TidBITS Issue #271

03 Apr 1995 | Print

New Mac LC Based on PowerPC 603

New Mac LC Based on PowerPC 603 -- Today Apple made a series of announcements re-affirming its commitment to the education market, centering around the introduction of the Power Macintosh 5200/75 LC, the first Macintosh based on the PowerPC 603 processorShow full article

03 Apr 1995 | Print

Adapter Woes

by Mark H. Anbinder

Adapter Woes -- Having trouble getting your model M5140 PowerBook AC adapter replaced? We've received several reports since last week's article (see TidBITS-269) that some representatives at Apple's technical assistance center at 800/SOS-APPL have not been sufficiently informed about the programShow full article

03 Apr 1995 | Print

Emailer Licensed by Claris

by Adam C. Engst

Emailer Licensed by Claris -- Guy Kawasaki's Fog City Software has announced that Emailer, its email client program, will be marketed by Claris when it comes out sometime in the northern hemisphere's summerShow full article

03 Apr 1995 | Print

Radius System 100 "Debuts"

by Geoff Duncan

Radius System 100 "Debuts" -- Last week, Radius announced limited strategic channel shipments of its System 100, a high-end Macintosh clone intended primarily for media-intensive electronic publishingShow full article

03 Apr 1995 | Print

Daylight Savings

by Adam C. Engst

Daylight Savings -- I've never internalized the concept behind Daylight Savings Time since there's the same amount of daylight no matter how you set the clock, but Macintosh users in most parts of the U.SShow full article

03 Apr 1995 | Print

Global Price Drop

by Adam C. Engst

Global Price Drop -- Global Village Communication recently reduced the access charges for its $2,000 OneWorld Internet 28800 product see TidBITS-258). The original hourly charge of $8.95 has dropped to $3.95, thanks to the addition in July of a nationwide access network like SprintNet or the CompuServe Packet Network (until July, the lower rates apply to the current 800 number access method)Show full article

03 Apr 1995 | Print

Triple Conflict: RAM Doubler, CD-ROMs, or 7.5.1?

by Tonya Engst

Several TidBITS readers recently wrote in to let us know that after installing the 7.5.1 update on their Power Macs, they could no longer use or play CDs properly with RAM Doubler enabled (typical problems included not being able to play music and not being able to see files and folders on the CDs)Show full article

03 Apr 1995 | Print

Duo Dock Addiction

by Geoff Duncan

A few owners of the Duo 270c, 280, and 280c have encountered a perplexing problem: every so often a Duo becomes "addicted" to its dock, refusing to boot unless the dock is attachedShow full article

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A few owners of the Duo 270c, 280, and 280c have encountered a perplexing problem: every so often a Duo becomes "addicted" to its dock, refusing to boot unless the dock is attached. The problem is infrequent (estimated to impact less than one percent of all Duo owners using docks), but when it happens, it can hit hard: the Duos often must be returned to Apple for repair. The Duo 210, 230, and 250 do not appear to be susceptible.

The problem is caused by transient charges moving from the dock to the Duo. These charges can damage an FET transistor in the Duo's PDS connector circuitry: if the FET is damaged, the Duo fails to correctly detect the presence of a docking device, and when the Duo is booted without a dock, it thinks a defective dock is connected. The Duo then does exactly what it was designed to do in that situation: it refuses boot at all - no sad Mac codes, no sounds, no display - in an effort to prevent damage to the machine. However, when the Duo is booted with a dock attached, the Duo correctly detects its presence and boots normally.

Docking devices used for Ethernet connectivity appear to be the most susceptible to this problem due to wide variations in network architecture and hardware. Though most networks don't cause problems, some may transfer a transient charge to a Duo when an Ethernet cable (10BASE-T) is plugged in.

Newer Technology - the largest third-party supplier of docking bars - noticed the "addiction" problems associated with the Duo 270c, 280, and 280c, and, working with Apple, determined that a protection circuit present in the earliest three Duo models was left out of the most recent three Duo models. Newer Technology now builds the missing motherboard charge protection circuitry into their docking devices to prevent transient-related problems from occurring.

Users whose Duos have been damaged should contact their Apple dealer about the problem (or contact Apple directly via 800/SOS-APPL) and let them know you are simultaneously contacting your dock vendor for an updated dock. Newer Technology offers a free exchange for affected customers. Remember that simply getting your Duo repaired by Apple doesn't give you the missing charge protection circuitry; you'll need to obtain a dock with the protection circuitry built-in to make sure the problem won't recur.

