are harder to pinpoint.
These freeze ups may have increased a lot just since the USB Logitech MouseMan Wheel mouse was installed. However, as the iMac owner also installs and uses lots of other things on the iMac regularly, there's no way to narrow the suspects down to just the mouse itself.
But I do know the iMac in months past ran much better on the web than this. Now, it's fast becoming unusable on the web.
Major troubleshooting and maintenance lie ahead for the iMac. I dread it. It looks like the iMac is going to be just as difficult to keep running as our 7.5.3 Performa 6400 ever was for us. At least the 6400 isn't as much of a headache for me anymore however, since it now is primarily used to run just a handful of games for kids, no longer goes online, and practically never even uses its peripherals of ZIP drive, scanner, printer, etc. Under these conditions about the only time I have to repair it is when a new game install goes wrong-- but we rarely do new installs these days. So the 6400 has been pretty stable for months now.
UPDATE on browser crashing: Much of the browser problem seems to hinge on visits to Yahoo's news pages. It may be Yahoo is breaking Mac browsers by some new Javascript trick or something they've embedded in their code. I've managed to greatly reduce the iMac's freeze ups by avoiding Yahoo on the machine. Now I try to always use good old reliable WebTV to access Yahoo instead. WebTV doesn't crash nearly as easily as the iMac.
Another method for minimizing crashes seems to be avoiding use of the 'Back' button in the top bar of the browser window. If you instead use the pop up menu that you get inside the browser window itself by holding the mouse still on one spot and holding the button down to make the menu appear, the browser is less likely to crash.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
11-10-99: As a long time Mac user (since 1988) it pains and angers me to see the OS getting harder to use rather than easierAnd I've not even fooled with what many say are the worst interface crimes in the new OS versions-- QuickTime, etc. I also have avoided using Sherlock since my first tests of it were so mediocre in results. How can anyone see Sherlock as a real improvement in the OS?
The Extensions Manager appears to have been rendered completely impotent now-- you have to manually manipulate extensions again now like way back in 7.1 or whatever, since the Manager has quit working. I hate the spring-loaded folders too-- you can no longer hover with a file atop a folder to make a decision like in the old days. When you try that now suddenly folders are opening all over the place of their own accord and confusing the heck out of you.
Yeah, somewhere among the OS prefs there may be a way to turn such things off-- but I truthfully haven't had the time to search for them. There's this thing called a LIFE that some of us have, that prevent us from having the spare time to endlessly tweak things in our computers (which we shouldn't have to tweak in the first place)...
The Mac's perpetual problem of font incontinence continues on unabated: install a few programs and your total system fonts goes over a critical number (128 or so?), and you start having all sorts of font-related problems. I didn't notice this problem until around OS 7.5 I believe (extra fonts were much scarcer in those days); but ever since then it's proved a constant pain in the butt. Just today I had to throw out a bunch of excess fonts from an 8.6 iMac, because they were causing all text to appear in italic style on the machine (and possibly causing other, worse problems, as well).
I don't think the Mac OS even informs you of this potential problem. Instead, you're forced to troubleshoot or guess about it on your own. But Windows98 on our Compaq certainly informs the user about such things. Indeed, W98 has been trying to get us to remove some fonts now for quite a while, saying that it now has more than 500 and this might cause problems for it (or something like that). However, we haven't gotten around to reducing the Compaq's fonts yet, since the excess there doesn't seem nearly as problem-prone as 128+ fonts on a Mac does.
All the above caveats might be acceptable if the OS and apps had gained any stability whatsoever during the last half dozen 'upgrades'-- but they haven't so far as I can tell.
Add to all this the fact Jobs insists on continuing to bundle the worst mouse in history with all new Macs, and you get a sorry situation indeed.
