Why Tiger users sometimes giggle uncontrollably

Occasionally I like to talk about Apple computers and Apple's operating system, the latest version of which is called Tiger. Although I'm much more familiar with Microsoft's operating system because I've been using Microsoft applications for 20 years and Apple applications for only about 5 years, I'm increasingly attracted to the features Apple brings to the desktop.

This isn't a full review of Tiger. I'm not sure that a full review is even possible because Apple claims something like 200 improvements in OS X 10.4. Instead, this is a rambling summary of features I've found.

The Mail slide show.

I frequently send collections of images to people. Sometimes I embed the images in the message and sometimes they're included as attachments. One day, I got a reply from one of the recipients. "I forwarded your message to my father," she wrote, "and he was wondering how you I did that slide show thing. I didn't do anything, so you must have. Can you tell me how?"

Well, I hadn't created a slide show and that's what I said. A few hours later, she reported back. She and her father both have Apples and both are running Tiger. The Mail application in Tiger has a new slide show option that will, at your command, show all images included with a message in slide-show fashion.

To see how it works, I composed a message on the PC and sent it to myself on the Mac. The slide show feature earns a "WOW!" The only shortcoming is that I include text before or after some of the pictures and, when the receiver views them as a slide show, my comments disappear.

There's still no Start Menu.

Mac Addict, the more rabid of the two major US Mac magazines, likes to slam Microsoft whenever it can. I found it amusing that the CD included with the July issue includes Drag Thing, one of my favorite utility applications. Drag Thing creates a tabbed menu that provides functionality missing from the Mac -- mainly the Start Menu.

Why can't Apple just admit that Microsoft got that part of the interface right? Or maybe I should just stop whining about it; I've found a solution to the problem, after all.

Does this Tiger really have 200 new stripes?

Technically, the answer certainly is yes. Apple tends to engage in hyperbole, but the company generally doesn't lie. If Apple says Tiger has more than 200 enhancements, I'm sure that it does. I'm also sure that Apple's advertising agency would have been more accurate if it had written that Tiger has a couple of new killer features, some features that might be useful in the next version, a few enhancements that only a programmer with a stopwatch will notice, and some nice window dressing.

Mac lovers, before you start sending hate mail, read this: Tiger, while not perfect, is probably the easiest-to-use operating system on the planet and possibly (for now) the most secure. I like what Apple has accomplished with OS X over the past 4 years.

I don't know what Microsoft's still-distant new Longhorn operating system will look like, but I do know that Apple has raised the bar. If you own a recent Mac and you haven't yet spent the $100+ dollars needed to upgrade, you will.

Turn on the spotlight.

Windows machines have had a disk indexer for several years. I always turn it off because the indexing causes a lot of disk thrashing and slows the operation of the machine. Now Apple has added a similar feature, but it's accessible from the desktop, it's astonishingly fast, and it doesn't seem to create a big drain on performance.

So far, about all I've used it for is to find the occasional file and some pundits have written about how confusing it is to use. How confusing is it to type a word into a text box and then examine a list of matching files?

Spotlight, as I mentioned, is on the desktop, but it's also in Finder, in System Preferences, and probably has hooks that will make it available in future applications.

Widgets by the dozen.

Another of Apple's favorites to highlight is the Dashboard and it's a cool feature that puts a selection of applications on the desktop. The Dashboard can be set to pop up after a period you specify and you can also specify a corner as a hot spot. Hover the mouse there and the Dashboard appears.

Creating Dashboard applets ("widgets" in Applespeak) seems to be the thing to do. Tiger brings along a screen full of widgets and it's easy to find more. You can turn widgets on or off as you need them and even open multiple copies -- two or more notes, two or more clocks, two or more weather monitors. Whatever you need.

For this quick tour (starting in the upper left and going left to right, top to bottom) I have:

• A dictionary, which I've used to look up "patriot". Despite what Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh might want you to believe, please note that a patriot is not defined as a "conservative" or a "Republican". "Democrats" and "liberals" can play, too.
• A calculator.
• The current weather conditions, which I can click to display the 6-day forecast.
• The amount of charge remaining in the battery. The computer is plugged in and the battery is fully charged.
• A small notepad that I can use as a reminder.
• A countdown calendar that shows the number of days until my next birthday.
• A calendar.
• Yahoo's local traffic information. It's not very useful here, but Yahoo provides frequently updated reports for half a dozen cities.
• A little FTP client. I can drop a file on it and the file goes to the Technology Corner server.
• A measurement conversion applet. Here I'm converting kilowatts to BTUs per hour. Sadly, the conversion from miles per hour to furlongs per fortnight is missing.
• A translator that tells me "I thought I saw a kitty cat" translates to "¡Pensé que vi un gato del gatito!" in Spanish. Usually these translations are a bit less than perfect, but sometimes they're close enough to communicate the main point.
• A business look-up (somewhat limited in what you can look for) that tells you the closest place to get something.
• Clocks showing the time in Moscow, Russia, and Columbus.
• And, in case I need quick access to a WiFi connection, a list of the closes WiFi locations. The problem with this, of course, is that if you don't have an Internet connection, it can't look up locations.

