Subject: Info-Mac Digest V18 #54 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="Info-Mac-Digest" --Info-Mac-Digest Info-Mac Digest Tue, 27 Mar 01 Volume 18 : Issue 54 Today's Topics: [*] PhotoMover 2.0 Released for OS X and 9 [*] The Atomic Mac 5.0.0 Carbon Version [*] The Atomic Mac 5.0.0 PPC Version [*] TidBITS#573/26-Mar-01 [A] iBot driver memory leak confirmed [C] Smart-installing MacOS X to prevent future problems second monitor for i-mac Vertus Player Zip drive and old Mac The Info-Mac Network is a volunteer organization that publishes the Info-Mac Digest and operates the Info-Mac Archive, a large network of FTP sites containing gigabytes of freely distributable Macintosh software. 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Info-Mac volunteers include Adam C. Engst, Demitri Muna, Hugh Lewis, Tom Coradeschi, Shawn Bunn, Christopher Li, Patrik Montgomery, Ed Chambers, and Chris Pepper. America Online donated the main Info-Mac machine . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --Info-Mac-Digest Content-Type: multipart/digest; boundary="----------------------------" Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Info-Mac Digest V18 #54" ------------------------------ Date: 27 Mar 2001 From: julian miller To: Subject: [*] PhotoMover 2.0 Released for OS X and 9 Now easily upload photos directly to ClubPhoto, Zing, Sony ImageStation, Nikon.Net, FotoTime and PhotoPoint from any Mac using iView PhotoMover. PhotoMover works with the very best and most popular photo archive sites on the net. Share all your digital photos with family and friends without having to emailmegabytes of images. Your clients, friends and family can order professionally printed copies of your photos on many different media (including photographic paper, posters, t-shirts and mugs) from these sites and have them shipped anywhere. New in Version 1.5 - Fixed reporting canceled uploads to Club Photo - Fixed exiting upload when connection drops during sending. No logger tries to read response. - Fixed/Changed host to deal with file size limit of 1Mb on the old club photo upload host. New host now support files size up to the 4Mb. - Now when scaling is selected, if image is smaller than selected size and is in JPEG format the image is not recompressed. - Added better checking for out of memory. - Added play sound at end of upload. - Now Beeps if an error during upload. - Report file size, if failed to upload and file was read successfully. - Record Album name in log file, if logging is enabled and if host support it. - Added option to scale images to 320 x 240 or 640 x 480 - Added options for changes setting during upload. - Improved status information during upload. - Display Album name in upload dialog (if host support is). - Updated copyright. PhotoMover is the latest application from the creators of the award winning iView Multimedia and iView MediaPro. iView MediaPro is absolutely essential software for digital camera and Photoshop users. iView MediaPro is a media asset management application enjoyed because of its ease of use by hundreds of thousands of beginners and simultaneously iView is powerful enough for large commercial users like the SF Chronicle, Condenast, RIT, Apple Computer, NASA and others. iView Multimedia catalogs and organizes many types of media files including stills, movies, animation, sounds, Canvas, PhotoShop, Quark, SGI, QTVR and a long list of others. iView users can now use PhotoMover to coordinate photos locally with photos on the web. [Archived as /info-mac/comm/inet/photomover-20.hqx; 1350 K] ------------------------------ Date: 27 Mar 2001 From: Chris Smolinski To: Subject: [*] The Atomic Mac 5.0.0 Carbon Version The Atomic Mac is a periodic table of the elements for the Macintosh. In addition to the usual information found in such programs, The Atomic Mac also contains a wealth of nuclear information on each isotope, including half life, decay mode, and daughter products. X-ray data (fluorescence and binding energies) is also available. A molecular weight calculator makes it easy to find the molecular weight of compounds. A shaded diagram showing the ranges of physical properties makes it easy to visualize relationships across the periodic table. The Atomic Mac is a periodic table of the elements for the Macintosh. In addition to the usual information found in such programs, The Atomic Mac also contains a wealth of nuclear information on each isotope, including half life, decay mode, and daughter products. X-ray data (fluorescence and binding energies) is also available. A molecular weight calculator makes it easy to find the molecular weight of compounds. A shaded diagram showing the ranges of physical properties makes it easy to visualize relationships across the periodic table. Photon interaction data, both in tabular and graphical format is also available. [Archived as /info-mac/sci/the-atomic-mac-50-cbn.hqx; 1252 K] ------------------------------ Date: 27 Mar 2001 From: Chris Smolinski To: Subject: [*] The Atomic Mac 5.0.0 PPC Version The Atomic Mac is a periodic table of the elements for the Macintosh. In addition to the usual information found in such programs, The Atomic Mac also contains a wealth of nuclear information on each isotope, including half life, decay mode, and daughter products. X-ray data (fluorescence and binding energies) is also available. A molecular weight calculator makes it easy to find the molecular weight of compounds. A shaded diagram showing the ranges of physical properties makes it easy to visualize relationships across the periodic table. The Atomic Mac is a periodic table of the elements for the Macintosh. In addition to the usual information found in such programs, The Atomic Mac also contains a wealth of nuclear information on each isotope, including half life, decay mode, and daughter products. X-ray data (fluorescence and binding energies) is also available. A molecular weight calculator makes it easy to find the molecular weight of compounds. A shaded diagram showing the ranges of physical properties makes it easy to visualize relationships across the periodic table. Photon interaction data, both in tabular and graphical format is also available. [Archived as /info-mac/sci/the-atomic-mac-50-ppc.hqx; 1258 K] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 21:00:00 -0800 From: TidBITS Editors To: digest@info-mac.org, Mac-L@clio.lyris.net, evangelist@macevangelist.com Subject: [*] TidBITS#573/26-Mar-01 TidBITS#573/26-Mar-01 Mac OS X is out - when should you make the jump? Adam offers specific advice to different types of users to answer that question. Jack-Daniyel Strong joins us with a comparison of two U.S. federal tax preparation programs: TaxCut and TurboTax. In the news, OnStream files for bankruptcy, Proxim and Netopia terminate their merger, and we cover the releases of StuffIt Deluxe 6.0.1 and ConceptDraw 1.59, plus Palm's announcement of the slim m505 color handheld. Topics: MailBITS/26-Mar-01 Tax Software for the 2000 Filing Year Mac OS X: The Future Is Here - Coming Soon! [Archived as /info-mac/per/tb/tidbits-573.etx; 33K] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 07:10:25 -0500 From: "Randy A. Noranbrock" To: Subject: [A] iBot driver memory leak confirmed I posted last week regarding a potential memory leak in the 1.0.1 version of the drivers for Orange Micro's iBot. After much cajoling and persistence in spite of tech support, they have now confirmed that I was right and there is, in fact, a memory leak in the 1.0.1 version of the driver. That being said, they are aware of the problem and should be updating the driver soon, but an intermediate solution is to fall back to the 1.0 driver version. Do note, this mostly affects you if you use the iBot to capture individual images and not movies. -Randy ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 08:15:43 -0800 From: Wagner Truppel To: digest@info-mac.org Subject: [C] Smart-installing MacOS X to prevent future problems Dear Mac friends, about 6 years ago, back when System 7.5 was the newest version of the Mac operating system, I wrote an article for TidBits discussing how to correctly install the Mac system software in order to avoid common problems: Update Madness Since then, the Mac and its OS have both changed significantly but none of the changes in the past are likely to compare to the switch to OS X. Having both a brave and foolish soul, I was one of the first to switch and I'd like to relate my experience, particularly concerning installation, for the benefit of those who cannot afford the time (nor the frustration) involved in experimenting. Before moving on to talk about installation, however, let me say a few words about my overall experience of using OS X so far. For 3 days now I've been running the _release_ version of OS X on a dual-processor G4/450 with a 20 GB hard disk and 128 MB of memory. The computer in question is _not_ some machine I set up to experiment with OS X. It is, believe or not, my day-to-day machine so I wasn't kidding when I said I'm both brave and foolish. In case you're wondering whether I'm nuts, I did make a backup of everything I have. Now, here's the bottom-line: OS X is slower than I expected but it's also rock-solid; I haven't had a single crash yet, and that includes the Classic environment. Classic applications are working just as they always have, though a little bit slower sometimes. OS X applications are also somewhat slow, slower than their counterparts under OS 9. The user interface has lost some of the features I liked most from OS 9 (such as hierarchical menus, contextual popup menus, and spring-loaded folders) and gained others that I'm beginning to love (such as the columnar view, though it could be improved). The dock, however, should be sent back to the design room with a one-way ticket. Another aspect I'd like to see changed is