I continue to be amazed that Apple exists at all anymore, with all the abuse it's heaping on its users and customers (i.e., the stealth downgrade of G3 Macs regarding upgradeable CPUs, and the recent dropping of a 30 day return policy from the Apple Store if customers weren't satisfied, etc., etc.), and the steady decline in usability and software applications and hardware options available for its products. Atop all this, a $400 minimum premium for a very basic PC feature set in the lowest cost iMac. My aunt recently bought a new Hewlett Packard PC complete with nice 14 inch monitor, speakers, 64 MB RAM, fast CPU and roomy hard drive, MS Works, 56k modem, CD ROM, (a mouse that WORKS!), etc., for about $600 not including sales tax.
The new OS 9 is apparently offering users all sorts of glitches and incompatibilities for an extra $100 or so now, too.
My entire family consisted exclusively Mac users-- until Steve Jobs usurped control of Apple a couple years back. We'd all stuck with Apple through thick and thin until then, and even had hopes that Jobs might restore some measure of Apple's past glory upon the company's products. But that didn't happen.
Instead, Windows PCs have taken the lion's share of our new computer purchases since then, that otherwise would have went to Apple products. In the time since Jobs' took a whack out of our loyalty, we've bought at least two PCs for every single Mac. And the ratio of PCs to Macs seems to be on the increase. It helps of course that you can often get two or three PCs for the price of one similarly equipped Mac.
Just what reason can one offer to buy a Mac these days over a PC? Some say the case is prettier-- and worth an extra $400 all on its own. But that's a pretty weak argument in my book.
So long as you encounter only minor problems with your machine, the Mac may be a bit easier to fix than a PC. But in my own experience the Mac seems to have bigger problems, and have them more often, than the PC-- so this argument doesn't take you very far at all.
Windows 98 PCs do have an annoying short file name problem compared to Macs, as well as a more difficult to grasp file organization scheme. And in some cases these differences alone can amount to pretty big interface problems for PC users as opposed to Macs-- but even on Macs problems sometimes arise in this area, so it's not as clear cut as Mac users might wish.
Windows PCs have two big and steadily growing advantages over Macs-- much lower prices for equivalent hardware features, and a widening compatibility both in terms of Windows-related software/hardware and (perhaps more importantly) internet-related software and services. Apple doesn't yet seem to have realized that the net compatibility gap will kill them faster in coming years than the Windows compatibility gap. Apple continues to allow Microsoft to treat the Mac as a second-class net client (i.e., our iMac's MSIE 4.x can't reliably upload files in Mac OS 8.6), and Apple even makes IE the Mac's default browser. Since Netscape browsers fell out of the race due to general instability a year or more ago, and Apple killed its own independent browser efforts (CyberDog), the Mac is rapidly losing ground in this field.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
11-7-99: One of my cousins has had to re-install her OS and applications from scratch on her brand new iMac Revision DThen on top of that it went dead on her almost immediately, forcing her to re-install everything. I write this only minutes after a phone conversation with her, where she told me she's still weeks later continuing the process of trying to get all her applications re-installed again. We've come close a couple times to having to overhaul our own iMac this way-- but with the help of sites like MacFixIt and my own lengthy Mac experience we've managed to squeak by without doing so, so far (just barely).
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
11-7-99: We try a third mouse for the iMac (the USB Logitech MouseMan Wheel)The iMac owner paid about $50 for it at a local discount store.
The package included a PS/2 port adapter for older PCs.
It didn't take long for all the original problems of the standard iMac mouse to rear their ugly heads again, once we were forced back to it by the failure of the Kensington USB Mouse-in-a-Box-- our previous attempt to rectify the iMac's Horrific Mouse Problem. The standard iMac mouse is simply a torturous device.
The MouseMan's most unique feature may be its sculpted contours to actually fit the user's hand. This, along with its two tone color scheme (battle-ship gray sides with an off-white top) makes it not look quite as sleek as some might wish on the desktop. But the shape works pretty well, and may actually be superior to the long-time standard egg-shaped mice of personal computers.
The MouseMan incorporates some extra features most long-time one-button Mac users will be unfamiliar with-- like the right-side button long used with PCs, a window scrolling wheel in-between the two main buttons, and a thumb button on the lower left side of the mouse.
