Contents AppleSauce this month... 4 Peter Carter Presidential Keyboard 6 Frank Wade Pictures 7 Images from the October meeting Peter Carter My Macs and I 8 Then and now... Wacek Jedrzejczak Family video 11 PAL, NTSC, DVD, QuickTime... Judith Watts Clues for healthy computer use 13 ‘Now, to avoid all of these nasty things...’ Brian Plush A Mac OS 10.3 Panther overview 15 New features...
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Contents
Prescript AppleSauce this month... Peter Carter The cat is now out of the bag: Panther is on the dealers’ shelves. In this issue Frank gives us a quick overview of the new features, and we hope to have a demo at the November meeting. As you are aware, the Club is organising a bulk purchase.
AppleSauce this month... Ergonomics used to be a ‘big thing’ in computing, but seems to be getting less emphasis these days. Brian Plush takes a break from discussing graphics in this issue (but the cover is his) to discuss exercises to keep you fit and flexible while you slave over a hot keyboard. I’ve recently taken to balancing on an exercise ball, and my usual exercise is to pull up a few weeds. Whatever your choice of diversion, take a break every now and then.
Presidential Keyboard Frank Wade By the time you read this Mac OS X 10.3 will be available for sale in Australia. There is more information on this major upgrade elsewhere in this edition and at . There will also be a presentation at SAAUC’s November meeting (7 November). This evening will also offer SIGs, and there will be an opportunity to enter a raffle to win a new 12in PowerBook or digital camera.
October meeting Pictures Peter Carter Above left: Getting a close look at the G5 Left: Grant Ward points out G5 features Above right: Part of the screen, with images from one of the demonstration cameras arranged by something like iPhoto on a PC.
Member experience... Then and now... My Macs and I Wacek Jedrzejczak My first contact with computers was while designing transmission towers at ETSA. We used an Adelaide University computer and had an ‘easy’ access to it via a direct line which transmitted data from a punch card reader to the university. Of course, I first had to laboriously fill in data on punch card forms, and these were used by typists to produce the cards.
My Macs and I Translators and Interpreters examinations and qualified as a professional interpreter and translator, English to Polish and Polish to English. I already possessed an Olivetti typewriter specially ordered with Polish characters which helped me to produce translations of documents. This was, however, ‘old technology’ and the next natural step was to progress to a computer.
My Macs and I inkjet StyleWriter which produced a much better definition of characters. Four years elapsed before I changed the computer again. I wanted to be able to access the Internet and needed a faster computer with more RAM and a larger hard drive. I chose the Power Mac 7220/200. And as unbelievable as it may seem, I still use it today, although I added more RAM to it, replaced the CD drive with a CD burner and ‘upgraded’ to Mac OS 8.6.
Sending video PAL, NTSC, DVD, QuickTime... Family video Judith Watts I have long been envious of people who have family living in New Zealand, UK and other PAL friendly countries as they are able to effortlessly send video tapes to their kin. Our son resides in Alabama USA: NTSC country. We have tried a number of ways to deal with the video situation but had resorted to saving items for Kirk to view when he visits Adelaide. Now the situation seems even more complicated with the introduction of DVDs.
Family video and realized that appropriate software was probably most of my answer. I was told that it was possible to save video onto CD and if it is saved in a Windows compatible format Kirk should be able to read it. One evening I borrowed a Beatles package from the SAAUC library containing one of their movies recorded many years ago in QuickTime video. Kirk has QuickTime on his PC... Hmm... The Panasonic video camera easily connects to the composite video port on the 5200CD or the Mac G3.
Ergonomics ‘Now, to avoid all of these nasty things...’ Clues for healthy computer use The CD is full of interesting technical information about your body. There’s not too much, but it sets the scene. Brian Plush Over the next few months I am going to share some of the ideas from a CD in the CD library that everyone should look at at least once called Clues for Healthy Computer Use. No, it isn’t about computer crashes.
Clues for healthy computer use you must listen to your body and do a few little exercises. Even those totally obsessed professional computer games players in South Korea get up and go for a jog every now and then in amongst their 24–48 hour shifts at the computer. If they can, you can! Evidently the jogging keeps them fired up for the next eight hours. A very important posture type of thing to remember is to keep the elbows in. It takes the strain off your shoulders. Hey, that’s a motor sport thing too.
The latest from Apple New features... A Mac OS 10.3 Panther overview getting to the windows on your desktop called Exposé, and high quality video conferencing with iChat AV.” Frank Wade Apple released the long-awaited major update to Mac OS X for sale to Australian customers on Saturday 25 October. This overview is based on rumour, hearsay, magazine articles and Web reports, as it was prepared before the software was publicly available.
A Mac OS 10.3 Panther overview The new Action button brings up a contextual menu based on the current selection. It lets you perform tasks such as aliasing, printing, sending files to the Trash, and labeling files and folders by colour, an old favourite from OS 9. The Finder has a greatly improved search function, similar to the one in iTunes and Mail, which shows results as you type. Exposé Panther’s new Exposé feature can help you quickly sort through the chaos of several applications running at once.
A Mac OS 10.3 Panther overview The second mode brings every window in the current application to the front while graying out the rest of the windows. This can be handy if you have several Photoshop documents open, for example. Select the third mode to momentarily hide all open windows so you can access something on your desktop. This makes it easy to find and open a document, unmount an iPod, or send a file to the Trash. Mail Apple’s free e-mail program, Mail, gains more power in Panther.
