Cube Guy (F2P_Pancakes) Mac OS

  • Mar 24, 2011 More recently, he could be seen briefly during Apple's Back to Mac event, where the company first took the wraps off the upcoming point release of Mac OS X 10.7, dubbed 'Lion.'
  • He also 'preaches the Gospel' at a Minneapolis Micro Center - he's the bald black guy. Rodney 'drives' a G4 Cube and a PowerBook G3. After enjoying a popular run at Mac Addict.com, 'iBrotha' was.

I was a big fan of the NeXT machines, and was quite dissapointedwhen NeXT stopped producing their own hardware.Then Steve Jobs went to Apple, and started turning them intoalmost NeXT like boxes.They aren't too bad, but often they are too toylike.It's complex, and too long for an intro.Here are how my viewpoints of Apple have changed over almost a decade.

Table of Contents

Random Notes

Feb 05, 2014 The emanating sound, however, is the all-too familiar Mac OS startup sound. The Simpsons - Four Regrettings and Funeral. Season 25, episode 3. Comic Book Guy shouts, 'Traitor! This is a driver for using the GR-55 on Mac OS X v10.6. GR-55 Driver Ver.1.0.0 for Mac OS X 10.4 / 10.5. This is a driver for using the GR-55 on Mac OS X 10.4/10.5. GR-55 Librarian For Windows. GR-55 Librarian is a software that allows you to manage Sound patches in the GR-55 with your computer.

Check this out for details and noteson my experience with the PowerMac and MacOS-X.

MacOSX 10.1.5

Use -no-cpp-precomp to turn off the stupid pre-compiled headersthat Apple seems to be fond of.

Although gcc-2.95.2 is installed, it isn't gcc-2.95.2 and doesn't havethe expected c++ libraries. Instead the libraries provided are incompleteand brain-dead. How come apple ships gcc-2.95.2 and doesn't provide thesources to people can install it correctly?

Try powerpc-apple-bsd as the GNU configure platformdesignator. powerpc-apple-macos doesn't work.

Apple made the Apple Digital Speakers; Ibelieve they released them with the Cube and the surviveduntil G5s came about.These things are are shaped like large spheres, slightly largerthan a baseball, made of clear plastic, and have,silver/chrome and white speaker horns.I recently picked up a unused set to try with my old G4 --man those are pretty nice speakers.Though small they have rock solid reproduction for quite a varietyof audio output -- music, speech, sound effects.For their small size, their audio output is amazing:

  • No hiss
  • No distortion
  • Giant sound from a small package (ported even)
  • Wide range of output - bass to treble.
If your G4 has a 1/8' output jack which looks sorta like a radarantenna (multiple curved (((mmm ) appearance, that is thedigital speaker jack.Try them out -- I would already like to get another setfor use on a second old G4 I recently acquired.They really are quite amazing; I wonder why Apple stopped supplying them.

Other Hacks

Miscellaneous Power Macintosh Info

  • Short Form: defaults write com.apple.helpviewer NormalWindow -bool true
  • defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseMomentumScroll -bool yes
  • D-Link DBT120 (Rev B2) Bluetooth adapter can be used for magic mouse on non-bluetooth macs. It is the only device supported by apple to do wake via bluetooth.
  • Asus USB-BT21 mini bluetooth dongle may work with everything.

Terminal Magik

Unforunately Apple treats technical computer users as idiots.They provide zero documentation and tools for doing useful things.Worse of all they keep on saying that everything that usesthe shell is scary magic crap.Because of that, here are some starting points to using mac tools..

  • diskutil checkraid disk2

.mac and / Backup Issues

iPhoto & Aperture

iTunes

For a couple of years my old versions of iTunes could no longerget tracks from CDDB / GraceNote.It Appears that as of Spring 2009 that the older version of iTunesare working again.I guess they turned the old interfaces back on.Yay!

  • iTunes 4.7.1 (or maybe 4.8) is the last MacOSX 10.1.5 iTunes
  • iTunes 4.7.1 will get tracks from Gracenote as of 2008, iTunes 4.6 will not :(
  • As mentioned above, in 2009, iTunes 2 now can get tracks again.
  • When iTunes 4 and newer update an older library .. they put the date added field to be the same as the update date, not the date the track was laid on the disk (apple's added creation date). Which means all your songs suddenly were added at once, instead of being added across your lifetime. As of writing this there is no clear way on how to fix this properly.
  • iTunes 4.x added arrows to the Apple Store for things . however it even adds arrows for your own created music that it thinks knows what is up. Ooops. And they are a bit annoying. Earlier versions of iTunes have an option to get rid of these in the Preferences. Later Versions (somewhere in the iTunes 8 series i believe) eliminated this preference .. but it is still available under the covers through the defaults mechanism:
  • defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE -- Disables 'Arrow Links' in iTunes -- They even appear on my Voice memos!
  • defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES -- Arrows point to your music library, not iTunes store.
  • iTunes >= 8 no longer allows selecting play music while importing; to config:
  • defaults write com.apple.iTunes play-songs-while-importing -bool TRUE
  • To hack config settings on the Win32 version of iTunes, you need to edit the iTunesPrefs.xml file. For example, to do the above, you need to put an key/data combination in the &userPreferences dict: Hint, the encoded string may just be 'True' or 'YES' encoded.
  • <key>play-songs-while-importing</key>
    <data>
    dHJ1ZQ
    </data>

