So You Like Running Water?

Raise your hand if you like running water. How about a warm shower? As Americans, we tend to take these modern conveniences for granted. However, if you do much traveling overseas, you know how these simple, every day pleasures can quickly become a commodity in some developing countries.

Admit it. We all like conveniences and -- whether we admit it or not -- aesthetics. Some Macintosh users have a hard time telling you why they love the Mac OS user interface so much. Many say that "it just works" or that it's easier to use.

As a user of the Mac OS and Windows OS for many years now, I can say with confidence that "it's the aesthetics of Macintosh" that really grabs me. From the ground up, the Mac OS has been engineered with the end user in mind. While Windows certainly has gotten much better over the years, it really lacks in operating system aesthetics and usability.

Ask any long-time Mac user who must use Windows at work or who is forced to switch for some reason. The first thing they'll tell you is that "all the programs don't work the same." Perhaps a more accurate statement is that the user "does not access every program the same way." This, in itself, is an important distinguishing characteristic of the top two operating systems in the world.

From the beginning, the Mac OS "toolbox" forced programmers -- like it or not -- to call on certain parts of the operating system the same way. That why for years all one needed to know to shut down a Macintosh application was CRTL Q or to choose Quit from the File menu.

Windows users may read my previous statement and say, "Hey, Windows works the same way, you're not being fair." Well, in recent incarnations Windows programmers have began to standardized on standard menus. However, if you'll notice, this is mainly in more mainstream programs of high professional or consumer distribution. If you don't believe me, download a shareware Windows program sometime and take a close look at it. More times than not the programmer will come up with all sorts of ways to access the program, all to the confusion of the user. In all fairness, this happens sometimes to youthful Mac programmers as well. But I have experienced it to be much more common among the Windows programming crowd.

Now that we've all grown accustom to the Mac OS, Apple is changing everything with OS X. What's promised is a higher level of usability and functionality. With the public beta out on the streets, we'll know soon how well the boys (and girls) in Cupertino have delivered on this one. If OS X lives up to its billing, Apple may set the standard for consumer operating systems once again.

What will be interesting is how Apple ultimately delivers OS X to the masses through its scalability and uses in a various of consumer and professional devices. With core underpinnings from UNIX, I believe Mac OS X is in a good position to capture some of Microsoft's historical market share. Will OS X be a part of your future? The answer is "yes and definitely." Will it be a part of the future of Windows users? The answer is a "yes, but they'll come kicking and screaming."

If Apple is successful with the implementation and marketing of Mac OS X, the company may once again position itself favorably in the physique of corporate America.

Time - and more than a beta release -- will tell.

Why I Recommend Mac

I enjoy travel. Whether it be for business or for pleasure, traveling seems to give me a needed rest from the common every day. Recently, while traveling with my wife who was attending a teacher’s convention, I read an interesting article in USA Today. Since I receive a local and state newspaper at home, I relegate the reading of USA Today only to times when I travel.

The cover story on this day discussed how Macromedia’s Shockwave is exploding in use on the Internet. Shockwave allows common, everyday people to create their own multimedia programming at little or no cost.

What was amazing is that not only common folk are getting involved in Internet multimedia authoriing, but filmmakers and other creative professionals who previously had to work through large corporations to deliver their art form.

Among the names mentioned were film directors David Lynch and Tim Burton. Apparently, it takes a minimum amount of computer equipment needed to produce and deliver Shockwave content to web audiences. The article pointed out that practically any well-equipped new computer is capable of running the multimedia software.

Lynch, who is by no means an unknown director, uses an iMac. Here was a major motion picture director who has had literally hundreds work with him on movies in the past, sitting quietly in front of an iMac authoring his own productions.

It’s not that Shockwave authoring cannot be done on a Windows PC, of course it can. The difference pointed out in the article is the sheer simplicity the iMac provided to facilitate the process. Lynch drew pictures on the iMac, animated them, provided voices and background music -- all without any assistance.

Without meaning to the USA Today article said that neat stuff is just easier to do on an iMac. It’s not that it cannot be done on a Windows PC, it’s just easier on an iMac.

I’ve never really considered myself a "Mac advocate," rather I’m an advocate of easy-to-use computer systems. I have found the Mac is the only computer platform that meets that criteria over and over again.

