The Last Power Mac G4 and OS 9
From David Walker:
Hi Dan,
I read with great interest Jim Miller's claim of a G4 MDD with a
pair of FW800 ports. I worked for an Apple Reseller in Canada from 2003
to 2005, and no such machine ever made it onto our price list nor came
into the service department for upgrade or repair. His letter is the
first I've ever heard of such a beast.
I remember checking the logic board of the 2003 MDD and finding it
identical to first generation MDDs in every respect - layout, slots,
external ports, AirPort slot, etc., and I can't believe Apple would
design a new OS 9 capable motherboard a year after their highly
publicized mock
funeral for the OS.
I remember the 2003 MDD in particular, because it was one of the
first Macs we ordered from Apple in custom configurations. Up until
then, almost all Macs arrived in a standard configuration and
modifications were done in house to meet demand.
Initially we sold more dual 1.25s than we did single 1.25s. This may
have been because so many of our customers were in media creation, and
software like Photoshop had
been multiprocessor aware for years, but I think mostly it was a simple
matter of math. Two 1.25 G4 processors for the price of a single 1.6 G5
made the G4 look like the better deal. Once the dual 1.8 G5 arrived in
the fall of that year sales of dual 1.25s dried up.
David
David,
Thanks for writing. There's a lot of life in those
"old" MDD Power Macs - and every G4 Power Mac with AGP video. And
there's still life in Mac OS 9, despite the mock funeral. I use it
in Classic Mode every day as I continue to plug away in Claris Home
Page, a great WYSIWYG HTML program last revised over a decade ago.
Good tools never go out of date.
Dan
2003 Mirror Drive Door G4 and the Tick of
Death
From John Muir:
Hi Dan,
A couple of things from the mailbag:
I just picked up a 2003 last-of-the-line Mirror
Drive Door Power Mac G4 myself last week. It's my attempt to
surpass the troubles a Rev.
A B&W G3 was giving me! Anyway, I can attest that the machine
does indeed have two FireWire 400 ports and no FireWire 800
ports. It also has AirPort instead of AirPort Extreme, so is to all
intents and purposes a reissue of the Power Mac G4 before the
FireWire 800 model. Clearly, its purpose was all about native boot into
OS 9.
It's a fine enough machine in Leopard by the way (I know you have a
Mirror Drive Door G4
too), and I'm currently filling it up with my old drives and the
massive horde of data they contain from my habit as a digital pack
rat!
The other thing is a comment about the power supply tick of death
Fletch wrote in about. I have heard it too. But not in a Mac, but
rather an ancient IBM PS/2! A friend of mine picked up a pair of them
from an office he was called in to outfit with much newer systems,
already many years ago. He stumbled into one while moving home recently
and I dared him to try it out with OS/2 . . . just out of
curiosity. Alas, all the little pizzabox shaped flatbed desktop will do
is click loudly when hooked up to power, so its power supply must need
attention.
To be honest, I would have thought this kind of problem would be
quite common in classic computers. Aren't compact Macs susceptible to
power supply troubles as well? Anything that's lasted from 1990 and
before is daring the odds with component lifetimes.
John
John,
Thanks for confirmation on the final revision Power
Mac G4. Yes, the Mirror Drive Door models are great, and mine runs
Tiger very nicely - and handles Leopard reasonably well.
There were power supply issues with early compact
Macs, particularly the Mac
Plus.
Dan
Thoughts on the Windows Death Spiral
From Jordan Sisk:
Dear Dan,
First of all, thank you so much for publishing Low End Mac! I've
been a daily reader since the Intel Macs came out in 2006. It was your
site as well as one of my close friends who convinced me to buy my
first low-end Mac, an iMac G4
1 GHz. Before that I had been using Windoze for 8 years, and
my mom's college Mac Plus before that.
I am writing to say that I really appreciate the Windows Death Spiral
article. I first looked at Frank Fox's article about Paul
Thurrott's piece, and when I saw the headline I immediately thought
that something was out of whack. I then read Thurrott's article and
clicked out of it about halfway through. Then I read your piece and
realized just how good you and the entire Low End Mac community of
writers are at portraying the facts in a straight way so that all of us
readers can see the truth right away.
