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This and That
Other highlights of the trip include an Old Leghumper beer from the Thirsty Dog in Copley, Ohio, a T-shirt from the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame on the Lake Erie waterfront, and a visit to The Apple Store in the Easton Town Center shopping district of Columbus, Ohio. Now, if you draw a straight line from Graysville, Indiana, to Cleveland, Ohio, it certainly doesn't come anywhere near Columbus, Ohio. But, since the planners of our Interstate highway system felt it important to route us through a community containing an Apple Store almost right on the way, who am I to complain! The Easton Apple Store
I tried both and found them quite responsive, although the Classic environment seemed to take just as long to launch on them as it does on my 300 MHz G3! The machines don't feel fragile in the least and I quickly forgot the "Lump, stick, rectangle" configuration while working on one. Having given one machine as good a workout as one can (with a faithful, friendly store employee watching), I'll still have to reserve final judgment on the new offering. Having used one, however, greatly increased my estimate of the new line's chance of success. These are serious computers wrapped up in futuristic garb. Probably the coolest thing that happened while in the store was watching my Novell-Windows-PC techie wife get swept away playing with the twin 800 MHz tower that had the 22" cinema display! Annie couldn't take her eyes off the screen...until I told her what just the display cost. Just as it took time to get Annie to finally say, "I do" eight years ago, it's taking time to convert her to the Mac platform. While she just passed her first Microsoft MCP certification, she now does all of her web browsing at home on MY MAC! She snarls at Internet Explorer and still leaves applications running by just clicking the upper left corner box, thinking she's quit the app, but she also isn't afraid to troubleshoot a Mac in distress.
At one point both of us were amused as a father purchased a "snow" iMac and software for his young daughter. The iMac box with around 15 software boxes in two stacks on top was far taller than the youngster! Lucky girl! Annie was drawn to both the high end towers with their flat panel displays and the 14" iBook. While she still doesn't like the iBook keyboard, it appears to have been greatly improved since the model I tested last May. The trackpad looks completely different. Based on Annie's reactions, if Apple can get knowledgeable computer users in the door to the Apple Store, they're going to be very successful. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Hey, I just threw in that boldface title to keep you reading. There absolutely wasn't anything ugly about the Apple Store. "The good" you've already seen above. "The bad," if there is any, is the lack of third party hardware. If you want an internal CD burner for an older Mac, I didn't see any. Of course, there was a really enormous person and salesman effectively blocking that small portion of the store. It may be that Apple has decided to leave the independent dealers an area of exclusivity. It also may be that shelves and racks of cords and peripherals and stuff don't fit the slick new Apple Store image. And it may be that all that stuff was just hidden behind those folks who appeared not to move a step in half an hour. (Does that say something positive about the amount of staff and attention to customer needs? I think so!) It also seemed really, really strange to see Mac OS X running on every Mac in the store! BeHierarchic for Mac OS X...in about a month Fabien Octave wrote this week to say that he is hard at work on BeHierarchic for Mac OS X. He wrote, "I decided to rewrite everything from the ground up. Of course it took much more time than I expected, but I guess I will be able to get a beta running soon (about 1 month)." There are lots of good competing products on the market already. But Fabien has always taken a little more time (and possibly a little more care) in releasing his updates than some other software authors. While I really hated to bug him about the update, I've often plugged and beta tested previous releases of BeHierarchic, so I imposed upon him last week with an email inquiring about whether there will be a BeHierarchic for Mac OS X. It was gratifying to receive such a prompt, courteous, and informative reply. I'd much rather have it right than quick and buggy. New and Updated Freeware Travis East has updated his excellent cross-platform FractionCalc freeware to version 1.2. Electricalc 2.0.1 is also available as a freeware Mac download in either Classic or Carbon versions. Pertinent Columns Joe Taylor sent along a link to a George Will column, Factoring education, family into the lives of children. I've never been terribly fond of Mr. Will's opinions, but also have found him to be a pretty independent thinker, not totally subservient to the ultraconservative right. I may have to rethink my politics a bit as applied to George Will, as I think he's pretty well nailed down in this column what's wrong with education in America. I also suspect that no one in power will listen to what he says one bit. In Schweiker, Street name school overseers, Susan Snyder of the Philadelphia Inquirer tells about the five-member School Reform Commission appointed by Pennsylvania Governor Mark S. Schweiker and Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street to oversee the state takeover of the Philadelphia public schools. Snyder reports the issue of whether Edison Schools Inc. will be hired as a consulting or managing firm remains open to further discussion by the commission. SchwabLearning.org Weekly Postings This week the SchwabLearning.org begins a new series of expert columns, featuring Dr. Gordon Sherman. Dr. Sherman "has been Director of the Dyslexia Research Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, and Assistant Professor of Neurology (Neurosciences) at Harvard Medical School. In addition, Dr. Sherman is the Immediate Past-President of the International Dyslexia Association." His first column concerns medical research about the brain and dyslexia, Structural Brain Differences. Other new items this week from the SchwabLearning.org: Quick and Dirty Be gentle with me, folks. Today's posting is clearly a quick and dirty attempt to cover a whole lot of material in a very short time. Our trip to Cleveland was obviously something more than a weekend getaway and will have to be repeated several times in the near future. (And downtown Cleveland can really be pretty cool.) Postings to this site will undoubtedly become somewhat irregular in the weeks to come, as we journey to and from the clinic. I do not intend for this site to become one of the many Mac sites that go up with a bang for a few months and then wind up not being updated for days, weeks, and months on end. If you have suggestions, news ideas, etc., please . Security Now #1 with Microsoft? Under heavy criticism for the many security lapses in Windows XP, Internet Explorer, and Outlook, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates issued a memo to Microsoft employees on Tuesday (leaked on Wednesday) saying "the company intends to shift from focusing on features to spotlighting security and privacy."
In a related story this week, eWeek's Peter Galli reports Automatic Updates Give XP Users New Headaches. Galli relates that the automatic updates for security and other corrections are coming out so fast that IT managers are swamped as to what all the patches do. He also notes that some managers are finding the "fixes cause new problems." New and Updated Software RPN Calculator has been updated to version 1.55. It's available for Macintosh in Carbon, PPC, and 68K versions. Synergy Creations has updated their Periodic Table shareware to version 3.0.4 and their freeware ConverTable Planets to version 1.2. Pertinent Columns Richard Rothstein, writing for The New York Times, takes a look at what liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans believe they got in the new education reform act in Created: Bigger U.S. Role; Evolving: What the Role Is (free registration required). Low End Mac's Jeff Adkins talks about the need for software to manage and use standards and benchmarks in Educational Standards and Benchmarks on the Web and in the Classroom. Have a great weekend!
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Having just returned from a romantic, long weekend getaway to beautiful downtown Cleveland, Annie and I are home recovering from "truck lag." (Hey, anywhere is beautiful when you're with your "honey!") We don't have family in northern Ohio, but did get to visit with some very competent folks at the 
The Easton Apple Store had two new 2002 iMacs on display. Both were well equipped with 256 MB of RAM and plenty of software. They drew a good bit of attention from the steady stream of customers through the store, but one didn't have to wait long to get to use one of them.
Watching someone who is clearly not in the Macintosh camp was a good indicator to me of how the Apple Stores might fare in the long run. Both Annie and I were blown away with the quantity of software available. She repeatedly marveled at the variety and quantity of software, saying, "People need to see this to appreciate how much software there is for the Mac."| Previous Week |
©2002 Steven L. Wood