Some PC users -- many of which have never used a Mac -- are quick to criticize the Mac. I tell them I speak from experience when I recommend Mac because I use both daily at home and at work. While PCs have become the darling of corporations for whatever reason (we won’t get into that here), it’s really hard not to recommend Mac to home users and creative professionals because of its many end-user strengths.

One of messages I hear repeated from missionaries and pastors who use Macs in the United States and overseas is the easy of use, set-up and stability of the Macintosh. Here again, when asked what type of computer I recommend, I usually respond Mac because of the attributes the platform possesses.

On the flip side, I have found it is sometimes unwise to recommend a Mac to users whose friends primarily use. Why? Because not matter what type of computer a person uses, there will be support issues from time to time. I’ve found it best for Mac users to have Mac friends to help and vise versa with PC owners.

However, I must admit that it has become easier to recommend Mac following the revitalization of Apple Computer and the growing acceptance of the platform once again among consumers. As more people use Mac technology, them purchase of a Mac makes more sense even when many more friends and families may use a PC.

Apple in the Windy City

Recently, after many years of just passing through the Chicago airport, I actually stayed in the Windy City. It was a delightful experience, as I got the opportunity to enjoy Chicago hot dogs, its famous pizza and many other of its special culinary delights.

On the Apple Computer front, advertising was visible on several downtown outdoor displays. I also visited the CompUSA store right off of Michigan Avenue.

Apple had a good presence in the store: iMacs were stacked high as customers walked through the front entrance. Additionally, there was a well-stocked "Store within a Store" that featured every Mac configuration currently available. What's more, there were a lot of people visiting the area, most of which were a younger 20s or so set. All in all the store had lots for the Mac enthusiast.

The next day I visited the world famous Sears Tower, which is one of the tallest buildings in the world. On the day I was there, they were getting ready to dedicate a new observatory on the 103 floor. It was a sight to behold. In addition to the beautiful view, there were displays detailing Chicago history. It was also designed as a high-tech exhibit, as computers were located at each observatory deck. The computers were designed to provide visitors with information on landmarks visible from the tower.

I say "designed" because several of the devices, which were Gateway all-in-one computers running what appeared to be Windows 98, were locked up due to some type of error message.

I chuckled when I saw this, wondering how many thousands of dollars had been spend on the new exhibit, only to have it marred by defective technology. I will give those responsible for the exhibit some slack, as it is still being finished.

I guess the same could be said for Windows 98.

Apple has 92% among my acquaintances!

By Lukas Hauser

In the heels of news that Macs have only gained 1/2 a percentage point in marketshare in recent years, MacCommunist has conducted an equally scientific survey. Apple has a commanding marketshare lead over its nearest rival, Dell Computer, among people I know.My girlfriend has an iBook. (Okay, I forced her to. She's a previous Dell user, the capitalist. But there's only one party allowed in this country, baby!) Her friend in corporate law school is planning on getting an iBook next semester. (See? The system works!)

My ex-girlfriend has a Mac, too -- probably the same Power Computing piece of junk I helped her choose so many years ago. Perhaps had we stayed true to MacCommunist ideals - COMPETITION WITH APPLE IS ALWAYS WRONG - the relationship would have worked out. No matter.

My current girlfriend's roommate, Sarah, has an original iMac but she's thinking of switching to PCs since her iMac is busted. (An acceptable loss: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.) My girlfriend's ex-roommate, Wendy, is considerably happier with her iMac. My girlfriend's other roommate, Karen, is an "information architect" at a major New York internet agency, and uses Macs on the job. The fourth roommate, Jessica, doesn't have a computer but apparently had owned Macs throughout her college career.

A friend, Jason, has a tangerine iMac 266 in his Manhattan Upper West Side apartment. He'd previously had an original iMac at his job -- financial writer for a Hearst magazine -- and had recently upgraded his work computer to an iMac DV Special Edition. (The entire magazine's staff uses iMacs -- as, I imagine, most Hearst magazines do.) But he's recently quit his job to write freelance, and will be using his orange home iMac full-time.

