Unpredictable # 53

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CHRIS'S UNPREDICTABLE and OCCASIONAL Newsletter for MAC USERS # 53
11/07/02
Contents Copyright 2002 by Christopher Plummer

This Issue

It's the cusp of the holiday buying season and that brings us to a short and almost TOI (Totally Obsequious Issue). So here it is, news about new products from Apple! Barely even enhanced with fascinating Mac trivia, insightful comments, and personal commentary of questionable merit. Coming SOON, an article about CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, and MP3s. Oh, and MicroWho??. :-)

UPDATES - Jaguar Runs Free for Teachers
NEWS - Apple cuts prices on iBooks!! TiBook gets DVD Burner!! The iPod
from Dell.
UNPREDICTABLE READER FEEDBACK - Just the usual accolades
COMMENTARY- Happy Banned Books Week
GEEK SPEAK REVIEW - SuperDrive, Apple //
OVERLOOKED AND UNDERUSED - coming, really!!
OCCASIONAL Favorite WEB SITE - Who is Ellen Feiss?
Special Bonus Keyboard Commands - Scrolling Sideways

GEEK SPEAK ALERT: No Geek Speak Allowed

Updates

**Jaguar Free to Qualified U.S. Teachers** -- Apple has unveiled "X for Teachers," a new program offering _free_ not-for-resale copies of Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar for eligible K-12 teachers in the U.S. (and, after 24-Oct-02, in Canada) for their personal, educational, and/or research use. The package will feature a "Getting Started with Mac OS X" self-paced training CD-ROM that presumably introduces Mac OS X's key features; also included are Apple's digital hub applications iMovie, iTunes, and iPhoto.

<http://www.apple.com/education/macosxforteachers/>
<http://www.apple.com/ca/education/macosxforteachers/>
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/>
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/oct/17macosx.html>

To qualify, teachers must be currently employed as a K-12 teacher in a public, private, or charter school. Non-teacher school employees, student teachers, higher education faculty, home schools, resellers, and others are not eligible, and there's a limit of one copy of Jaguar per qualifying teacher. Orders must be placed via the X for Teachers Web pages, and orders will be shipped to the teachers' school addresses. The X for Teachers program runs through 31-Dec-02. [GD]
[the above from TidBITS#652/21-Oct-02]
[For heaven's sake, if you're a teacher with a fairly current Mac, take advantage of this great deal! - Chris]

News

Apple Drops Prices - on iBook and enhances PowerBook models!! Let's face it Apple wants to sell more Macs, and thank goodness SOMEBODY inside the castle figured out that a good way to do that is to LOWER PRICES!! So now you can buy the low-end iBook (a beautiful little laptop, sometimes referred to as 'the IceBook') for just $999.00. Call it a GRAND, it's still a great price for a great Mac! Meanwhile, the Titanium Powerbook, my personal favorite, has gained a 60 Gig drive and HOORAY!! a SUPERDRIVE. That means, in addition to all the fun CD, CD-RW, stuff you could already do, you can now BURN DVDs on a Titanium Powerbook! Until now you had to buy a G4 Desktop, or a high-end iMac to do that.
<http://www.apple.com/>

New Apple Stores in NJ and PA!! - Don't know where to go? This weekend (November 9) is the grand opening of not one, but two Apple stores in our area. New Jersey gets a third store with a new one in the Menlo Park Mall in Edison, and Pennsylvania scores its FIRST Apple store at the King of Prussia Mall in...King of Prussia. In case you haven't heard by now, these opening events are kind of...cultish. People stand in line for hours to be the first to get in. At both stores the first 1000 visitors will receive a free Apple t-shirt. There are contests and activities, besides all the usual cool Apple stuff. If you see me there, be sure to say "Hi!".
<http://www.apple.com/retail/menlopark/>
<http://www.apple.com/retail/kingofprussia/>

Feel left out? You can find Apple's stores at the Apple Retail page:
<http://www.apple.com/retail/>

Dell Computer Site to Sell iPods - Well that's what the article said on CBS Marketwatch! I went to the Dell web site and did a search on iPod and got: "TCP ERROR. The system was unable to communicate with the server. The web server may be down." iKid you not!! Does this surprise you? YOU MUST KNOW that buying an iPod to use with your Windows PC doesn't make you COOL. To be COOL you have to BUY A MAC. I don't make the rules. That's just the way it is. And NO I'm not going to post a link to a Pee Cee site in my newsletter. If you want to get your own Dell server crash error, you figure out how to get there. We don't have to buy an iPod from Dell. Because we have Macs! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Unpredictable Reader Feedback

Just the usual Accolades (Thanks!)