It's important to note that this problem impacts only a very small portion of Duo owners: paranoia is not justified. If you haven't yet experienced the problem, the odds are very good you never will.

Newer Technology --800/678-3726 -- 316/685-4904
316/685-9368 (fax) -- <techsupport@newertech.com>

Information from:
Newer Technology
John Vaudin <john.vaudin@sentient.co.uk>

03 Apr 1995 | Print

Global Village Goes Platinum

by Mark H. Anbinder

Director of Technical Services, Baka Industries Inc. After months of speculation, Global Village Communication has shipped its 28,800 bps modem series, the TelePort Platinum and PowerPort Platinum modemsShow full article

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Director of Technical Services, Baka Industries Inc.

After months of speculation, Global Village Communication has shipped its 28,800 bps modem series, the TelePort Platinum and PowerPort Platinum modems. The new v.34 modems, selling for $279 and $399 respectively, should be available now.

The TelePort Platinum comes with software for both 680x0 and PowerPC based desktop Macintosh computers, and offers a special feature that takes advantage of the higher-speed serial port capabilities of Power Macintosh and AV Macintosh computers. The PowerPort Platinum supports only 100-series PowerBooks, but also works in Global Village's OneWorld communication servers. Global Village does plan Platinum modem models for other PowerBook series computers, but has not yet announced a specific availability date.

Both modems include the popular GlobalFax 2.5 send/receive fax software and GlobalFax OCR for optical character recognition. In addition, the new TelePort and PowerPort models offer a new fax/ARA discrimination feature that has been on Global Village user wish lists for ages. The TelePort model has a fax/voice discrimination feature; TelePort users can use this feature or the fax/ARA discrimination, but not both. The fax/voice discrimination capability was available on the TelePort Bronze, one of the company's Apple Desktop Bus modems, but has not been available from Global Village since the TelePort Bronze was replaced with the TelePort Bronze II, which lacks the feature. Some other modem manufacturers, including Supra, have offered such capabilities, which depend on the manufacturers' choice of modem chipset.

Global Village has also announced, but is not yet ready to ship, a software enhancement for TelePort Platinum owners with 68040-based Quadra and Centris computers that the company says will dramatically improve serial port performance on these machines. The software, which Global Village plans to distribute electronically at no cost in May, will use software-based data compression techniques within the Macintosh to allow transmission speeds higher than 57,600 bps.

http://www.globalvillag.com/press_release_text/ mac/platinumpr.html

Global Village Communication -- 800/736-4821 -- 408/523-1000
408/523-2423 (fax) -- <sales@globalvillag.com>

Information from:
Global Village Communication propaganda

03 Apr 1995 | Print

TidBITS & Eudora

by Adam C. Engst

My main complaint about Steve Dorner's excellent email program Eudora is that it suffers from the 32K text limit so common to Macintosh programs. This isn't inherently Eudora's fault - after all, Steve currently uses TextEdit (a component of the Mac operating system essentially designed to handle minimal text editing in dialog boxes, scrolling lists, and so on) to provide text services, and TextEdit causes the 32K text limitShow full article

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My main complaint about Steve Dorner's excellent email program Eudora is that it suffers from the 32K text limit so common to Macintosh programs. This isn't inherently Eudora's fault - after all, Steve currently uses TextEdit (a component of the Mac operating system essentially designed to handle minimal text editing in dialog boxes, scrolling lists, and so on) to provide text services, and TextEdit causes the 32K text limit. (Rumor has it that the next version of Eudora, at least the commercial version, will eliminate the 32K limit entirely). Eudora handles this limitation as gracefully as possible, by splitting large messages into multiple chunks, and joining them together seamlessly if you select all of the chunked messages and use Save As from the File menu. Unchecking the Include Headers and Guess Paragraphs checkboxes in the Save dialog ensures that nothing but the original text ends up in the resulting file.

However, it's still a pain to read long messages by opening two windows, and TidBITS has always fallen into the category of messages that Eudora splits. I asked Steve why TidBITS ends up split, since almost all of our issues are under 32K of text. It turns out that for safety, Steve has Eudora set to chunk files at 24K rather than 32K, but as an example of Eudora's flexibility, he also provided a simple method of upping that number to the limit. So, if you read TidBITS in Eudora, and would like to receive it in a single message each week, fire up ResEdit and follow along with me.