A Mac OS 10.3 Panther overview and so on), or end destination (such as a Web site). You can also control which fonts are available in a particular application. In QuarkXPress, for example, you might want to see only PostScript fonts. You can preview a typeface in Font Book and install or disable it (or an entire type family) by clicking on a button at the bottom of the Font Book window. Font Panel has also been updated.
A Mac OS 10.3 Panther overview new preference pane for fax management, called Print & Fax. iChat AV This update to Apple’s instant-messaging application enables audio and video chat with Apple’s $259 iSight camera or another FireWire webcam or camcorders. AppleScript Improvements to AppleScript include a redesigned Script Editor and new ImageEvents commands.
Reading ‘This ebook has been brought to you by the letter X and the number 3’ Take Control ebooks Peter Carter The team at TidBITS has launched a new series of ebooks on topics of interest to Mac users, the first two on upgrading to and customising Mac OS X 10.3. They’re PDFs done right with bookmarks, live Web links, and so on, and can be read on screen or printed. The idea is to publish items that would be too large for magazine articles but not big enough to warrant printed books.
Key software Matching System and system Which Mac System version should you be running? Frank Wade Computers are doubling in speed and dropping in price about every six months. This and the size and complexity of modern programs may mean that you need to upgrade to remain productive.
Which Mac System version should you be running? and limited numbers of small files. There are many other options, including a second hard disk (internal or external), ZIP or JAZ drives, Super Drives, which write data to both conventional floppies and 120MB removable disks and USB flash drives. If you have a CD burner then you can back up your data to a CD. You could also use a second Mac for back-up purposes! System Released 7.0 1991 7.1 1992 7.5 1994 7.
Which Mac System version should you be running? System Released Cost Supports (See additional notes) Minimum RAM required Hard disk requirements/ Comments 8.0 Aug 97 Originally $139 68040 or PPC 12MB of physical RAM with virtual memory set to 20MB if less than 20MB of real RAM exists Minimum 125MB of HD space for easy install 8.1 Mar 98 $149 from versions earlier than 8.0 $39 from 8.0 68040 or PPC As for Mac OS 8.0 Did not work on some Performas 8.0 to 8.
Which Mac System version should you be running? System Released Cost Supports (See additional notes) Minimum RAM required Hard disk requirements/ Comments 9.0 Oct 99 $149 PPC only 40MB RAM (32MB physical with virtual memory set to at least 40MB) 150–250MB of hard disk space depending on options 9.1 (from 9.0) Jan 01 Free download or $40 on CD-ROM PPC only 64MB RAM (32MB physical with virtual memory set to at least 40MB) 320MB of hard disk space for installation.
Which Mac System version should you be running? System Mac OS X 10.3 Released Oct 03 Supports (See additional notes) Cost $229 G3 or greater processor Minimum RAM required 128MB Hard disk requirements/ Comments 2GB of hard disk space Notes Most versions earlier than the current one are available, but may be difficult to find locally. Apple Australia sells earlier versions. Call their Australia-wide number 133 622 for details.
Which Mac System version should you be running? Later Power Macs with sufficient RAM: 9.x Macs with a G processor: 10.3* *Mac OS X is continuing to evolve and is currently at 10.3. Users of all G processor should consider upgrading if they meet the above specifications, ideally with more RAM than the minimum quoted. The possible exceptions are those with a processor running at less than 350MHz. These Macs will run Mac OS X, but more slowly than Mac OS 9. All very well for dogs to carry bones...
Incoherent comment... Computing at One assumes that Frank is a ‘little-endian’ after he wrote “The October edition of AppleSauce is now available for download...” in a message to members. It’s actually eAS0310.pdf: ‘03’ is the year, ‘10’ the month, in abbreviated ISO 8601 format, which goes year, month, day, hour, minute... Never mind, you found it anyway.
Computing at Entropy House (BTW, you now understand why USB connectors will go in only one way...) A VAX 11/780, just a grey box. In practice, there would be similar grey boxes alongside with extra disk and tape drives, and nearby, the grey wall of VMS documentation In his piece a few pages back Wacek Jedrzejczak mentioned the VAX computer. The name means ‘Virtual Address eXtension’ and VAXen were probably the most popular minicomputer of their day, 1978 to the late 1980s.
Computing at Entropy House How does one edit on a terminal with no mouse? Some editors were rudimentary, and involved chasing an invisible ‘dot’ and ‘mark’ about the screen. Others, like the VMS EDT used arrow keys to move about and the numeric keypad to provide select, cut, paste, insert, etc. commands. Relatively painless, and it was possible to embed escape commands to make the VT100 display bold or flashing, or the printer to print double size, etc.
Computing at Entropy House Every time you shut down your Mac it goes through some routines to make sure that all files are closed properly and everything is tidy. Takes time. (And after a Word .doc that came by e-mail crashed Word twice one gave up on it, and told the sender so.) Had occasion to plug flash drive into client’s Windows Every time you start the Mac up again it runs some rou- XP PC to collect some files for their publication.
Computing at Entropy House And should you want to put wheels under an iMac, you might consider the igo4mac stand, from . Someone at Microsoft, it seems, is unhappy that iTunes for Windows is a closed system, limiting users to purchasing from Apple’s site. Sounds like one utensil accusing another of being covered in carbon.
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