The MouseMan comes with a CD ROM from which to install a driver to utilize all these extra buttons. I installed the software, but other than maybe changing the cursor speed haven't used it at all.
Being all long-time one-button Mac mousers here (and with little time or opportunity to spend learning a new way), that's how we've tended to use the MouseMan too.
How's it done at basic one-button mousing? Fairly well. However, for me the thumb button gets in my way-- I accidentally click it sometimes, making the Mac's window scroll bars stop reacting to the pointer and move up or down according to the mouse rolling on the pad instead (or something like that-- my memory of the action is hazy, and I can't easily test it as I write this since I'm presently using my own Quadra 650). This is confusing at first; you might think the Mac has locked up on you or something. Then you figure it out and click the thumb button a second time to get back to normal. So up to now the thumb button has been a bit of an annoyance and distraction for me (but not nearly as annoying and distracting as the iMac's standard mouse from Apple!). Other adult users seem to have similar problems.
The extra button also poses problems/distractions for children. An accomplished three year old user kept accidentally clicking the thumb button merely by way of his grasp on the device, and this would result in the main mouse button seeming to cease to function in his edutainment program-- until the thumb button was re-clicked again. However, he seemed to learn to avoid the thumb button immediately after I explained the problem to him just once (we adults continue to accidentally click it sometimes).
Overall the MouseMan seems a decent mouse, and its contours seem maybe more comfortable than an egg-shaped mouse. Long term use might allow the adult user to learn not to accidentally click the thumb button, or else maybe start using it and the other buttons as they are intended. But somebody like me, for whom the extra comfort is a marginal benefit, and the extra buttons simply annoying, would likely get by with either a standard or low cost egg-shaped mouse like 98% of all PC and Mac users have used since GUI computers became the standard.
Of course, no iMac buyer can do this without buying a third party mouse, since Apple doesn't provide a decent mouse with the machine from the factory.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
9-1-99: The Kensington USB Mouse-in-a-Box stops workingIt seems one or more of the spring-loaded rollers inside the mouse which are supposed to keep the ball in contact with the pad are too weak, or else the ball cavity itself is too deep, or the mouse ball is too small. Towards the end the Kensington mouse was working so horribly it was actually a relief to replace it with the $%#@!-awful original iMac mouse-- yeah, I know this may sound unbelievable to anyone who's spent time with the standard iMac mouse, but it's true.
Two awful iMac mice in a row. I don't know what we'll try next. Maybe we need to run Virtual PC with Linux installed so a mouse is superfluous? (just kidding-- but the iMac mouse situation IS ridiculous in late 1999)
On another subject, the iMac owner recently decided they wanted to place something else on their desk to the right of their iMac-- a sort of combination printer stand/paper rack. If the iMac was a PC this would be a non-issue. The gizmo itself is nice enough-- but since the iMac's reset hole is hidden way back in a deep compartment on that side of the machine, it's now much more difficult to use it-- and the iMac continues its crashing ways to require frequent use of a bent paper clip. With an iMac, a minimum of around 12 inches clearance is required on the right side of the machine for reasonable access to the restart pinhole-- you know, bend over, stick your head as near the cubbyhole as you can reach, work at least one arm and shoulder into the space too, squint to distinguish the two pinholes from one another and the delicate I/O ports that surround them, then stick in your jury-rigged piece of trash (a ruined paper clip), to get the computer to work again (hopefully anyway). But the iMac owner is currently trying to make do with only a bit beyond four inches of clearance, on their roughly five and a half foot wide desk. How long will the owner be able to stand the extra aggravation of straining past the printer stand to restart the iMac? And will a fatal error of inserting the conductive metal pin into an I/O port kill the iMac? Only time will tell.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
8-14-99: The iMac gets a real mouse (the Kensington USB Mouse-in-a-Box)The....thing....that Apple calls a mouse and bundles standard with the iMac is so horrible I hestitated even throwing it into the electronic junk/spare parts bin at WebFLUX Central. But upon reflection that it's at present the closest thing to a spare USB...pointing instrument...we have on hand, I finally did drop it in.