It is that lack of fact and truth that keeps me away from many
Windows fanboy sites and articles. Unfortunately, even most PC
magazines bash Apple products and services without giving the readers
the facts in a straight way. And then there's Microsoft always trying
to invent the next iKiller... :)
Thanks again for keeping the info on LEM high quality and easy to
read!
Jordan Sisk
Jordan,
Thanks for writing. One of the things I like about Low
End Mac is the diversity of opinions. Frank Fox has one take on things;
I have a slightly different perspective. We don't try to speak with one
voice, and we sometimes disagree on things. That's healthy.
It's when we see tripe like Thurrott's that we really
want to jump in and debunk the nonsense. Frank did it by pointing out,
as HP has recently reiterated, that a whole lot of Vista sales are
really Vista licenses for Windows XP installations. I did it by adding
the Mac and Windows installed base figures and graphically showing the
decline of Windows.
I hope we don't come across as Apple fanboys too
often. We love the computers, the operating system, and such, but we
also realize that Apple and Steve Jobs are not (quite) perfect.
We'll keep the analysis coming.
Dan
The Ticking Duo Dock
Dan and Steffen:
Well here's the report - I printed out the webpages Steffen gave the
link to for repairing the Dock's power supply and showed the guy who
was selling the Dock what I needed to do, lamenting about my lack of
soldering skills, and he said, "Well, I think I should be able to do it
myself." So I helped him get the case open, and then he used a hand
drill (!) to grind out the rivets holding the power supply together.
Then we realized the failed capacitor was hidden under the circuit
board, and decided the rest of the job would need to wait until
later.
I came back a couple of days later to help him out with the rest of
the job as much as I could, and as I walked in the door I saw he had it
all put back together again, and it was just as he was sliding the Duo
into the Dock. Lo and behold, it sucked the Duo in and "whoosh", the
startup sound played! What a surprise; I didn't think he'd get it done
so soon and so easily. He said he wound up using a 120 farad cap
instead of a 100 farad one, but that it was within tolerance.
Now all I gotta do is figure out where to find a new battery, since
this Duo's is dead, and how to install a SCSI drive in the Dock (or
rather, how to snake a ribbon cable from below the motherboard in the
drive compartment, up to where the connector is). Plus one guy on
DuoList has an external ethernet-to-WiFi
access point attached to his, and I can't figure out what he plugs it
into, since the Duo only has serial and modem telephone ports. Unless
he carries a Minidock around with him.
Thanks again guys,
Fletch
Fletch,
Thanks for sharing your success. I've been
corresponding with Sean Cleary, the author of that page on repairing
the Duo Dock, and we'll soon be mirroring it on Low End Mac. It's a
great resource.
I suspect the guy on DuoList has an ethernet NuBus
card in his Dock.
Dan
Bargains Galore
From Fletch:
Well here's the final tally after we finished clearing that guy's
office out. For $125, I got the Gigagbit Power Mac G4, the
PowerBook Duo 2300c and
repaired DuoDock II, keyboards for both, an old LaserJet 4P printer
that had only 25,000 pages printed in its lifetime, an almost-as-old
Canon 11x17 inkjet printer with a Mac serial port (and all documents
and software for both printers), an old SCSI Zip Drive, a set of
powered speakers, two whole floppy disk flipfile boxes full of old Mac
software, System 7.5.3 boxed, a grab bag of half-a-dozen or so old RAM
sticks, and a few power strips and superlong ethernet cables.
For another $40 from two other sources I got the 733 MHz Digital
Audio G4 CPU and a 256 MB stick of RAM for the G4, and three old cheapo
scanners to see if I could get working (an Agfa SnapScan 1212u, an HP
ScanJet 3300C, and a Umax Astra 3400).
This is my best old-stuff deal since my Great Vintage Macs List
Trade of 2003, when I got an LC, LC II, LC III, IIci, and two monitors
for a busted microwave oven.
Thanks for all your help again Dan.