The Dashboard has widgets for stock watchers, a link to your address book, weather radar, flight trackers, hex-decimal-octal-binary calculators, television schedule, webcam viewers, and ... and ....

Oh, by the way, if you're a Windows user and you like the Dashboard idea, DesktopX from Stardock and the shareware program Konfabulator make the feature available. For users of older Macs, there's a version of Konfabulator that works. (Watch for a review of Konfabulator in an upcoming show.)

Later I added more widgets -- clocks for Columbus, Seattle, Moscow, and Tokyo; weather for Columbus and Seattle; computer resource statistics; a small hex calculator; a link to UPS and FedEx package tracking; word, quote, and joke of the day; a small screen capture application, and a link to Creatures in My Head.

Do you chat?

Ichat has been greatly improved. This isn't an application I use often, but on-line video conferencing is becoming more mainstream. Apple Ichat program adds features that have been missing and piles on the ability to include video if you have a fast network connection.

Safari brings out the big guns.

Apple's browser, Safari, continues to improve, but it's not enough to pry Firefox out of my hands. Safari adds Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds natively, something Firefox adds with an extension. Page rendering and speed continue to improve in this release.

Don't look now, but your Mac is syncing.

If you have several Macs and want to keep the address book, calendar, mail, and passwords (but not files or folders) synchronized, you can tell Tiger to take care of it for you using a .Mac account. This might actually be enough to justify Apple's $100-per-year charge for .Mac.

And what else?

Another new feature will appeal to parents. Tiger includes parental controls let you specify who users may communicate with via e-mail or chat and which websites are OK.

	Yet another way the Mac is clearly superior to Windows Let's say you have both a Mac and a Windows machine and you're having trouble ejecting the CD. On the Windows machine, you selected Eject from the menu or you pressed the little button on the CD drive and nothing happened. On the Mac you dragged the little CD icon to the trash and nothing happened. On the Windows PC On the Mac Locate a paper clip. Insert the paper clip into the small hole on the CD player. The CD slides out. Reboot the computer. When you hear the startup sound, press Cmd-Opt-O-F. At the command line, type "eject cd". The CD slides out. At the command line, type "mac-boot". Log in and re-open any applications that were closed when you rebooted. Clearly the method selected by Apple's engineers is far more straightforward and intuitive than is the method selected by the Microsoft-Intel cabal. Furthermore, the Apple method doesn't assume that you might have access to a paper clip, while Microsoft ignorantly makes this assumption. After all, how many of us actually keep paper clips in our offices!

So Macs are better than Windows machines?

Oh, absolutely!

Younger daughter Kaydee uses a dual-processor G4 Mac running Tiger. She's a student at the Columbus College of Art & Design. I'm still stuck in the 20th Century, so my primary computer is Intel-based computer. When my computer starts misbehaving, I format the disk drive, reload the operating system, re-install the applications, and restore the data from backup.

For the past 6 months or so, Kaydee's Mac has been crashing half a dozen times a day or more. Now if this had been a Windows machine, I would have assumed that the problem was with the operating system. But she had a Mac, so I assumed that something must have gone haywire with the hardware. I'm not as knowledgeable about Mac hardware as I am about Intel hardware and Apple hasn't yet started using Intel hardware, so I took the computer to the Micro Center. "It's almost certainly a hardware problem," I explained.

A day later, I received a call from the Micro Center technician. "It's not a hardware problem," he said, "and we'll need to re-image the drive."

"Re-image" in the Mac world is "re-format" in the Windows world. So the solution involved formatting the drive, reinstalling the operating system, re-installing the applications, and restoring the data from backup. You can see how much better this is than what I would have had to do with a Windows computer.

Instead, I bought a second hard drive, had Micro Center install it as the primary drive in the Mac, and kept the original disk as the secondary drive. Yes, we had a backup with all of the applications and data, but the computer needed some extra storage space and adding a second drive was one way to guarantee that the existing data wouldn't be lost.

At least I learned something about troubleshooting a Mac and it's surprisingly similar to troubleshooting a Windows PC.

Apple has a perfect security record, doesn't it?

That's right! There's never been a security flaw in OS X that has required an update of any sort. Oh, by the way, just disregard the lines marked in yellow at the right because they indicate"security updates" for OS X, but because OS X is perfectly secure already, it doesn't need security updates and so this must be either the product of an over-active imagination or a lie. For details, check with Tony Blair.

Bugs? What bugs?