The Kensington USB Mouse-in-a-Box was the iMac owner's replacement choice. The mouse does exactly what you'd want and expect of a mouse; it mouses. Simple as that. Something that cannot be said of the piece of *&%$ Apple ships with an iMac and has the audacity to call a mouse. Mac users must be meek indeed these days to accept such treatment from Apple (and the terribly inadequate 32 MB RAM the iMac ships with is also a travesty).
Of course, this real iMac mouse purchase now brings the true cost of the iMac to $1450, combining the necessity of the iMac itself ($1200), additional RAM ($90) and an after-market mouse ($30), with after-market writable storage device ($130), all in order to basically match the functionality and convenience of a $500-$600 emachine's PC (which includes a monitor, writable media drive, mouse that actually works, and can run better with only 32 MB RAM than an iMac can).
Since nowadays a personal computer is near useless without a net connection, and lots of PCs are now being sold for nothing more than the cost of a several year net contract, you might as well add in ISP costs to the machine too ($720).
This leaves a realistically equipped iMac connected to the net for three years at present costs hovering around $2170, compared to a PC at around $500 or so, (a low end emachines PC plus monitor and three year CompuServe contract/rebate). Sure, the iMac would boast some incremental advantages here and there in this comparison-- but all of them together would not total up to $1670 worth of advantages over the PC. I've sampled/used machines very close to these two configurations myself, and definitely could not see $1670 worth of differences between the two.
Note folks that those of us who aren't filthy rich but are continually searching for ways to get ourselves, family, and friends online (or upgraded) at bargain prices simply have no choices in regards to computers: PCs win hands-down over Macs. You can set up FOUR different families with three years of net access and a reasonably compatible, flexible, and featured personal computer for the same price required to set up only ONE family with an iMac. And all this is using only NEW wares. If you have the savvy and courage to go the refurbished route, even more might be done for the same prices or less in this regard.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
8-12-99: Our iMac goes dead; I perform Mac CPRAnyway, the iMac didn't like something about the desired picture, and so thereafter locked up every time the machine was switched on or restarted, showing a blank desktop pattern menu and no mouse pointer. The owner was so traumatized by all this that they had already rounded up their receipt to return the iMac to the store they bought it from, before I ever learned of the matter.
I restarted the 160 MB RAM OS 8.6 iMac via the awful jury-rigged paper clip hole (such restarts are a daily routine on the iMac apparently), and held down the shift key to prevent loading of extensions.
OK, I finally got a usable display on the machine. I looked inside the system folder for anything obviously amiss, and noted a zero k size Epson pref file. I also noted the latest modifed file was Mac OS preferences. I found no picture (or anything else suspect) in the Startup folder.
I ran Disk First Aid to check the disk. It reported no problem.
I went into the Appearance control panel and 'removed picture', then 'set desktop', then quit. I then restarted.
The iMac seemed OK after that.
Note folks that the owner of the iMac has been using Macs for several years, and still hasn't gotten the restart-with-extensions-off-trick memorized, nor do they know what to do next after such a restart-- basically because they have a life and don't qualify as a geek. But in many other matters such as installations/app configurations they often succeed. The point here is that this is no Mac novice. And yet they were alarmed and stymied by this event. So take warning true novices; the iMac is not that much easier to deal with on a daily basis than a Windows98 PC-- only slightly so, and maybe not enough to make a significant difference. And surely not enough to justify the current price differences or substantial compatibility/capability differences between the two platforms.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
8-3-99: iMac/WebTV Users' Logs: Web surfing/email station contest: WebTV Classic Versus Apple iMac Revision DPlus, the iMac is a full-fledged standalone personal computer system (although ranking as only a very expensive and slow Windows PC system, requiring emulation to run most mainstream software), while a WebTV is wholly dependent on the ISP and online applications for its usefulness, with no compatibility at all with either native Mac or native PC apps.