the overall size of things on screen. Most things are too large! Also, the windows have a _lot_ of wasted space that could be minimized. Not everyone can afford a 21-inch monitor! Mine is 15 inches. Now, before I get excited about what I think should be changed in the user interface, let me get to the main point of this message: installation. Anyone who's been following this matter will have seen several suggestions. I enumerate a few below and then discuss why I believe the choice I've made in the end is the most useful: 1) partition your hard disk into 5 partitions and install: a) a "pure" OS 9 on partition 1 b) OS X on partition 2 c) your current OS 9 on partition 3 d) your OS 9 applications on partition 4 e) your documents on partition 5 2) partition your hard disk into 4 partitions and install: a) a "pure" OS 9 and OS X both on partition 1 b) your current OS 9 on partition 2 c) your OS 9 applications on partition 3 d) your documents on partition 4 3) Either (1) or (2) above with an extra partition containing another OS X, for playing with, and/or yet another partition, for backups. 4) one partition, with a single OS X and your current OS 9, and all your OS 9 and OS X applications, and your documents. At first I chose option (2) above but then I realized that it's not multi-user friendly at all. Even if you're the only user of your machine (as I am of mine), having applications and documents spread all over the place is prone to problems. It's far easier and safer (see why below) to follow a different approach, so I chose option (4) and installed everything again, according to the following 14-step scheme: 01) I backed up everything I have on my computer [actually I had already done that before I attempted option (2)]. 02) I initialized and created a single partition on my hard disk. 03) I installed a pure OS 9.1 system folder. 04) I installed several Apple updates: CarbonLib 1.2.5, Disk Copy 6.3.3, G4 FW Update 4.1.8, PowerMacG4 AGP Update, and Startup Disk 9.2.1, as well as printer drivers for my printer. These (with the exception of the printer drivers) can all be found at . Make sure you choose "Released in Past Month" from the update date menu. 05) I installed _all_ the extensions and control panels I use daily, then the entire contents of my previous OS 9 'Preferences' folder (this is the easiest way to restore one's preferences from a previous OS 9.1 installation), then restarted to activate those preferences. 06) I created two sets of extensions/control panels in the Extension Manager, one for my daily use of OS 9 (which I called 'full OS 9') and one for when I want to run the classic environment under OS X (which I called 'OS 9/X'). Naturally, the latter has several less-important extensions and control panels disabled. I activated the 'OS 9/X' set. 07) I then booted from the OS X CD and installed OS X. 08) I booted from OS X and configured it to my liking. 09) I then rebooted from OS 9. 10) I re-installed all my OS 9 applications, saving them in sub-folders of the 'Applications (Mac OS 9)' folder (see below for an alternative useful to single-user machines). 11) I installed all my documents in sub-folders of 'Earth/Users/wlt/Documents' Here, 'Earth' is the name of my hard disk, and 'wlt' is my home directory (set up by the UNIX environment behind OS X, based on my login username). 12) I then configured my daily-OS-9 aliases to applications and documents, in effect getting this setup ready for a OS-9-only run if ever needed. This included adding aliases of startup documents and applications to the 'Startup Items' folder, so they'll run under OS X as well. Note that I kept all my aliases within one of these three places: the OS 9 System Folder (as in inside the Apple Menu Items folder or the Startup Items folder), my 'Earth/Users/wlt/Documents' folder, or the desktop. 13) I then made a last-minute re-check of the Extension Manager sets I created before to make sure that each set has what I wanted it to have. 14) Next I booted from OS X and finished configuring it to my liking, including setting up the Classic environment to run at startup. Now, why is this setup a good idea? Considering the fact that OS X is still in its infancy, many updates are sure to be released on a regular basis (take the Classic Mac OS as an example). Under the setup I just detailed, I can re-install OS X on top of what I already have without fearing that my OS 9 System Folder or applications will be negatively affected. I can also re-boot under OS 9 and install any future OS 9 updates without fearing that OS X will be affected. In addition, if I ever create other users for my computer, with either physical or remote access, they'll have access only to what they should, and not to any of my documents (because those are safely stored within my home directory). This would not have been the case if I had documents spread over several partitions, unless I had taken special precautions by