Eudora uses two settings to determine where to split files, SPLIT_THRESH and FRAGMENT_SIZE. The rule that governs them is that FRAGMENT_SIZE must be smaller than SPLIT_THRESH, which in turn must be smaller than 32000. In my instructions below, I set the variables 100 bytes apart. This will work fine in most cases, but a problem may crop up if you forward or redirect a long message. Since there will be additional header information in the forwarded message, the recipient's copy of Eudora may split the message, even though it was small enough for a single piece when sent. With really long messages, such as Info-Mac Digests, forwarding may result in odd splitting on the receiving end, since each sent chunk may be split into two pieces when received, doubling the number of chunks received. Thus, it's probably safer, if you plan to forward large messages such as TidBITS issues, to set the difference between SPLIT_THRESH and FRAGMENT_SIZE to 1,000 bytes, or even 2,000. Of course, if you get too close on the low end to the 30,000 character size that most issues come in at, you're likely to have them break into one 30,000 character chunk and one 12 character chunk, or some such nonsense. So, I recommend that you try it my way, and if it doesn't work for some reason, fiddle with the two settings until it works acceptably.

Once you're in ResEdit, choose New from the File menu to create a new resource file. Name it "TidBITS plug-in" and save it somewhere - it will eventually go in your Eudora Folder.

Then, from the Resource menu, choose Create New Resource, choose "STR " (not STR# - Eudora uses "STR " resources to override the STR# resources in it or its settings file) from the scrolling list, and click the OK button. ResEdit promptly creates a new STR resource, ID 128, and opens the window for editing. The window contains an entry with two text fields, titled "The String" and "Data." In the "The String" field, enter 31800 for the FRAGMENT_SIZE setting, and leave the Data field blank. Once you've entered the FRAGMENT_SIZE setting, close the STR ID 128 window. Make sure that resource is selected, and from the Resource menu, choose Get Resource Info. In the Info window, change the ID field from 128 to 6408, and if you wish, enter "FRAGMENT_SIZE" for the name so you'll know what it is if you ever have to go back.

One down, one to go. With the STR resource window still open, choose Create New Resource from the Resource menu again. ResEdit creates another STR resource ID 128 (since we just renumbered the last one). In the "The String" field, enter the SPLIT_THRESH setting of 31900, and again, leave the Data field blank. Close that window, select STR ID 128, choose Get Resource Info, and change the ID to 7619 and the name, if you wish, to "SPLIT_THRESH". Close that window, close the STR window, and save the file.

Note that if you enter something other than a valid number in the "The String" field, you'll seriously confuse Eudora and may cause crashes. I know, since that's what I did the first time I tried this.

One final step. Eudora will only recognize the plug-in if it has the proper creator code, so from the File menu, choose Get Info for TidBITS plug-in (your menu may be slightly different depending on the file name you gave the file). In the window that appears, change the Creator to "CSOm" (without the quotes of course, and that's a capital O, not a zero). Leave the Type field alone. Close the Info window, saving the changes when prompted, and quit out of ResEdit.

Quit Eudora if it was running, and make sure the TidBITS plug-in is located in the Eudora folder. Launch Eudora again, and from now on, files will be chunked at the new sizes. The next time you receive an issue of TidBITS, it should arrive in one piece, and larger files, like the Info-Mac Digest, will arrive in fewer, larger chunks.

If you're a ResEdit weenie, or are feeling lazy, you can simply email away for a copy of this plug-in. Just send email to <tidbits-plug-in@tidbits.com> and my machine will send you a copy. When you get it, debinhex it (if Eudora hasn't already done that for you for some reason), and pop it in the Eudora folder. Quit and relaunch Eudora and you're on your way to getting issues of TidBITS intact. Do keep in mind that if for some reason mail to your site has a lot of header information attached to it, issues may grow too large and will still be split.

Like most things relating to Eudora, the plug-in should work equally well on both Eudora 1.5.1, the free version, and Eudora 2.1.1, the latest commercial version.

Information from:
Steve Dorner
Eudora Q&A stack

ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/quest/mac/eudora/ documentation/Eudora_QA.hqx

03 Apr 1995 | Print

Them's Fightin' Words - Desktop Video's Legal Flamewar

by Geoff Duncan

When the Supreme Court of the United States recently rejected without comment Apple's long-running copyright infringement suit against Microsoft Corporation and others over the "look and feel" of the Macintosh interface, some people in the Mac community got worriedShow full article

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When the Supreme Court of the United States recently rejected without comment Apple's long-running copyright infringement suit against Microsoft Corporation and others over the "look and feel" of the Macintosh interface, some people in the Mac community got worried. What would Apple's lawyers do without that suit? Like loggers - er, "timber harvesting professionals" - in the Pacific Northwest, there no longer seemed to be enough natural resources to sustain them. These lawyers have families and children to feed! You can't take away their livelihood!