No, there's no way this comparison can be wholly fair: the WebTV hardware platform here is a middle-aged codger (in computer years) compared to the young child of the iMac hardware (WebTV possessing only a fraction of the circuitry in terms of manufacturing costs too)-- while the case is reversed in terms of operating systems, with the iMac's OS 8.6 practically ancient compared to the young adult of the WebTV OS.
Sufficiently confused yet? That's OK.
Let's greatly simplify matters by throwing out the respective ages/maturity/obsolescence of the hardware and software, the huge differences in costs, the substantial differences in standalone flexibility, options, and software-- and focus only upon the performance, convenience, and flexibility of the two devices in terms of web surfing and email alone. Functions which Apple's own surveys seem to indicate many buyers primarily purchase their iMacs for anyway.
In display prowess, the two stations are nearer than most folks might expect, what with the iMac using a digital display and the WebTV only an old cramped TV screen. WebTV does a great job at formatting the vast majority of web pages to display well on TV-- and what formatting problems do appear often occur on the iMac as well(!)
Of course, WebTV is handicapped where small graphic images-- especially those including text-- are concerned, so that those items can often be illegible. WebTV may re-size and reformat true web page text to larger sizes for viewing but not graphic images containing text. However, I've found after many months that only rarely does this liability prove a real problem with WebTV-- maybe 1% or less of the web pages sporting this particular problem are rendered unusable to the surfer.
Naturally, owing to the resolution differences between digital computer displays and old fashioned TVs, WebTV surfers are limited to an effective screen size maybe a third that of the iMac's-- so there's not as much to see all at once. This means your surfing will by necessity often be a bit slower with WebTV compared to the iMac, since you must scroll more via WebTV to see the same region. But the difference isn't a large one in practice-- and in some circumstances actually works in WebTV's favor. For instance, I've found Yahoo's near pure text 'What's New' listing of new web sites to be almost unreadable on the iMac compared to WebTV, due to Yahoo's particular formatting circa late July 1999. I much prefer using WebTV to access the list nowadays.
Support for various browser plug-ins technology and Javascript/Java is another subject altogether. WebTV closely resembles older Macs/browsers in this respect with little or no support for many of the flashier web technologies. By contrast, the new iMac is much stronger in this area. But how significant is this difference to the user? It probably depends on each person's personality, and what exactly they are after on the web. In my own case I keep the sound turned off, and pretty much hate most web noise/music with my surfing, no matter what the platform-- although I have opted to listen to a bit of RealAudio on WebTV for news purposes (which works very well). WebTV also offers a slow motion presentation of short video clips too, so long as they are available in a somewhat rare format. These too I have used successfully (albeit slowly). Typically however I avoid the kind of animations, video, and other items which might require extra plug-ins or bandwidth, regardless of the platform I use; I simply am not interested in such things (maybe this will change if we get a cable modem?). Perhaps the biggest failings for WebTV in the extra functionality arena regard forms and Java use. There's a handful of extra forms and Java sites I would use with WebTV, if they worked on the system. But again, this pertains to a relatively small percentage of the whole web, with me encountering such a non-functional item I'd like to use perhaps once every couple months. Most forms and functions seem to work well with WebTV, overall.
How do the iMac and WebTV compare performance-wise? For pure web surfing and emailing alone? Well, both use 33.6 modems (we had to downgrade the iMac because at 56k it would disconnect after 5-20 minutes on our noisy rural line). And the iMac has the performance advantage of offering a far bigger display resolution to the user compared to WebTV (as mentioned above)-- so you can eyeball more stuff faster with the iMac.
However, when you go beyond basic surfing/emailing to actually saving stuff for purposes of research like I often do, the iMac suddenly jumps out way ahead of the WebTV-- but of course this is beyond the scope of the activities I said I'd discuss here, isn't it? So strike this from the record...