iMovie & iDVD

  • Running iMovie '09 on G4 Macsv

iCal, Contacts and other Apps notes

Browser Issues and Versions

  • .. but it doesn't work with camino 0.8.5
  • The Latest explorer for MacOSX (even runs on 10.1.5) is 5.2.2 and 5.2.3 . you can find the disk images with a search like macosx explorer version
  • The last os9 explorer was 5.1.6 or 5.1.7, and is harder to find.
  • The EVolt.org Browser Archive has a good selection of the various IE versions for MacOS and MacOSX.
  • Latest Firefox release for macosx 10.1.5 is the Firefox 1.0.x series, of which 1.0.8 is the newest, and 1.0.5 is mentioned a lot.

Cube Guy (f2p_pancakes) Mac Os Update

Publications & Publishers

Software

Hardware

Repair & Maintenance

Articles

For now these articles are all from Ars Technica, once I findsome more this credit will go away. These seem to be an excelent historyabout what is going on with Mac OS X .. and it comes from a PC-specific publication to boot. Neat!

  • Mac OS X Public Beta 10-2000
  • Mac OS X DP4 5-24-2000
  • Mac OS X DP3: Trial by Water 2-28-2000
  • Mac OS X DP2: A Preview 12-14-1999
  • Mac OS X Update: Quartz and Aqua 1-17-2000

Backing up MacOSX

With MacOSX Leopard Apple provides a simple backuputility with every mac -- Time Machine.It's great, it works, etc.It isn't anything new though -- it is just a copy of several olderbackup systems which do the exact same thing.But the great thing about it is that it ships on every mac and everybodycan do backups for the price of an external drive.If you got it -- USE IT!

It doesn't do everything, such as creating a bootable backup,but the leopard disk can restore your box from time machine, so youcan get yourself back to just what it was before whatever broke.

Time Machine isn't a long duration backup mechanism -- unless youcan backup the TimeMachine backups.I think Time Capsule's have an archive option, and I want to check thatout.

Cube Guy (F2P_Pancakes) Mac OS
  • DiskUtility -- Copy your boot drive.
  • ASR -- Apple Software Restore -- make a bootable clone of your boot drive
  • Silver Keeper -- LaCie
  • Time Machine
  • rsync
  • psync
  • Simulating Time Machine with Rsync

HyperCard & Clones

HyperCard is/was a very powerful software projectcreated by Apple Computer for the Macintosh.HyperCard allows you to organize information as a set of indexcards.Just that functionality itself is quite powerful.You can generate address books, keep records, flash cards for studying, etc.But wait .. its also a database of sorts.But wait, it has a scripting language and the cards can actuallydo things.. such as generating content.And they can work with all the various items and objects that a Macintosh has available .. image, sound, video, whatever!

To give you an idea of how powerful HyperCard is ..the computer game Myst, which has graphics, complex puzzles,interactions .. is just a HyperCard Stack!People have written multi-user business systems in HyperCard!

Unfortunately, Apple decided to abandon HyperCard, seemingly on theverge of its next release.Some other organizations and companies make HyperCard look-a-likes orclones.It is said that the original HyperCard leaves them in the dust, even withtheir years of improvement.Apple has left a HyperCard Player application to play existingHyperCard Stacks, but you can't create new content with it.

Some people argue that the SmallTalk environment is the logicalsuccessor to HyperCard.Smalltalk is a wonderful environment, a real programming language, tool,and graphics all rolled together.The only difficulty is that if you just want cards.. you have to buildit all over again.

HyperCard & Clones

HyperCard Resources

Cool Projects

Power Macintosh Info

Cube Guy (f2p_pancakes) Mac Os 7

Bolo's Home PageLast Modified:Sat Dec 4 11:47:36 CST 2010Bolo (Josef Burger)<bolo@cs.wisc.edu>

Cube Guy (f2p_pancakes) Mac Os 7

Here's Why You Should NOT Buy A G4 Cube
July 6th 2000 How to use slot machines in vegas.

I'It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean no one's out to get you.

Anon?

'I know who you are! You're Mordecai Jones. You're the Flim-Flam Man!'

Part, the first: Art, life, imitations

Steve Jobs is the personification of Apple Computer in everyone's mind, and it seems as if Mr. Jobs -- and by extension, Apple -- is often accused of being a modern-day flim-flam man.'

