Meeting Notes - Mar 21, 2001

By: Mikio Moriyasu - Revised: 2006-10-05 devin


Statewide Higher Ed Meeting by Larry Anderson

This was a brief but important announcement from Larry regarding the upcoming Statewide Higher Education Mac User Meeting.

Statewide Higher Education Mac User Meeting

When: Wednesday April 18th, 2001 from 1:00 pm to 4:00 PM

Where: The Wilkenson Center on the BYU campus

Additional information and meeting agenda will be e-mailed out to the Mac Managers list by Richard Glaser.

Because of the timing of this meeting, there is no Mac Managers Meeting scheduled for next month.

What's New by James Reynolds

Please note that additional information regarding the following topics can be found here.

Mac Managers Contacts
The Mac Managers Contacts was conceived of as a way to improve communication between Mac people on the U of U campus with Apple Computer. Because the campus is so diverse, the existing Mac Managers group and others involved with Macs need to coordinate their activities so that they don't waste resources.

Currently, the Managers Contacts database is set up and ready to go. To have your name and information entered into the database, please fill out the online form. Filling out the form involves the input of a lot of information so be prepared to spend some time.

Before filling out the form, however, Richard would like to meet with you in person to find out what kind of work you're involved in, what your concerns and/or needs are. Eventually we'd like to use this information so that we can improve overall campus-Apple communication and support.

For security reasons, the information in the database will only be accessible to members of ACLIS Mac Support. If there is interest and if Mac Managers whose information is part of database want it made available to other Mac Managers on campus, then ACLIS Mac Support will make it available at a future date. Currently, our top priority is gathering the information. Making the content available will take time as we would need to develop security & fields/options of making certain records available to certain users based on users preference.

To get additional information and/or sign up, go to:

http://www.macos.utah.edu/ - "General Info" - "Mac Manager Contacts"

You must have the password to gain access. (usual Mac Mgr username and password).

Mac OS X News
From AppleInsider.com and MacosRumors.com

A number of unusual appearances of Windows logos, the sudden appearance in several system files of DOS and Windows 98/200/ME/XP references, and other Microsoft-isms in recent builds of the Mac OS X "Cheetah" 4K6x series suggests something very interesting may be going on with the new OS.

Daily updates on Mac OS X are available at http://macfixit.com/macosx.shtml.

Background-only Extensions/apps
From "Ask Al" 2/12/01 at alsoft.com

Some extensions have 2 load up times: during the "extensions parade" and invisibly right after the Finder starts up.

If the Finder hangs after it has started up, but before the contents of Startup Items launch, it is an extension with file type "appe" (application extension) that is causing it to hang.

Notable New Software
IPNetTuner 1.4
  • Full on the fly access to Open Transport (Mentat/TCP) tunable parameters.
  • Fine grained control of the best commercial TCP/IP stack on the market. Outstanding compatibility, does not modify any Open Transport or networking files.
  • FAT application runs native on both 68K and PPC processors. Retrieve low level IP routing and other information.
  • Experiment with confidence, easily restores factory default settings.
  • Auto-configure allows you to restore your settings transparently upon restart.
  • 21-day free trial.
  • Works with other complementary software by the same developer to tune up IP (IPNetMonitor).
Relocated 1.0b2
  • Originally developed for cable modems and DSL connections and focused on the European market.
  • Changes MAC (Media Access Control) hardware address. Only works with Mac OS 8.0 - 9.0.4 and non-first generation PowerMacs (better than 6100, 7100, 8100).
  • Support for Mac OS 9.1 is being worked on. Modifies the System suitcase
Adobe Acrobat - 5.0 (preorder to ship in April)
Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1
Apple Disc Burner 1.0.1
Apple Final Cut Pro - 2.0
Apple iTunes 1.1
Apple Macintosh Manager - 1.4
Apple URL Access 2.3
Carbonic 1.0b3
Chaos master 1.2
Eudora 5.1b2
Fetch 4.0b6
Graphic Converter 4.0.4
HTML-Optimizer - 4.2
HTML-OptimizerPlus - 2.2
HTTP Benchmark 1.3.2
Invisible Prefs 0.4.4 		IPNetSentry - 1.0
IPNetTuner - 1.4
iTunes Associator - 1.6
MacSSH 2.1a10
NetBarrier 2.0.2
Opera 5.0tp1
Peek-a-Boo - 1.6
Prefs Manager 1.0b4
Relocated - 1.0b2
Search & Rescue - 3.0b2
Software Hardware Tracker 4.0.5
TechTool Pro 3.0.3
Tenon OS 9.1 update
Thursby DAVE - 2.5.2
Web Server 4D - 3.5.2b1

New Third Party Software from 2-20-2001 to 3-20-2001 (click here for more details).