Beyond the differences mentioned above, the iMac enjoys tremendously more physical RAM and raw CPU speed, as well as a writable hard disk, compared to the WebTV, which may be more comparable to a 386 or 486 diskless PC in hardware terms. But so far as perceptible differences in performance are concerned, all the hardware advantages of the iMac produce a much smaller effect than you might expect. Maybe 25-33% of the time all that extra hardware makes for a big difference in a particular page load-- but the rest of the time it's only a slight speed up.
So, amazing as it may sound, the iMac only presents a modest performance advantage over the WebTV here, on average. Indeed, I find I now use the two devices about the same amount-- 50-50-- partly because the performance difference simply isn't that great.
How do the two compare in convenience? Well, the WebTV usually wins hands-down here, as you can sit comfortably in an easy chair to surf, as compared to having to sit at a desk with the iMac. For folks like me who must spend much of their time tied to a desktop for other computer-related tasks, being able to lounge on a couch to web surf is a welcome luxury. Too, if you get involuntarily disconnected with the WebTV for various reasons, you can usually re-connect and return to the exact web page you left off-- unlike what happens with the iMac's embedded browser in AOL 4. In AOL 4 if you didn't bookmark your last site before disconnect you have to find it again manually from scratch later.
How do the two compare in reliability and troubleshooting? I'd have to give the WebTV the definite edge here-- although probably a big chunk of its advantage stems from its non-existant standalone flexibility and near total lack of desktop software and peripherals compatibility, as compared to the iMac. The rule of thumb for both Mac and Windows PCs is, the more apps and peripherals you install to either, the less reliable and more problem-prone they become. You can install almost nothing yourself on your WebTV-- only WebTV HQ itself has this power, with perhaps bi-annual software updates online.
If a WebTV user has problems with their terminal, there's only a very few things they can do about it, short of calling or emailing WebTV Central for help. They can switch WebTV off and back on again; pull WebTV's power plug from the wall; push a reset button present on the back of some units (not all); trick WebTV into calling its second access number when the first isn't working well; or simply stay offline a while and try again later. That's about it.
Things are a LOT different with the iMac. A user could potentially spend the rest of their lives trying to fix it if something goes wrong-- there's that many different things to try. There's at least $thousands worth of commercial diagnosis and repair software/hardware available, untold numbers of freeware/shareware utilities, and hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of different tips and repair reports available on the web regarding Macs, that you could follow up on and implement.
I've been on Macs since 1988, and am perhaps one of the best general Mac experts in East Tennessee not presently working as an Apple technician (or possessing virtually zero documentation or software utilities aids regarding the machines). I still regularly repair Macs and ocassionally PCs. I don't always succeed-- but mainly that's because of cost-effectiveness judgements; practically anything can be fixed, given enough time and money-- but few things are worth too large an investment of either.
I'm getting to be an OLD Computer Geezer now, and easily lose patience with stuff that's as troublesome and time-wasting as modern PCs and Macs. So I lean heavily towards preferring WebTV's kind of reliability myself. Although I admit for those few times when you have a very pressing need for something only your WebTV box can provide, and you can do nothing but wait on WebTV Central to correct the problem, you might well wish for more of the options available on a PC or Mac for do-it-yourselfing.
About the only time you miss standalone capacity on WebTV is during the writing of lengthy email messages or when all you want to do is examine an old message. WebTV can't tell you're typing during creation of a long message, and may drop your connection on you before you're finished, forcing you to reconnect before you can even continue typing, much less send it. Fortunately, nothing is lost during those events. However, if and when WebTV actually crashes on you for some reason (which it occasionally does for no obvious reason, much like Macs or PCs, only considerably less frequently), you CAN lose an email you're working on. Losing a lengthy and important email message this way is awful. Often you can never again repeat the eloquence or level of detail in a second try from scratch.