His roommate, a veteran freelance writer and editor, has had a plethora of Macs since 1985, and just recently upgraded to a $999 entry-level iMac. His other roommate, Dan, a computer-science graduate from an Ivy League college, is computer-less, but will be buying a Mac PowerBook for his summer job in Los Alamos. Dan just helped his mother, a painter, get an iMac, too.

The woman who hooked me up with a writing/editing myself for a New York-based design-centric magazine gig is a proud owner of an iMac at home, as is her fashion-writer roommate; the influential web magazine she also writes for is exclusively Mac-based, too. The aforementioned design magazine uses Macs, of course, as I imagine all its writers and designers do at home.

Mired's editor has a PowerBook G3 at home. Mired's contributing editors -- a humanities graduate student and a sports-magazine fact-checker -- own a

PowerBook G3 and a Dell notebook, respectively. However, the Dell-notebook-using fact-checker uses a graphite iMac DV at his fact-checking job, and is apparently considering making the switch at home, too.

A good college friend of mine, an artist, is a big fan of her G4, which she uses to make her art. Her father, a respected photographer, recently switched from a 5-year-old Windows PC to a G4 with Apple Cinema Display. His wife, a lawyer, loves her PowerBook G3, recommended by a computer-consultant family friend who owns dozens of Macs. A lot of the family's artist friends are Mac users themselves.

One business acquaintance of mine is a fashion photogapher, who has 5-10 Power Mac G4s in his Chelsea studio; another is multimedia performance artist who also has 5-10 Macs in her Tribeca studio; another runs a small SoHo art gallery with 3-5 Power Mac G3s; another works for an outdoor advertising agency which has 3-4 G3s in its design space.

Five web-design colleagues at a global media conglomerate for which I work all use either G3s or G4s, and all have older Macs at home. (One, a

Yaddo-affiliated painter, helped her significant other get an iMac recently.) Our division has probably a hundred Macs in use, exclusively. Also in my building are a major newsweekly magazine's offices (all Mac-based).

One financial writer I know there, peripherally, is married to a graphic designer, who recently bought a Power Macintosh G3. An HTML programmer I know in another division uses a PC at work, but bought a purple iMac for his home use in Queens. Another, who runs a punk-rock web-zine, is in the same situation, but will be replacing his work PC with a G4 in the coming weeks.

My own roommate doesn't have a computer at home, but has his sights set on a graphite iBook. The entertainment magazine he writes for is also exclusive Mac-based. An inventory of some of his friends: a fellow writer and iBook owner; a musician and G3 owner; another musician and G4 owner; a freelance fashion writer and iMac owner. My roommate's cousins also use Macs, as does his father, a doctor.

My mother has an iMac. My father, retired, has a tangerine iMac DV. My half-sister and her husband have a Mac. Some good friends of the family in California have several Macs. Some friends of the family in Western New York recently bought a PowerBook G3.

My uncle has a PC. How it hurts!

My old high-school buddy living in San Francisco has a G3 at home and G4 at work. (His mother has an older Mac at home.) A college buddy, also in San Francisco, has a Mac at home and is otherwise unemployed. Another high school friend is in the Peace Corps, but his family back in Western New York has a variety of older Macs.

Some good friends of mine, jazz musicians, bought an original iMac a few years ago. As they've become more successful in recent months, signed by a major label, they've bought themselves an iBook and iMac DV Special Edition.

"These numbers are staggering," I said in response to the report. "Apple seems to be doing better than expected in this particular but far-reaching market segment."

The lesson? Capitalist pigs: prepare to be dragged out onto the street and shot.

Thanks to our man Gary Flint for his solidarity!

The Big Apple in the Big Apple!

If you lived out in the boonies like I do, you would sometimes forget there's a whole another world out there. Let's face it. Life in a community of 40,000 or so people is much different from say, Chicago, New York City or San Francisco.


On a recent trip to New York City, the fact that I live in a small and isolated Midwest town really hit me between the eyes! As I rode in a taxi from a New York Airport I watched as we passed billboard after billboard. But one billboard caught my eye. It was a huge photograph of an iMac DV Special Edition. In addition to the "Think Different" slogan in the lower right of the billboard, the only words on the ad were "Super Model." There it was: The Big Apple in the Big Apple!