Fletch,
Quite the bargain! If you're not happy with the
scanner software or can't get these older scanners working with
OS X, check out the VueScan
scanner software from Hamrick Software. It can give new life to a
lot of old scanners, including the Minolta Dimage III film scanner I
have which otherwise doesn't have any OS X support.
Dan
CompactFlash Card as Solid State Disk
From Al Pawlowski:
Got the 4 GB Samsung "280x" cards and have them installed. In my two
Duo 2300c's, they seem to operate overall about like the 2 GB 5400 rpm
IDE drives they replace; I am satisfied and plan to leave them in. They
do seem a bit faster on most reads. Supposed to read/write at 36
Mbyte/sec average and 20 Mbyte/sec minimum.
In the P3 500 ThinkPad with XP Pro SP3 (workgroup mode), it seemed
overall slower than a 5400 rpm drive, enough so that I would not
replace the drive unless I badly wanted SS operation.
The Samsung's do both seem at least 50% faster than the 16 GB A-data
I tried.
Al Pawlowski
Al,
Thanks for sharing your findings. Flash memory writes
slower than it reads, and the more an operating system depends on
virtual memory, the more that can be a problem. This is one of the
reasons Solid State Drives don't tend to do especially well with Vista
- and Windows XP may be suffering from the same issue. More RAM is
probably key to overcoming the problem.
Glad to hear you've improved your performance so
much.
Dan
Frank Fox's Psystar Commentary
From Matthew Zehe:
Hello:
I would like to add my comments to the dialogue sparked by
Frank Fox's Apple v.
Psystar commentary.
First, I would like to complement the tone of the dialogue. Civility
should come as natural as breathing and be just as essential. However,
in the Internet world, this is not the case (just check out the
comments on Paul Thurrott's site). I am impressed with this dialogue,
and I have always been impressed with this site, after ten years of
reading it, and its maintenance of the civility of its discourse.
Thanks to all!
I don't know a whole lot about the arena in which this suit will
play out, so I don't have an opinion as to whether Apple will win (my
gut says yes). However, I have a few observations.
I believe that since Psystar bundles with its hardware the system
software it bought from Apple (presumable at retail), it will argue,
among other things, along the same lines as the cloners did - that it
doesn't pilfer from from Apple's market share, but rather expands it.
Apple sold to Psystar a copy of software it wouldn't otherwise have
sold. Thus, Apple profits from that sale. Apple doesn't lose, because
Apple wouldn't have sold that copy of software, nor would it have sold
the computer that came with it, without Psystar's willingness to hit
the price point on its hardware that its target market craves (a market
Apple won't reach under its current pricing scheme).
I am an attorney, but I do not practice in intellectual property, so
I don't know much about EULAs. But my guess is that the successful EULA
suits protect the consumer, not a business, and especially not a
competing business. The arguments around EULAs seem to swirl around
whether the consumer, not a competing business, is getting shafted.
This would explain why distribution of one copy of software on
eBay by a consumer-turned-eBay-seller is not pursued (the EULA
would require the seller to remove the software from all of the
seller's devices - how much does that actually happen?), and why also
not pursued are users who install a Mac OS on foreign hardware, or even
publish on how to install on foreign hardware.
Comparing the distribution of Windows Vista to the distribution of
Mac OS is like comparing Apples to oranges - Microsoft specifically
licenses its software, and it is not a hardware provider for devices
running its own OS's, except for maybe the Xbox. Apple, on the other
hand, requires in its license that the Apple OS run on
Apple-manufactured hardware.
I think that Xbox may provide a thought-provoking, if not
necessarily complete, analogy. Apple attaching its OS to its hardware
is similar to the game hardware manufacturers attaching their specific
OS to their hardware. The analogy isn't obvious, because dedicated game
hardware producers don't expose the OS very often. But would Sony
tolerate the transplant of its PlayStation 3 OS onto hacked hardware
produced by a fly-by-night Internet retailer? Would it succeed?
More relevant to this conversation, would Sony succeed even if the
retailer was fashioning its own boxes with ROM chips transplanted from
PlayStations purchased at retail (and producing profits from the use of
generic, off-the-shelf components in its hacked systems)? Isn't this
argument akin to the argument regarding Psystar's resale of Apple
software purchased off-the-shelf?
