Year 2000: Are Macs Safe?
By Rich Barron

How many times have you heard someone say: "I don't have to worry about the Millennium Bug, I've got a Mac!"? Unfortunately, they are wrong. To compound the problem, they are spreading the disease I am obliged to fight -- the truth about Mac and Year 2000 (Y2K) issues.

I've found about 30 Macintosh programs so far that have a problem handling dates in the year 2000. There are even more that the manufacturers of the programs will not test because they think nobody uses their older versions of the software or that the Mac doesn't have a Y2K problem.

Let me explain a bit. We all know about the two-digit years versus four-digit years snafu and a few of us know that not all computers know that Feb 29th, 2000 is a real day (leap year, you know). The Macintosh hardware and operating systems can handle dates past Jan. 1, 2000, and handles the leap year with grace. This is a widely advertised fact and holds true. The problems come when programs ask for a date to be typed in by the user, not grabbed automatically from the OS.

Scary Example #1

FileMaker Pro prior to 2.1 compliant with issues.

If you enter a two-digit year in a date field, FileMaker pro will assume that you are talking about the 20th century (1900s). Fortunately, you can enter four digit years and the program will accept the information. Sure, it's not the current version, but it is such a popular program I am sure there are thousands of people still using it, most of them unaware of the potential problems -- especially if they are using large databases containing two-digit years and plan to continue using the database and entering dates in the 2000s. It may already be too late for some.

Scary Example #2

FileMaker Pro 4.1 - compliant with issues?

1) The "TextToDate(date)" calculation function in FileMaker Pro may not be Y2K compliant. Two-digit years register in the 20th century, according to one user.

2) When manually entering a Y2K date such as "12/3/00" into a database cell, FileMaker Pro properly indexes this as "12/3/2000". However, entering a Y2K date via AppleScript/AppleEvents (e.g. CGI), FileMaker Pro will index "12/3/00" as"12/3/1900". It appears that the method of Y2K date entry determines interpretation.

According to the FileMaker Website, Versions 3.0 and later are smart enough to know which years you meant to enter based on the current year. "If the current year is among the LAST ten years of the century (as in 1990-1999 or 2090-2099), then any two-digit year in the range 00-09 will be treated as a year in the FOLLOWING century. (For example, if it's 1998, then 03 will be expanded to 2003 but 83 will be considered 1983.)"

Scary Example #3

Microsoft Office 98 -- compliant according to the Microsoft website. This is the latest release by the biggest software company in the world a year and a half before the year 2000.

Microsoft Excel 98 -- Compliant according to MS, but some Wizards have Y2K issues. Select date format for cell, select date format xxx-yy (Mar-98 for example) Enter 01-00: Tab: Result will be Jan-00 (correct result).Enter 01-01: Tab: Result will be Jan - (what ever the current OS year is set to, 99 for example) RESULT IS INCORRECT: Should be Jan-01.)

MS Chart (helper program used with Power Point) -- Compliant with issues. Has the same problem noted above for Excel.

An update available at: http://www.microsoft.com/macoffice/y2000.htm may fix these problems. I don't believe the update is installed by default.

For more information and an ongoing discussion of the Mac Y2K issues, please visit my website at: http://www.macnologist.com/y2k/

by Rich Barron
rbarron@exo.com

Just to recap:
Macs WILL NOT SELF-DESTRUCT IN THE YEAR 2000! Some older programs MAY have problems handling the Y2K and I'm sure many problems will be fixed by this time next year. Generally, Macs will not have a problem handling the Y2K. Some pre-90s Macs might have problems, mainly because they run archaic System Software (for instance the Mac 128k will not run anything higher than System 3.2). Apple has certified most Macs to be Y2K compliant, and they have even got an advert in the US featuring HAL 9000 ("Do you remember the year 2000, when computers started to misbehave?"). Go to www.apple.com to see it.
-- Finlay Dobbie, Ed

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