setting up sharing privileges. With everything that belongs to a user stored within that user's home directory, those privileges are set up automatically. Moreover, if any of these multiple users ever wants to install his or her own 'private' OS 9 or OS X application, he or she can do so by saving those applications in a sub-folder of his or her home directory's 'Documents' folder. In fact, on a single-user machine, it's useful to install _all_ 3rd party applications (both OS 9 and OS X) in one's 'Documents' folder (or in folders within it) so that updates to either OS 9 or OS X will not affect them. Some OS X applications, however, don't give you a choice and must be installed in OS X's 'Applications' folder. A similar situation happens to Apple's OS 9 applications, which are better left installed in the 'Applications (Mac OS 9)' folder. Those may have to be re-installed after an update to either OS is performed. This setup also facilitates back-up procedures. _Everything_ that a given user may be interested in backing up (other than backing up the actual OS) is stored within his or her home directory. To summarize, I used to be a big fan of multiple partitions, for the following reasons: better organization, safety, and space considerations. Safety was an issue because if an application crashed the OS while in the middle of accessing the disk, the file structure could be compromised to the point of rendering the disk completely unreadable; with multiple partitions, you can at least have backups on a separate partition. As for space considerations, under the old Mac file system, the minimum allocation file size increased with the size of your partition, so the more partitions the smaller the allocation size. These reasons are not very compelling under OS X, however. In many ways, the more restrictive file structure imposed by OS X (because of UNIX) actually improves organization, safety is improved by OS X's stability, and - with the extended file system now used by OS 9 and X - allocation file size is independent of the disk size. In addition, moving files from one location to another takes much less time in a single-partition disk than in a multiple-partition one. For all these reasons, I ended up re-installing OS X as I outlined above and I believe it was a good choice. I'd like to end this message with an updated version of my "Update Madness" article's disclaimers: **Disclaimers** -- In the interests of full disclosure, there are a few disclaimers I should make: * I don't work for Apple, and never did. I think they make great computers, though. * Yes, MacOS X has its problems. * Yes, I _do_ experience system errors sometimes. So does my computer although, these days, far less often that I. ** Most importantly, this message expresses an informed opinion, not a professional recommendation. If you decide to follow my suggestions, please understand that you're doing so at your own risk. Best regards, Wagner Truppel wtruppel@uci.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 09:04:22 +0800 From: "Tony Stanton" To: Subject: second monitor for i-mac I have a Mac 7300/180 using a 21" PC monitor. I am interested in upgrading, obviously, but cannot afford a G4 at this stage. I have been quoted $500 for a G4 upgrade card but can also buy an entry level I-Mac for $850. Does anyone know if it is possible to use a second monitor with the I-Mac, which would allow me to keep my big monitor and use the I-Mac screen for toolbars, etc. I have done this in the past with a powerbook so I would like to know if anyone has tried this with the I-Mac and if it works or not Hope you can help ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 09:42:40 -0800 From: Richard To: digest@info-mac.org Subject: Vertus Player Does anyone have a "Vertus" player? I'd like to view some NASA pix and other stuff, but they're in Vertus and Vertus no longer supports that player. I've tried several (about 12) FTP sites after a search, and they've all pulled their player files. Everyone is saying that Vertus is no longer supporting the player. (As has the Vertus site as far as I can tell.) Or, does anyone know of an app that will convert Vertus files to Quicktime? I believe the Vertus (vrml?) files come with the extension ".wsb" ".wrl" or ".vpy" - I'm not sure. Richard... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 20:55:21 +0300 From: Matti Haveri To: digest@info-mac.org Subject: Zip drive and old Mac > I have an ancient Mac LC which is serving as a dedicated data > acquisition machine for a seismometer. I would like to attach my > SCSI Zip drive to it 68000-mac-faq : * If you use a Zip drive as a boot drive on a Plus you will need v4.2 Zip drivers. Make sure that other Zip drives don't update the drivers automatically. Zip Tools package v4.2 (948K) is at or just the 48K v4.2 driver at -------------------------------- --Info-Mac-Digest-- End of Info-Mac Digest ******************************