Or, for that matter, would Microsoft succeed with a similar
challenge to its Xbox technology? The argument was offered that if EA
linked its games to a specific (presumably EA-produced) controller,
wouldn't that be illegal? Apparently not, since similar activity
linking software to hardware occurs all the time in the gaming
industry. To play Xbox games, you need the Xbox OS, which requires an
Xbox to run. Anyone play the Halo games on a WII yet?
I would expect Psystar to reply that the game console manufacturers
don't offer their system software for sale decoupled with the hardware,
as Apple does. I would expect Apple to rejoin that the console
manufacturers are different from the PC manufacturers in that the
hardware and software of PCs aren't intended to be upgraded at the same
time, as are the game consoles. The complications are endless, and
endlessly fascinating.
Regardless of the outcome, I don't blame Apple any more than I blame
any other corporation for vigorously defending the unauthorized use of
its intellectual property. Nobody argues that Psystar's use of Apple's
intellectual property is authorized by Apple (as Microsoft did
defending its licensing agreement with Apple in the 80's). The
controversy here is only whether Apple's limitations on its
intellectual property are legal. If Apple is going to put the
limitations in place, why holler at them for then trying to enforce the
limitations? Once a person reads that certain practices regarding
intellectual property are prohibited by the creator of that property,
can that person realistically expect to disregard those admonitions and
not suffer the consequence of, at best, the costs of successfully
defending its practices in court?
Apple's innovations have, over decades, hugely enhanced the
interaction of millions with the insular universe of technology. Apple
creates and sustains a sense of wonder and possibility in the
technological universe in a way that no other company can touch. Apple
may lose this suit, but if Apple believes that it must protect its
intellectual property in this fashion in order to continue operating in
this tradition, that's okay by me.
Thanks!!
MZ
Matthew,
Thanks for writing. We firmly believe in meaningful
dialog on Mac-related issues, and that requires civility. Ranting about
things and bashing people for the opinions they hold may get you
noticed, but it doesn't get you respect or create meaningful dialog.
(Not that we expect Paul Thurrott to pay any attention to what we
write....)
I think Apple was wise to give Psystar enough rope to
hang itself. If Psystar had merely made a clone that end users could
install Mac OS X on, I don't think they would have incurred
Apple's wrath. If Psystar were an authorized Apple software reseller
and sold it with its clones, I don't think Apple Legal could have done
anything.
But Psystar built a clone and sold it with a copy of
Mac OS X installed fully aware of the terms of the EULA. That was
enough to get Apple's attention, and then when Psystar downloaded
Apple's Leopard update, modified it, and made it available on its
website, it crossed the line. There is no way that Psystar is
authorized to modify and distribute Apple's copyrighted software. Case
closed, at least from my perspective.
We'll see how it plays out in court, but I doubt
Psystar will survive the encounter.
Dan
Return vs. Enter Keys
From John Harrison:
In your recent article, Toward a Better Computer Keyboard, you
state:
Return and Enter labels
On PCs, they're both marked Enter. There's no need to
have one key marked Return and the other Enter, which Apple has been
doing for 20 years now. Whatever the label, they do exactly the same
thing.
Actually they don't do the same thing. In most programs they do, but
there are programs in which there is a distinction. The most common of
these is Excel, in which I believe that Return goes to the beginning of
the next row and Enter proceeds in whatever direction you've been
navigating in, be it down or to the right.
An easy to test distinction is in iTunes, in which you can use the
arrow keys to select a song. Return will play it while Enter will
select the song title for renaming.
In any case I think that the Enter key is going the way of the dodo,
so perhaps this isn't a worthwhile nitpick.
The MouseDream keyboard.
Thanks for the column. Anything that pressures keyboard makers to
create the perfect keyboard is very welcome. Currently there is no such
beast, though that
MouseDream thing looks like it comes close.
later,
John
John,
Thanks for writing. I think the fact that Apple no
longer has separate Enter and Return keys on its notebooks or the
wireless aluminum keyboard speaks volumes to the distinction being dead
as a dodo.