The August issue of Mac Addict, the more rabid of the two big magazines for Mac users, notes the "5th annual bug-squishing superguide" and says that readers will discover how to kill 46 of the Mac's peskiest problems. This is an issue I'll keep because I've seem some of these bugs.

Some of the bugs are a bit of a stretch (how to display the keyboard viewer) or are the result of user ignorance (if you name a file with an initial period, it will disappear because Unix thinks it's a system file), but others address issues that, if they happened on a Windows machine, would be the subject of ridicule by some Mac users. Examples:

• Mail hides its "reply to sender" option in an obscure menu, which makes it all too easy to reply to everyone when a message comes from a list.
• Installing Quark Xpress 6 using the default settings will scramble permissions on every application installed on the computer.

My point is not to bad-mouth the Mac. OS X, as I keep saying, is probably the best operating system available today. My point is that no matter how good it is, it's still just an operating system written by humans that runs on hardware built by humans. And that brings us to ...

Some Mac users still don't grok that a computer is just a computer.

I attended a session of the Digital Designers Group in June. The group meets at the Columbus College of Art and Design and the June session was titled "What's New in Photoshop CS2". The session featured Photoshop guru Clay White and it revealed some undeniably cool new features, but it also revealed once again how far Adobe is behind Corel in some areas.

Most of those who attend D2G sessions are Mac users. My younger daughter, a CCAD student, is one of these. I own both Macs and PCs. I see these computers as boxes full of electronic parts with hardware, firmware, and software that sometimes does what we want it to and sometimes doesn't. Most of the others in the room seem to view the world in black and white (Mac = good and pure; Intel/Microsoft = bad and vile). I was amused by the gnashing of teeth over Apple's decision to dump the IBM/Motorola PowerPC chip and move to Intel CPUs. It was particularly amusing to realize that some of those present didn't even comprehend that IBM and Motorola worked collaboratively on the PowerPC chip.

As Clay White revealed some of the new features in Photoshop CS2, I found myself leaning over to Kaydee to say things like "Dynamic guides are a feature that Corel Draw added in version 12 about a year ago,"* or "All of the Corel products have had fully customizable interfaces since about version 8, which was released sometime in the 1990s."

* My review of Corel Draw 12 was in March 2004.

I didn't say any of that out loud at the D2G session because I didn't want to be chased from the room. Photoshop CS2 does have some astounding new features that haven't been borrowed from other applications, PC or Mac, and I wanted to learn more about them. Adobe has done an outstanding job of making applications that look and act nearly the same on PCs and Macs and we'll talk about the Adobe CS2 applications on an upcoming show.

I wonder what makes some Mac users so insecure that they feel it's necessary to bash Windows, Microsoft, and Intel. Why can't they just accept the fact that a computer is a computer -- that no operating system is perfect -- that Microsoft does get some things right -- and that Apple, Adobe, and others don't have all the answers?

But, as usual, I digress.

The Tiger roars. Honest.

Attention Mac users who have concluded that I am an ignorant apologist for Microsoft and who have missed my previous statements about OS X: Tiger is the best operating system on the planet. I have said this before and I will repeat it here that if I were buying my first computer today and I didn't have 20+ years of experience working with Microsoft operating systems and if I didn't depend on applications that work only under Windows, I would probably buy a Mac. I have written that previous section in bold because Mac users sometimes exhibit an incredible inability to read and I want them to see that before they send hate mail. Not that this will stop them.

Peace?

Technology corner rating for APPLE OS X 10.4 TIGER

10 CATS: What else? From one cat to another, this operating system alternates between roaring and purring. Occasionally it rolls over and asks for a tummy rub. If you own a Mac and you haven't yet updated to Tiger, go to Apple's website right now.

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Counterspy protects your computer and your data

Spyware can be little more than an annoyance, but it can also pose a serious threat to your finances. The definition of spyware is a bit murky currently, with some people thinking that cookies are a serious threat and most anti-spyware products doing little to disabuse them of that myth. Others consider applications such as Eudora or Opera that, in sponsored mode, display ads to be spyware. (Wrong. They're ad ware and they're up-front about it.) Some manufacturers and software publishers include applications that check in from time to time looking for updates. Are these spyware? Some seem to think so. I'm not particularly concerned about any of those, but I don't want anyone to install an application on my computer that reports information to anyone without telling me.

That's why I have a hardware firewall, a software firewall, and an antivirus application. The firewalls eliminate some threats and the antivirus application catches other threats. I also run Spybot Search and Destroy and, more recently, I've added Sunbelt's Counterspy.

Counterspy is a $20 application that offers a good selection of useful features. The ethics of some companies that use spyware to gather information without telling users they're doing so might be open to discussion, but there's no question at all about organized crime's efforts to plant applications on computers -- applications that will turn them into zombies. These zombies can be used as servers, which is bad enough, but these planted applications can also search for financial information and passwords on computers.