For the uninitiated, 'The Flim-Flam Man' is a 1967 comedy starring George C. Scott as an infamous, likable 'confidence man' who traipses across the Southern countryside, running his scams on unsuspecting marks. On various forums across the Internet, there are those who accuse Apple of running its own scams, the latest being the G4 Cube, R.I.P.

Others have reconstructed and deconstructed the Cube's demise far more than I care to read, but I want to look at another angle. What interested me out of this whole G4 thing was the amount of coverage it was given in the mainstream press. I'm told over and over how insignificant Apple is, yet the company's slightest move is cause for mild media frenzy, in the least. Surprisingly (to me, anyway), most reports were favorable, going so far to say that the Cube was one of the most innovative PCs in a good while.

Equally interesting to me was the fact that many PC bigots came out of the woodwork to shout 'Aha!' and lay on the I-told-you-sos to people like me for buying and publicly encouraging others to buy the Cube. https://erogonenterprise285.weebly.com/free-download-adobe-reader-for-windows-xp-32-bit.html.

I must admit that they were correct for chastising me for saying Apple 'hung the moon' with the G4 Cube. I'm man enough to admit I'm wrong for saying that, and I will eat my crow right here for all to see: PC bigots, you were correct. You should not buy a G4 Cube. Mac users, you shouldn't buy a Cube either. Those of you considering buying a G4 Cube, hear me out. You don't want a Cube. It's not expandable. It's not upgradeable (sure the RAM and hard drive are, and sure, it has FireWire, USB, AirPort, Ethernet, VGA, but that will never be enough for the average user). You need slots, slots, and more slots. You don't need something that isn't so artsy-fartsy looking. You need a computer that looks like, well, a computer.

Notice, that I have yet to say that I should not have bought a Cube. You see, this is the way I operate: If I find a good thing, I don't want everyone else to have it. I am self-professed Mac snob. Snobs don't want you commoners having easy access to their objects of snobbery. Which is why we play the reverse psychology on you. We buy a BMW and tell you that we hate it, secretly knowing that if we said the opposite, many of you would run out and buy your own, ersatz or not. When we buy a Cube, we tell you that we hate the 'cracks' and the 'lack of expandability,' knowing that's what you want to hear. It soothes your souls and salves your inferiority complexes.

You see, this is what PC users have to deal with. They have to deal with having nothing to brag about except their cheap PC prices.

What price innovation?

We, however, shouldn't even have to brag. I shouldn't have to brag about my Cube. It speaks for itself. Sure, it may be discontinued, but what computer isn't, sooner or later? Sure, Apple screwed the pooch when they introduced the Cube at comparatively exorbitant prices. But look at the benefits.

The influence of the Cube benefits Apple's bottom line in current products that pay homage to the Cube: the latest incarnations of the iBook and PowerBook both reek influence of Apple's Cubic approach to its latest industrial designs. It's arguable whether or not the Cube is the antecedent to what we're seeing in Mac laptops nowadays, but one'd be hard pressed to argue otherwise.

I don't think Apple will give up on the design roads less traveled, the roads with destinations like the G4 Cube. Products like the Cube are for those who value form over function (as long as that function is on par with the average computers; ditto for price). I think that the visceral reactions to the Cube attest to this fact. The problem was that those reactions didn't lead to the projected sales. This dichotomy reminds us of Apple's unique place in the computer industry. The company embodies personal computing's cutting edge, but that creative edge can be at times checked by the realities of the business model: profits and return on R & D investment must materialize.

The Cube may be dead, but the spirit of the Cube will rise once again, phoenix-like, in some future Apple offering.

But, that product may not be for you, either. I will warn you now that you may want to avoid it. If you see something at MACWORLD New York that bespeaks style and elegance, you may not want to touch it. After all, it could be discontinued in a year, at the behest of market forces and of the pedantic PC bigots.

After all, not everyone is worthy of such things. And those things aren't always for everyone. There is a segment of consumers that value the form as well as the function. It's a shame that manufacturers always value the reverse. Thank God that there are some out there who value both.

Thank you, Apple. I'd rather you attempt something like the Cube and fail, instead of playing it safe like the Dell's and Gateway's of the world. I like walking the cutting edge. If you didn't cut the edge with your designs, other than the Mac OS, there'd be no reason I'd want to buy your products.

Your comments are welcomed.

Rodney O. Lain is a junior manager at a major corporation. He enjoys public speaking, mentoring minority college students, and helping community multicultural-awareness efforts. He also 'preaches the Gospel' at a Minneapolis Micro Center -- he's the bald black guy. Rodney 'drives' a G4 Cube and a PowerBook G3. After enjoying a popular run at Mac Addict.com, 'iBrotha' was axed, to readers' dismay. Back by popular demand, it now runs exclusively at Mac Observer every other Friday, replacing 'Rodney's Soapbox.'

[Editor's Note: Rodney O.Lain passed away in June, 2002.]

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