You can also visit http://www.macos.utah.edu/ - "Meetings" - "Previous Notes" or versiontracker.com.

Hardware Rumors
From AppleInsider.com and MacosRumors.com
  • Colored Ti Powerbooks
  • Powerbook Ti stuck at up to 550MHz? Concerns are growing that Apple has painted itself into a corner by spec'ing the new 'Book with a PowerPC 7410 processor.
  • 10-hour battery life might be available for Powerbook Ti from 3rd party developer.
  • G4 cubes not going away, but not being developed much. The G4 cube developer team has been fired.
  • Dual-processor 667/733MHz PowerMacs due by April.
  •   Gigahertz PPC 7450 G4s targeted for August. Expect to see 800, 866, and 933, and 1000 MHz.
  • Motorola plans to co-develop the PowerPC 75xx processor family, also known as the G5, with IBM.
  • 733MHz G4s slower than 533's?! The consistent statement from sources is that the current Mac OS doesn't make the right assumptions in its memory management code to properly use the 7450's new on-chip L2 and backside L3 cache architecture, nor make the best use of its improved on-chip data paths or Altivec units. Mac OS X will do much better at this.
  • A new Lucent Technologies chipset will shrink Apple's AirPort hardware, add 54Mbps bandwidth support, and support the popular Bluetooth wireless interface technology over standard and high-performance Airport bands.
Retail News
From AppleInsider.com and MacosRumors.com
  • Sears to no longer sell Macs.
  • Apple retail stores to be announced by Macworld New York.
  • Independent Apple Service Providers who don't sell Apple hardware losing "Authorized" status.

UNIX Basics for Mac OS X by Daniel Trentman

Daniel's overall presentation was based on his long-term experience working with UNIX and his relatively brief experience working with one of the Mac OX X betas. His principle discussion listed and broke down the key operational features of UNIX and how these had been adapted to the Mac OS. He pointed out areas where the operation of UNIX and the Mac OS were similar and where there were key differences.

Over the course of Daniel's presentation, a few key points were raised and emphasized:
  • UNIX is structured on the operation of a series of small very reliable task-specific applications.
  • Total operation of UNIX relies on one application (A) passing its results onto another (B) which passes its results onto a third (C) and so on.
  • In everything that they do, UNIX users are essentially working with "permissions" which are "access controls".
  • Each user, in order to do what they want/need to do, will have to have "permission". This means, at a certain levels each user will have to log in with a password locally or remotely.
  • For Mac OS X, apple has essentially adapted their GUI and "overlaid" it on the UNIX operational structure.
  • Mac OS X is case preserving but also case insensitive. UNIX, however, is case sensitive.
  • Mac OS X operation is based on HFS+ which is of particular importance when it comes to backing up or restoring systems running it.
  • Most issues about the overall security of Mac OS X all point back to "Root Level Access".
As basic as Daniel's presentation was, however, its overall scope was too great to effectively summarize here in these notes. Throughout his presentation, he provided visual demonstrations of what he was discussing using a Mac operating one of the OS X betas.

He did distribute three handouts whose information would be helpful for those with a beginners understanding of UNIX. These included his own personal introduction packet based on his experience with OS X, a UNIX tutorial, and a paper discussing the integration of UNIX and Mac OS X.
  • Presentation Handout #1: Brief Introduction to UNIX and Mac OS X.
  • Presentation Handout #2: UNIX Tutorial for Beginners (click here to view).
  • Presentation Handout #3: USENIX 2000 Invited Talks Presentation; The Challenges of Integrating the UNIX and Mac OS Environments. (click here to view).
Daniel also provided and extensive list of internet based sources and news groups (click here to view).

Other Issues

Due to the length of the UNIX Basics for Mac OS X presentation and the resulting open discussion during and immediately afterwards, Security Overview - by Rhett 'Jonzy' Jones, Alternate Mac Servers - by Steve Harper and What's New with Mac OS X - by Richard Glaser were not presented.

These topics may be rescheduled for a future Mac Managers Meeting. If you are interested in the topics and would like to have them rescheduled, please contact us here.