I have to say that it's about time someone created a
new keyboard that touch typists could use with almost no adjustment -
no strange "ergonomic" shapes, no different alignment of the keys, no
moving constantly used keys (such as Shift and Tab) away from their
current locations. The MouseDream design eliminates that not quite
useless Caps Lock key while providing a pointer you can access from the
keyboard - brilliant.
MouseDream is practically perfect - expected key
placement, dedicated navigation keys, and full sized arrow keys. Add
Esc and F1 through whatever across the top, and you've got a great
keyboard design for notebooks (maybe even the 13.3" MacBook) as well as
desktop user who don't want or need a numeric keypad.
Dan
Mac Musings for a Better Keyboard
From Anthony Turenne:
Dan,
I enjoyed your article and agree that the current keyboard layout
could be improved. I ALSO OCCASIONALLY HIT THE CAPS LOCK and Help keys
by accident. As for the Return and Enter keys, they do not do the same
thing in all applications. Excel sometimes can tell the difference, and
some dialog boxes cannot be dismissed with the Enter key, you need to
press Return or use the mouse button. Also, the Escape key is
invaluable for users of PowerPoint to terminate a presentation that is
being developed so that a slide can be edited, or to stop a
presentation in the middle if the time for it has run out. It is very
conveniently located for this purpose.
As for proposed keyboards, my favorite is the Das Keyboard Ultimate ;)
Tony Turenne
Tony,
Thanks for writing. I can see where an unmarked
keyboard would have a certain geek cred, but I don't think I could ever
get used to it - even though I've been a touch typist since high
school.
Dan
Apple's Excellent Keyboards
From Andrew Fishkin:
Great article Dan!
As you know from my Model M
article, keyboards are near and dear to my heart, or at least my
fingers. On my Macs, I take the rather draconian step of disabling Caps
Lock in System Preferences, though that is annoying when I need to type
in ALL CAPS, which comes up occasionally. For serious writing projects
I still prefer my trusty old ThinkPad precisely because of IBM (now
Lenovo's) take on CAPS LOCK. They have a little utility that allows the
user to add a delay to certain keys, including CAPS LOCK. I can enable
CAPS LOCK by pressing the key and holding it a few seconds. A single
short tap will do nothing, but the long, continuous press engages the
key with the same deliberate action required to disable it.
I also like the IBM keyboard layout's inclusion of both delete and
backspace, which is faster than using FN+Delete to get true
forward-delete functionality. Other than those minor issues though,
Apple's keyboards are excellent. Like the guy with the blog, I love the
aluminum USB keyboard and have one both at my home and my office. It is
so refreshing when using a laptop to have almost no change in layout or
feel when moving from desktop to laptop keyboards.
Cheers,
Andrew
Andrew,
I like the idea of having essentially the same layout
on desktop and notebook computers, and I just love working on a good
keyboard (like my aging Logitech). The right keyboard just gets out of
the way.
I applaud IBM's take on Caps Lock, which solves the
problem without relocating or removing the key. Apple, here's an idea
worth picking up even if you have to pay a royalty to use it!
Dan
Insert Key Troubles
From Alan Zisman:
Dan:
A couple of comments on your keyboard article...
- If you find the cable on a USB keyboard too short, USB extension
cables can be added very cheaply - I've just bought a bunch of these
for my school (so that kids with USB memory sticks won't have to fuss
with plugging them in at the back of our older desktops), paying $1.50
for 3' extension cables and $2.00 for 6' ones at a local Dollar
Store.
- The biggest problem key that I see at the (PC-using) elementary
school where I teach is the Insert key; kids - and even teachers - hit
it by mistake, and suddenly their word processor is in overwrite mode
rather than the default insert mode. There's usually some sort of
notice of this, but users generally don't notice that. All they know is
that suddenly the computer is 'eating' up text, and they don't know how
to stop it.
- Alan
Alan,
Yeah, Big Lots and dollar stores can be great places
for finding things like computer cables on the cheap.