While I did not get a chance to do much sightseeing, the offices where I visited used lots of PCs, but Macs as well. During a field trip along numerous Manhattan streets, I strained to peer into office building windows. Yes, they were there. Macs were everywhere.


The night before I was scheduled to leave the city, I got the opportunity to walk to Rockefeller Center from the Hilton Towers where I was staying. As I strolled past downtown storefronts, something caught the corner of my eye. There they were, four colorful iMacs in the window of The Computer Experience. Having my trusty digital camera in hand, I managed to snap a quick picture (at left).


To top it off, on the return flight I picked up a copy of Business Week. There he was, Steve Jobs, recognized as one of the top CEOs of 1999 (see photo above).

All in all, it was a good to see Apple and Macs (and Steve Jobs for that matter) are making a big impact in big places -- not just Mid-Missouri!

Vintage Macs are a Good Buy

Since the beginning of my "Mac" experience in 1987, I've never been one to pay retail. If you have been a Macintosh user for long, you will remember a time when the computer made "for the rest of us" really was an expensive proposition.

I avoided that mostly by always buying closeout Macs that were last year's model. My first Mac, a Plus, was purchased at a Little Rock, Arkansas, downtown computer store for $1,299. For that price, all I got was the basic system. I purchased a tote bag (remember those?) and an external floppy drive.

I lived with the Plus for a number of years before purchasing a PowerBook 145B in Tupelo, Mississippi, which was being offered at an enormous discount at a Sam's Wholesale Club. At the time it was quite an upgrade from the Plus, which I had upgraded from one meg of internal RAM to four and 52 meg external hard drive. As I recall, the PowerBook came with four megs of RAM and an 80 meg hard drive.

Later, I purchased a secondhand Color Classic in Memphis, Tennessee. I now enjoyed a colorful Mac experience and was able to use all the applications I had grown to depend on.

Following the Color Classic, came a new 6116 Performa PowerMac, which was being sold on closeout at Office Depot in Columbia, Missouri. I was thrilled at the price and performance for the dollar. Literally up until a few months ago the 6100 was the fastest Mac I had ever owned.

I also acquired a used Mac Classic with four megs of memory and a 40 meg hard drive along the way, which was the computer my mother used up until last month.

You might say, "Well, what's the point?" The point is the 400 mhz G3 iMac that I'm typing this column on is an amazing piece of computer technology and engineering at an incredible price ($1,299). While you can certainly buy cheaper computers, you would be hard pressed to find a better value in top-of-the-line, cutting edge computing today.

The drawback for those upgrading to an iMac from older Macs is that Apple has created a legacy-free machine with the iMac. Gone are the outdated SCSI and serial port connections and in are Firewire and USB connections. The flip side is that everything you'll want to do with your new Mac will literally fly! The processor and hard drive is a screamer. Firewire smokes and USB does just about everything else.

Legacy-free can be good. It takes a company like Apple, however, to take the hit and make it happen.

This is really a great time to be a Mac user. While Apple is turning out great products, there is a huge market out there in older Mac equipment. Contrary to the PC market, old Macs are still very usable computers today. Let's face it, even the oldest Macs, such as the Mac Plus, can surf the web today. Try doing that on the competitor to the Mac at the time the Mac was introduced, such as a 286 IBM compatible.

This past weekend I picked up a used Mac LC III with monitor and printer for little to nothing. Despite the limitations of hard drive space and RAM, which I've already upgraded, this is a sweet machine. It runs System 7.1 and older software at good speeds and could be used for an Internet surfer if so desired.

There are many other examples of great deals on older Mac equipment on the web. While these machines may not fit the bill for everyday web surfing or intensive number crunching, they can still perform 90 percent of the tasks people purchase computers for.

And still yet, over the past several months I've purchased "closeout" software for a song as well. I've bought some nice older software, which by the way still runs on my iMac, for .99 cents and for $2.99 at several local stores.

I've known for some time that "old" isn't necessarily bad. That goes for age of a person and certainly the age of vintage Macs.

$699 iMacs at Sams!

Who said Macs are expensive? If you don't believe me, check out your local Sam's Wholesale. But you better do it quick, because the low-cost Macs I saw were flying off the shelves!