Commentary

HAPPY BANNED BOOKS WEEK - "Americans should 'Watch what they say'." - stated Ari Fleischer, White House Spokesman. From those same folks who brought us the Microsoft 'settlement'. Allright you don't want to know about this? Fine. Go read about Ellen Feiss (Occasional Favorite Website, below). Just don't ask me to keep my mouth shut! It's your right to free speech. It doesn't have much to do with Macs, and yet it does. Because as a Mac user you probably believe in having choices.

Here's an excerpt: "This part of the [USA Patriot] Act overrides existing state and federal privacy laws, allowing the FBI to investigate which books have been bought or borrowed by anyone it suspects of being a terrorist--an extremely broad and vague determination. Further it prevents librarians and booksellers from revealing that such a search has taken place, and it bars the press from reporting on such searches." <snip> "The law states, moreover, "No person shall disclose to any other person...that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained" these records.

<http://archive.aclu.org/banned2002/>

Geek Speak Review

SuperDrive - THESE DAYS, meaning in the 21st century, a 'Superdrive', or 'SuperDrive' - whatever - is what Apple calls a CD/DVD drive that will read and WRITE both CDs and DVDs. This drive is available in Macintosh computers, and was probably available in them (as usual) first. Definitely a great thing to have, especially if you have a digital video camera and you like to make movies. The SuperDrive can also be used to store around 5 Gigabytes of DATA, although I believe you might have to buy some third-party utility (such as Toast) to make that work. Back in the previous century, a 'SuperDrive' was what Apple called a 3.5 " floppy disk drive that would read and write 800k, and 1.2 Mb "floppy" disks, not only in the Macintosh native format, and in the Apple // "ProDos" format, but also in the IBM MS-DOS format. SuperDrives were available for both Macintosh and Apple // computers, allowing the two different Apple computers to migrate data back and forth fairly easily. This was a pretty nifty accomplishment, apocryphally attributed to the programming prowess of Apple co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak.

Apple // - One of Apple computer's predecessors to the wildly successful Macintosh line. Many of us believe that the Apple // really was the first Personal Computer. Apple marketing didn't catch onto that idea until the Apple //e, when they labeled the boxes, "THE Personal Computer". The //e was a slightly more enhanced model than the //, usually sold with a super-serial card (to connect to a printer), and which came with an 80 column display. (The "80 column card" was used to provide 80 columns to pre-//e models.) Boy, and I hope I got that all right, because it's been about 20 years since I put one together!!

Occasional Favorite Web Site

Switchers inspire websites! Okay, the Internet can be a strange place. Embrace it, ignore it, do what you like. One of the early Switcher Ads, the one with 'bleep, bleep, bleep, Ellen Feiss, ...a bummer', has made something of a sensation of young Ellen. Is it because she's cute? Or because she appears to be stoned in the ad? Because she says, "It was really good paper!" You decide. Check out this fan site, with lots of links to other Switcher sites, parodies, articles, and so on.
<http://www.ellenfeiss.net/>

Here's her Switcher ad.
<http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/ellenfeiss.html>

At least she's not Gianni Jacklone.
<http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/giannijacklone.html>

Special Bonus Keyboard Commands

(X) Excel Horizontal Scroll - This may be a Jaguar-only tip, I'm not sure. If you have a scroll mouse and use MS Excel v.X, you can use your Scroll Wheel to scroll horizontally. That's right, SIDEWAYS. Just hold down the [Shift] key and scroll. This cool feature supposedly works in other v.X Office apps, but I'm trying to have a MICROSOFT FREE MAC, so I can't tell you if it really does or not. If you can confirm that, write me! I can tell you that it does NOT work in Internet Exploiter 5.2.2 (which comes with Jaguar). Oh well.

And really folks. If you haven't migrated to X yet, start thinking about it. Apple is going to make it harder and harder to stick with the ol'trusty NINE. Speaking of trusty, call your trusty consultant if you need help or advice. (That would be me.)

TFSB

:-)

** CHRIS'S UNPREDICTABLE and OCCASIONAL Newsletter for Mac Users **
Oriented towards, but not exclusively for, Mac Users in Beautiful Western
Central New Jersey. Published Whenever - About Whatever!

Non-profit, non-commercial publications may reprint articles if full credit is given. (Please provide UNPREDICTABLE with a copy.) Others please contact the editor. Accuracy of articles is UNPREDICTABLE and not guaranteed. Caveat lector. Publication, product, and company names may be registered trademarks of their companies.

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SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
My accountant has advised me to come clean in every issue. Yes, I am a consultant and am available to HELP YOU on a one-to-one basis. Macintosh Networking, Internet Connectivity, Desktop Support, Training. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Oh, and Lotus Notes and Domino Adminstration, Development, and Support. Interested in help from a long term MAC Professional? Don't hire some Windows kid who tells you to get rid of your Mac because HE doesn't GET IT! Send me an email:
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TFSB :-)

THE END