By Gary Kirchherr
With all there is to complain about in the wonderful world of personal computing, I'm glad to be able to find something to praise for a change. And as a beleaguered Macintosh user, CompUSA's Macintosh "store within a store" deserves kudos on many fronts.
I said in my Feb. 3 column that I liked the idea. And now that I've actually seen the idea in place, I like it even more.
Last month I visited Anchorage's own CompUSA shortly after the chainwide grand opening of the Apple stores within stores. And I'll admit, I didn't go with the highest of expectations. I was expecting at least the Macintosh stuff in one place, and would have considered even that an improvement over the scavenger hunt that shopping for Mac merchandise usually is at large computer stores.
Imagine, then, my pleasant surprise to find a fair-sized and clearly marked corner of CompUSA set aside for Macintosh merchandise. Demo models of both desktop CPUs and PowerBooks were out, and working! Even an eMate was displayed. Displays of peripherals, such as keyboards and modems, were organized. But the best part was the software - lots of it. And not garbage, but the useful and popular stuff, up-to-date and reasonably priced. Having a legitimate Macintosh software vendor is nice, especially in Alaska, where consumers have to pay a hefty premium to mail-order outfits just to get them to send merchandise here.
I hope my local CompUSA can keep its store within a store as organized and well-stocked as it is now. I hope CompUSAs across the country can. If they do, the benefit to Macintosh users will prove substantial.
While you're checking out CompUSA, pick up a copy of Symantec's Norton Utilities for Macintosh 3.5. It already is proving well worth the $90 sale price I paid for it.
NUM has been around for years; its staying power is mainly due to the usefulness of Norton Disk Doctor, which looks for and repairs file and volume directory problems; and Speed Disk, which optimizes volumes. Unfortunately, my older version of Disk Doctor didn't work with Mac OS 8, and Speed Disk - well, Speed Disk always was slow. I knew the improved Speed Disk that shipped with NUM 3.5 was supposed to be faster, but didn't buy the package until I grudgingly admitted to myself that I needed Disk Doctor. Don't kid yourself - Apple's Disk First Aid is not a viable substitute.
The biggest benefit of NUM 3.5, I soon discovered, was its medium - it now comes standard on a CD-ROM. I knew this before, and brushed it aside as irrelevant; after all, virtually every software package comes on CD-ROM these days. But on Norton, it makes a huge difference. After all, most of the time you run NUM, you need the applications to be on a startup volume separate from the one you're working on. And the CD-ROM, with its System 7.6 system folder thereon, provides a virtually incorruptible startup volume. No more messing with Zip drives, or using Startup Disk Builder just to make a startup floppy with Disk Doctor that'll work on your particular Mac. Just plug in the CD-ROM, and you're off.
Yes, the new Speed Disk really is much faster than the old one. Further, Symantec got rid of its bloated user manual and replaced it with a booklet that fits in the CD jewel case. The package has a few other new perks, but you get the point. If you updated to Mac OS 8 and haven't got NUM 3.5 yet, do so.
Sure, shelling out bucks for NUM isn't fun, so to ease the pain, here's news of a free update - QuickTime 3.0. The download is hefty - more than 6 megs - but it does have new versions of the standard QuickTime extension, plus updated QuickTime VR and QuickDraw 3D extensions, and the MoviePlayer application. You have to download this cornucopia from Apple's own site.
If you want to read Apple's boring press release on QuickTime 3, be my guest. But the nuts and bolts of it is, the new version has new video and audio capabilities, including a new compression technology. Avie Tevanian, Apple's senior vice president software engineering, gushes: "With new compression technologies and file play back capabilities, QuickTime is required software for any serious Internet user." Hey, if an Apple suit says so, that's good enough for me!
Micro$oft czar Bill Gates' March 3 appearance before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is old news by now. But it was news, an event being reported to all Americans, not just us computer geeks. And that's significant because Joe Six-Pack got a pretty good picture of the state of the PC industry from the testimony on Capitol Hill.
And what did Americans see and hear? As ZDNet's Jesse Berst reported in his March 4 column, Bill Gates sat before the senators and said with a straight face: "Microsoft does not have monopoly power in the business of developing and licensing computer operating systems." Uh huh. An oft-reported rebuttal came from Netscape Communications CEO Jim Barksdale, who, as Berst reports, twisted around in his seat and polled the crowd to see how many audience members didn't use Windows. When only a handful of hands stayed up, he said: "Gentlemen, that's a monopoly." Right on. The visual effect hammers home a message even the pinheads in Congress should be able to comprehend.
Ironically, less than three weeks after the committee hearing, ZDNet was reporting that the Justice Department was expanding its antitrust probe into Micro$oft's "alleged" efforts to wrest control of Java from Sun Microsystems. The article refers to Micro$oft's creating its own, Windows-centric version of Java that undermines Java's "write once, run anywhere" premise.
Just as many now are realizing that all those women can't be lying about Clinton, one must recognize that all these reports on Micro$oft's monopolistic bullying can't be Justice Department showmanship. It's time for Micro$oft apologists to quit their whining about how the big, bad government is undermining Micro$oft's "success" and recognize the monopolistic monster for what it is.
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