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ATPM 5.10
October 1999

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Welcome

Welcome to the October issue of About This Particular Macintosh ! Our autumn collection of Audacious Tidbits and Puckish Musings is designed to lift your spirits and satisfy your Mac-loving senses. The past month has been a delightful time for Mac users but a “rocky road” for Apple investors. You’ll read about it all inside this month’s issue.

Mr. Bush Shouldn’t Have All The Fun

Relax. We’re not taking sides but we are taking numbers! No matter your political preference, we want your view on a bunch of different items (The stuff that really counts!). Each month the editors of ATPM will offer readers an opportunity to voice your opinion on a timely, Mac-specific question. No matter the outcome of next year’s presidential election, we want every Mac user to be the real winner. Your vote counts! Vote early and please come back often—about the first of every month. The survey questions will appear only on our home page but the results will be published in our Internet magazine.

Here are the results of last month’s poll:

What is your favorite iBook color?

Blueberry: 51%

Tangerine: 42%

No Preference: 7%

The Franco-iBook War

At press time Apple Computer was in a skirmish of sorts with the French military. It appears that the radio frequency used by the iBook for remote, wireless communication has been set-aside by America’s oldest ally for military purposes. The choice is either the French military scraps its communication equipment or Apple modifies its products for the French market. We wonder if the Belgian armed forces have surplus communication equipment they could lend to our friends in France? Musings aside, we expect slightly modified Apple products to arrive on French shores momentarily.

Viva La Canada

Moving from France to French-speaking Quebec, Daniel Chvatik, ATPM’s managing editor has new desktop pictures from his recent travels to Montreal. If the Internet really is the new way to see the world, Daniel’s snapshots guarantee that all readers have a window seat with a view. Please see Daniel’s stunning images with a decidedly French Canadian flavor in this month’s electronic pages.

OS 9 Should Be Mine

The forthcoming release of Mac OS 9 has the ATPM staff very excited. Staff members who have been seeded advance copies of the latest and greatest version of Apple’s legendary OS tell us no one will be disappointed. The extraordinary improvements to Sherlock (Apple’s fully integrated Internet search tool) are enough for us to recommend OS 9 to Mac owners. Please support your favorite Macintosh e-zine by pre-ordering your copy from Small Dog Electronics today.

Hitting the Skids

Apple watchers witnessed with chagrin the recent sell-off of Apple stock. It appears that too much good news is bad news in the minds of people who trade stocks. Pre-orders for new G4 systems reached 150,000 units in just three weeks after they were announced. Motorola was unable to keep pace with Apple’s chip orders so the delivery of chips was delayed. One would think the popularity of Apple’s products would be a good thing. But the delays have caused the sale of the G4 machines to be booked in Apple’s new fiscal year rather than the old one that closed at the end of September. So what if the sales are booked a couple of weeks later than originally planned? The unprecedented demand for an Apple product should be treated as good news.

To help end public misunderstanding about the unprecedented demand for Apple’s G4 systems, we recommend that our friends in Cupertino take the following steps:

These and similar issues will be covered in greater detail in the quarterly Apples, Kids & Attitude column scheduled for our November issue.

CSS

Computer users are more than familiar with using initials for technologies and methods instead of names. There’s one more set that should be at the top of every geekster’s list. Cascading Style Sheets (or CSS for those in the know) are a real solution for Webmasters beset with mundane, look-alike pages. Please read Michael Tsai’s Personal Computing Paradigm for more information.

Put A New Face On It

Do you recall the aluminum siding craze of the 1960s? It looked really cool on a house until neighborhood kids dinged the stuff with baseballs. The good news about putting a new face on your Mac desktop is that it doesn’t costs thousands of dollars and Danny DeVito won’t be showing up at the door. It this month’s Shareware Roundup, William Lovett evaluates Mac OS appearance enhancements. Whether you’d prefer a sandlot look or a major league improvement, we’re sure there’ll be a few “home runs” among his recommendations.

Psst...It’s Ist!

Ed Goss, ATPM’s trivia titan and t-shirt tycoon is a quiet, soft-spoken kind of guy. We can imagine him as the voice-over man for a digital version of the old “Password” game show. But there’s little about Ed’s talents and generosity that should be mentioned in hushed tones. In addition to the cerebral calisthenics he provides our readers, Ed antes up a free ATPM t-shirt for the first two people who e-mail him the all the correct answers to his questions. Visit Ed’s trivia column for your chance to win.

Tropical Storm Tom

As a government employee in rain-ravaged Tampa Bay, ATPM’s Tom Iovino has been working overtime to ensure that emergency shelters and other regional disaster facilities are well stocked in the event of another major storm. No stranger to turbulence, Tom’s column often tackles the tough issues others are afraid to address. This month, Tom seeks to “spook” readers in a slightly different way. Please see Tom’s Halloween recollection in this issue’s Apple Cider.

Let’s Do Lunch

ATPM’s “Hollywood Guy,” Mike Shields, is an interesting fellow. Behind the dark shades and Tinseltown grin lies the heart of a suffering screenwriter. Originally hailing from artsy “NOHO,” Mike keeps to a Hollywood-style work schedule. We hardly hear from him before deadline. He’s promised us a late-month column on digital video, but we’re never quite sure what topics he has in store. Check out Mike’s stuff for a few push-the-deadline surprises!

Is There A Shrink In The House?

Well, almost. The editors of ATPM would like to introduce our latest staff member, Scott Feldstein. Scott’s a bright and energetic graduate student in educational psychology. A competent “Mac techie” in his own right, Scott prefers to explore the greatest reason for the Mac’s success—the creative genius and unique preferences of the people who choose to sit behind an Apple-branded box. A double installment of his new column entitled User Preference debuts in this month’s issue.

InDesign Is Out The Door

InDesign, the new page layout program from Adobe Systems, has finally appeared on retail shelves. Oft dubbed the “Quark Killer” while in development, InDesign sports a modular architecture that supports third-party enhancements via plug-ins and includes translators for XPress documents.

Will InDesign live up to Adobe’s expectations that it will supplant XPress as the #1 page-layout application in the desktop pre-press market? Initial sales reports indicate that the product is a run-away success. Priced at $299 (list price $699) for owners of Quark Xpress and a few of Adobe’s own products, the company is aggressively pricing InDesign to gain market share. The staff of ATPM will be watching the battle for pre-press supremacy very closely. Check back each month for the latest developments.

This Month’s Reviews Include

Please enjoy our latest issue!



The ATPM StaffApple

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