Counterspy knows about some of these, but it also encourages feedback from users to expand the database. The reports can be turned off and they're sent anonymously if you leave them turned on.

The application uses a system of active protection that watches your computer continuously for suspicious activity. And users can scan their machines automatically or manually to search for problems. As with any application that searches your computer for threats, Counterspy may return an occasional false positive. I use Smart Type Assistant and this application, among other things, logs keystrokes. I may eventually turn that feature off, but currently it's on. Counterspy recognized it as a keystroke logger and warned me. It also suggested that I give it the boot.

Fortunately, Counterspy also offers the ability to ignore what it perceives as a threat.

Counterspy's auto updater checks daily for updates, both to the database and also to the application itself. Among the extra features in the application, a history cleaner erases history files. I've never seen history as much of a threat and I don't use this feature because it's not unusual for me to want to go back to a site that I visited a few days ago but now can't remember.

On the other hand, if you use Internet Explorer, your computer probably has a lot of browser helper objects installed. If you have the Google toolbar, you have their BHO. And there are lots of others -- some good and some bad. Counterspy lets you see what BHOs are installed so that you can decide whether they should be running or not. You can also see what ActiveX applications have been installed, view your "hosts" list (it's frequently the target of attack by virus writers), and see what applications are running.

You probably know that deleted files go to the Recycle Bin and that they're not gone until you empty the trash. But after you empty the trash, they're still not gone. The operating system has just marked them as "deleted". If you want to be certain that the file you've erased is really gone, the secure file eraser promises to do the job. (Note, however, that the military specification for eliminating secret information involves physical destruction of the drive. There are ways to recover secure-erased data, but they are difficult and time consuming. The average computer hacker/cracker won't have a chance.)

Technology corner rating for SUNBELT'S COUNTERSPY

10 CATS: Spyware is clearly a danger and something you don't want on your computer. Counterspy, for $20 per year, provides a selection of tools that will help you fight back against the scum that feel your information should be theirs. Visit the Sunbelt website.

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Nerdly News

Smacking those who lose your data

A couple of weeks ago, I said something about class-action lawsuits and that, although I'm not always a fan of the technique, it seemed like a good time for someone to file such a suit against companies that manage to lose hundreds, thousands, or millions of records that would allow someone to steal someone else's identity.

Well, some San Francisco attorneys have done just that. At the end of June, a class-action suit was CardSystems Solutions, MasterCard, and Visa on the behalf of California credit card holders and businesses accepting credit card payments. The problem has been that those who lose data suffer no consequences. They say, "Oops! Sorry!" and that's the end of it.

The lawsuit says that CardSystems Solutions failed to keep credit card data safe and charges that the company is liable for the security breach because it failed to maintain a proper firewall, didn't encrypt data, stored information that credit card companies say should not be stored, and didn't establish proper security protocols.

The law firm that filed the suit stands to make a great deal of money if it prevails in court and the real victims will get comparatively little -- that's why I'm not a big fan of the class-action process -- but a judgment against CardSystems will send a message that other companies will hear: Protect data or you're going to have to pay a lot.

The suit also charges that CardSystems delayed announcing the data loss. According to CardSystems, the company discovered the problem on May 22, but MasterCard says they discovered security violations involving CardSystems a month earlier. The suit says that "other entities" notified CardSystems of problems late in 2004.

According to published reports, some of the credit card vendors still haven't notified cardholders information was stolen from their systems, saying that law enforcement agencies have asked them not to go public. The suit, however, says that the FBI office in charge of the investigation says it's important for card holders to be warned and that it never told the company to conceal information about the crime.

What ARE they smoking at Microsoft these days?

You may not recognize the name "Claria", but you probably will recognize "Gator". Claria is the company's new name and suddenly Microsoft's anti-spyware application considers Claria apps not to be so bad after all.

Might this be because Microsoft is planning to buy Claria? That's the rumor -- that Microsoft will purchase Claria for $500 million.

Microsoft has made a big deal about its "trustworthy computing" initiative and the company has said that it opposes adware, so what's the deal here? The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both reported this week that Microsoft is talking with Claria and those who are still using the Microsoft Anti-Spyware application noticed that it's no longer considered a significant threat by that application.

With friends like these, who needs enemies!

Claria's applications include Ewallet, Datemanager, Weatherscope, and Precisiontime. Security experts hold the company in extremely low regard. The proposed deal has privacy experts wondering whether Microsoft has privacy or profits as its primary motive. (Yes, asking that question would be silly.)

Neither company will comment, but if the purchase goes through, the result would effectively be a fox in charge of security for the hen house.

Claria has been attempting to put some space between itself and some of its partners who installed Gator applications secretly. Claria also seems to be trying to make it possible for people to remove the adware applications. Privacy experts say most of the changes have been cosmetic, though.

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