Well, we should have had more faith.

First Frames -- As noted in TidBITS-263, in early February Apple filed suit against Microsoft and Intel, alleging both companies knowingly used and distributed low-level driver code originally developed by the San Francisco Canyon Company for Apple's QuickTime for Windows. The code involves DCI, a method which allows improved video performance on a video chipset not directly supported by earlier versions of Video For Windows (VFW). Microsoft disputed the claim, saying it had repeatedly asked Apple to detail its allegations but that Apple had refused. Apple, in turn, said Microsoft had been belittling, refused to talk with Apple about the situation, and had threatened to discontinue Macintosh development if Apple didn't drop OpenDoc. Most industry observers seemed to feel the issue was exaggerated and, frankly, most expected the whole thing to blow over.

Big mistake. Let's just highlight a few details: as soon as Apple filed the suit, Apple and Microsoft immediately engaged in a public relations shoving match, releasing video tapes, open letters, and online propaganda to "clarify" their stances. Apple offered an amnesty program to let Video For Windows developers "continue using the pirated VFW code" for 90 days. Microsoft countered with releases of its own, saying "if Apple sues any developer over use and distribution of Microsoft Video For Windows 1.1d Microsoft will defend any such lawsuit." Apple released videotapes and QuickTime movies allegedly showing that "Apple technology" improved overall performance of Video For Windows. Microsoft countered that Apple's demonstrations were misleading and immediately released a videotape of its own tests, showing no significant performance difference between VFW 1.1d and earlier versions of Video For Windows. In a letter to Apple CEO Michael Spindler, Bill Gates denied threatening to cease Macintosh development and claimed Spindler had repeatedly refused to talk about Canyon matter until additional beta copies of Windows 95 were sent to Apple. Apple countered with more releases and open letters, making some of the materials available via its Web site.

http://www.info.apple.com/aboutapple/ lawsuit.html

Marching Along -- It gets better. In early March, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting distribution of VFW 1.1d. Microsoft immediately announced Video For Windows 1.1e - a version that doesn't contain the disputed code - in order to get around the restraining order and keep its developers happy. (VFW 1.1e has now been released to developers.) Apple - for once - shows some restraint and things were almost quiet for a few weeks.

Then, on 24-Mar-95, Microsoft filed a counter-suit, alleging Apple is conducting an "orchestrated campaign of false and deceptive information" and seeking unspecified damages. Microsoft said the code was commonly used and even owned by someone else before Apple used it in the Windows version of QuickTime. Then, according to Inter@ctive Week, the same day Microsoft filed the counter-suit, Apple discovered that both Intel and Microsoft were continuing to distribute VFW 1.1d via America Online in violation of the temporary restraining order. Microsoft and Intel both removed the software from their forums, but Apple wanted the restraining order made permanent. To add fuel to the fire, Microsoft alleged an Apple employee had been using a pseudonym online to discuss issues surrounding the suit..

http://www.interactive-week.com/~intweek/web/ issues/breaking/break3.html

So Where Are We? -- On 31-Mar-95, U.S. District Judge Robert Aguilar convinced Intel, Microsoft, and Apple to briefly set their flamethrowers aside regarding the permanent restraining order, hopefully sparing a lengthy formal hearing on the motion. However, the motion for a permanent restraining order is only one small facet of this disagreement which has snowballed in the tradition of the finest flamewars ever witnessed online. Judge Aguilar perhaps summed it up best: "There's no reason," he said, looking out over a courtroom of nearly 20 lawyers, "that counsel of your experience can't work something out."

Just wait. I'll bet there is.

Information from:
Apple propaganda
Microsoft propaganda
Pythaeus

TidBITS Watchlist

Customize Open/Save Dialog Sidebars

Recent TidBITS Talk Discussions

TidBITS#271/03-Apr-95

New Mac LC Based on PowerPC 603

Adapter Woes

Emailer Licensed by Claris

Radius System 100 "Debuts"

Daylight Savings

Global Price Drop

Triple Conflict: RAM Doubler, CD-ROMs, or 7.5.1?

Duo Dock Addiction

Global Village Goes Platinum

TidBITS & Eudora

Them's Fightin' Words - Desktop Video's Legal Flamewar