Thanks for the note on the Insert key. I'm sure that
will help a few people know what to do the next time it happens to
them!
Dan
Keyboard Design
From Ian Baker:
Hello Dan,
I enjoyed your Musings on keyboards. Any change is going to upset
someone. One product for which I program makes frequent use of the
Insert key, perhaps because it's spare with no obvious use.
Using AppleWorks spreadsheets, I had it configured so that one
Enter/Return key moved to the next cell below, one to the next cell to
the right. Very useful, and missed in Numbers.
The Ctrl key position may be second nature, but unfortunately it
also has to have a third nature for those who use Macs and PCs. The key
labelled Ctrl may be bottom left on an Apple keyboard but the functions
like Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V on the PC use the Apple/Command key, which
is next to the Space bar.
Anyway, I believe changes should be made for the greater good, even
if I lose a favourite anomaly. With that in mind, here are my
votes.
Get rid of the Caps Lock key, which I only use by accident. A side
benefit is that it might stop the odd person from typing in all
caps.
Get rid of the numeric pad. Squeeze up the arrow keys and lose Page
Up/Down etc. The mouse can now move six inches to the left reducing
strain on the right arm. (The latter said with feeling.) You can
deduce from this that I like using the mouse for navigation more than
keys. I know a lot of people don't like reaching for the mouse, but if
it weren't so far away they might not mind so much.
If I ever buy a new iMac, I would opt for the wireless keyboard even
if it had wires.
Best regards,
Ian Baker
Ian,
I got a real kick out of your last line. :-)
The original Macintosh keyboard didn't have a numeric keypad - or arrow
keys. Or navigation keys. The idea what that you had to use the
mouse.
The original Macintosh keyboard.
Apple got smart and realized that arrow keys made
sense, introducing them along with the numeric keypad with the Mac
Plus, although they weren't yet in the inverted T configuration we're
used to today.
Macintosh Plus keyboard.
From there, the keyboard just grew huge with the 1987
introduction of the Extended Keyboard.
I know I'd be lost without the arrow keys, but I could
get by without the number pad. As you note, that could easily trim 6"
from the width of the keyboard. Apple's current wireless keyboard goes
a bit too far by eliminating full-sized arrow keys and dedicated
navigation keys.
Dan
Needed and Unneeded Keys
From Bill Scott:
While I agree with 99% of what you said, I have to say "Wait a
minute, there!" to one suggestion.
"Return and Enter labels
"On PCs, they're both marked Enter. There's no need to
have one key marked Return and the other Enter, which Apple has been
doing for 20 years now. Whatever the label, they do exactly the same
thing."
In AppleWorks, and perhaps other word processors, Return starts a
new line or new paragraph, while Enter starts a new page. There are
times when you need that functionality. In spreadsheets, Return can be
used to go down to the next cell, while Enter can be used to go
sideways to the next cell, very handy when entering a lot of
numbers.
I applaud your effort to move Caps Lock. I hit it at least once per
day when I meant to type an A, and get a line of capital letters that I
have to erase and retype. But please don't remove Tab. It's very handy
for filling in forms on the screen, using Tab to jump from one box to
the next, and in many cases auto-filling in the form as it jumps. You
can move it up to the seldom-used Esc spot, but keep it in that
area.
You never addressed the Del X key, near the Help key. Have you ever
used that Del key? And while Num Lock is no longer used, I use the
Clear function a lot when I am using the calculator program, so it's a
keeper.
Thanks for your article, maybe it will spark a debate, but human
inertia - doing things the way we've always done them - is hard to
overcome.
Bill Scott
Bill,
Thanks for writing. I don't pretend to have all of the
answers, but I hope I've come up with some good questions. I have used
the forward Delete key rarely, mostly when I was doing book design and
dealing with small type on the screen. You place the cursor as best you
can and then use whatever delete key does what you want. And I'm sure
that 98% of computer users never use it.
I've never used a program that used the Pause/Break
key, but I can see where it might be useful.
Most of all, I want to eliminate the headaches caused
by accidentally toggling the Caps Lock key. Oh, and Help. The other
suggestions are icing on the cake.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