I'm talking about the $699 iMacs at Sam's. They're not the latest and greatest, but last year's 333 mhz, no-DVD version. They only have 32 megs of ram, but hey, they're Macs. A Sam's I visited over Christmas had a ton of these Macs on display for $849 (Grape and Tangerine only). That wasn't bad, but still not all that good, considering Apple had just introduced the $999 iMacs running at 350 mhz. I image some folks who have been curious about Apple and its products over the years bought one. But at $849, it probably wasn't many.

With a "6" in front that number (around Christmas) I would venture to say the boxes wouldn't have lasted long at all. In some ways, it could have been a real marketing coupe had Apple sold the machines to Sam's at a loss to get the iMac prices down and into homes and businesses. That way a lot of folks who are not exposed to the quality and reliability of Apple products would have purchased one. After all, the only competition in the $600-price range are some PC boxes with a name no one has ever heard of!

Many Mac watchers have dreamed of a sub-$500 Macintosh for years. While $699 is still a far cry from that, it sure is getting close and if you would have told me just two years ago that Macs would be selling below $700, I would have said you were crazy.

I would love to see sales figures of the iMacs once the price was reduced at Sam's. After all, Sam's shoppers are supposed to be bargain shoppers. People who know value when they see it. Once the price dropped, I bet the iMacs flew off the shelves, both into the hands of long-time Mac users and newbies as well.

While PC users will argue with Mac users about a lot of things, rarely does the argument ever focus on the shoddy quality of Apple products. That's because Apple is known in the industry as the leader in manufacturing good quality computers.

That's something the Sam's shopper who picked up a bargain-basement iMac will discover and who knows, perhaps one day, they'll buy Mac No. 2.

Need Relief from Stress? Buy a Mac!

For the past several weeks I've been leading a study at church on stress. We're using the videotape series Margin: Prescription for the Pain of Overloaded Lives by Dr. Richard A. Swenson. In one of the sessions, Dr. Swenson talks about how we should schedule for "margin" in our lives and allow time for things to go wrong. After all, he says: "Things that can go wrong will go wrong."

In addition, he talks about doing the things that tend to simplify, rather than complicate our lives. For instance, Dr. Swenson says he only owns two colors of trousers and one sports coat. By owning only two pairs of trousers he never has to make a fashion decision, he says.

You might be thinking what does a series on stress has to do with a column on the Mac? Well, I think a lot.

The use of computers in our personal and work lives can be both a blessing and a curse. As I have mentioned before in this column, some people are better suited to using PCs running Windows and others are more suited to using Macintosh computers. Windows tends to appeal somewhat more to business users and technophiles, whereas the Macintosh has tends to appeal more to graphic arts and publishing professionals.

With all that said, there are aspects to owning a PC running Windows that some embrace, whereas users of the Macintosh tend to really detest. One is the shear number of software titles and hardware options available for the average PC.

In this month's edition of MacAddict magazine, editor Robert Capps writes about his first trip to Comdex, which is considered to be the ultimate trade show by many PC users. As he arrives at the Las Vegas Convention Center where the show is being held, he sees an immediate contrast between PC and Mac users: many people in attendance are wearing suits.

To make a long story shorter, Capps is generally amazed at the number of competing software titles available for PCs. He had thought that he would be jealous of all that is PC and not Mac, but concludes otherwise: "I realized that if I worked for a PC magazine, I'd have to wade through all manner of ridiculous software. I'd be the guy that would have to test 50 different business management apps in order to find out what features would work for which people. Sure, these programs are functional, even necessary ­ but they're no fun and there are 10,000 of them."

And finally: "The longer I strolled the convention floor, the happier I was that I worked for MacAddict. We get to cover just cool stuff.The Mac pond may be way smaller, but thanks to its simplicity and its appeal to creative people, by comparison our pond is filled with champagne."

As I mentioned earlier, there is something to be learned here. Some people purchase a computer that they can constantly tinker with, while others buy a computer to get work done on and have fun on occasionally. That's where I believe the Mac excels and why so many people have found the iMac so appealing.

So the next time you're somewhere where there is an overwhelming number of PC titles over Mac titles, remember Robert Capps' visit to Comdex and go home and enjoy the stress relief of owning a Mac!