So why don't I save incremental versions of my email on WebTV as I writing, to prevent potential loss (like I could on a Mac or PC)? I can't. You can only save email on WebTV after you've sent it, or save email others have sent you....HEY!!!! I just realized I may be able to save incremental email work by sending it to myself on WebTV! Yes, I guess I should have realized this sooner, but like several aspects of the WebTV platform, it can require lengthy experience with the device to realize it's not quite as limited as you thought, and often the solution requires an extra step or two compared to full-blown computer wares (making it easy to forget a new discovery before you find the need to implement it the first time)-- plus, I may be suffering from being an Old Computer Geezer blindsided by new ways of doing things that are simply unlike the old desktop computer methods...
Anyway, other online services too involving PCs and Macs may disconnect you if no action is detected on your end for a certain period of time (e.g., AOL). But since a Mac or PC boasts considerable standalone power, such disconnection not only doesn't blitz your current message, but leaves it open onscreen so you can continue working on it. Like WebTV you still must log on again to send it, but unlike WebTV your stream of thought in writing suffers a bit less disruption. Of course, Macs/PCs can and do crash when online, possibly losing your email-in-process just like WebTV can-- but typically Macs/PCs don't crash if all you're doing is writing email; there usually must be something else going on too at the time, like concurrent web surfing, ICQ, downloading, printing, running other apps, etc. On balance, I'd say I lose an email I was writing on WebTV that was at minimum somewhat important to me, once to several times a year-- with similar emails lost on Macs/PCs at a much lower frequency (often only when I click 'send' without having saved it to disk, and my connection drops out or the computer crashes at that precise moment). But since 80% or more of my email writing has occured on WebTV rather than Macs/PCs the past couple years, normalizing the stats might make both platforms appear similar in reliability regarding this point. So it might be a toss up here which is better.
In fact, I frequently use WebTV as the preferred research station to locate solutions to problems we're having with either our Macs or PCs! And keep in mind that the WebTV is largely immune to most PC or Mac viruses, too (at least at present).
Another relevant area of comparison might be tweaking the devices for purposes of better performance or convenience-- like setting displayed text sizes. Obviously, you're limited in the amount of tweaking you can do with WebTV, while on the iMac you could tweak 'til the grave.
As a matter of fact, BOTH devices pretty much REQUIRE a certain amount of tweaking to achieve optimum usefulness and convenience-- with the iMac needing maybe ten times or more what the WebTV does (excluding initial set up and first log on)
But what if we compare the initial set up and first log ons themselves? In these matters it's a toss up; we had about the same amount of trouble with both machines in initial set up/log on, so far as I can recall (refer to the respective user logs for some documentation of the matters). Yes, WebTV should have done better than a more complex, full-fledged personal computer in this phase-- but it didn't. Which should serve as a warning to novices here. Of course, those reading the WebTV log might point out there were possibly unusual circumstances complicating the WebTV set up-- such as a store selling us a repackaged used WebTV with someone else's ID already burned into the unit, which made first log on much harder, and the fact we had to call a long distance number for access (being rural), and perhaps our TVs/VCRs were a bit too old to be fully compatible with WebTV, and so on and so forth. But hey! If WebTV sells units in areas and demographics like ours, it should properly prepare and market the units for such conditions.
The bottomline: in terms of basic web surfing and email performance alone, totally ignoring costs, standalone capabilities, and extraneous hardware/software matters, the Apple iMac Revision D offers marginally better performance than WebTV in our own experience-- although the WebTV is significantly better in terms of reliability and user convenience. So it's basically a draw, or tie. Note that there's presently one, maybe two newer generations of WebTV available today, compared to the unit used for these tests. But based on what I've read of them I suspect they could only succeed at making it a tighter race with the iMac, rather than outright winning the contest.
Apple iMac User's Log Contents
7-19-99: iMac Users' Log: We install a UMAX Astra 2000U USB ScannerIn most other matters the owner felt like the scanner was doing OK. However, the 'Gotchas!' related to the OmniPage limited uses and registration complexities all by themselves were sufficient to ha