Hi all--
While the act of thinking is sometimes dangerous, it seems the events
of this week at WWDC seem sufficient for a passing moment of
reflection especially as it pertains to our little group of jolly
jaunters in our little corner of the Macosphere. In a not so small
way we're now in the same playground as the 68k Mac users and we're
grappling with all the tensions that go with using a machine that
simply is no longer actively supported either by the OS or the
hardware. The machine itself is eminently usable which is one of the
most profound statements for the Mac system in that users are
perfectly capable of doing virtually any task with almost any piece
of Mac hardware out there. Mac users are simply productive
regardless of hardware limitations. Stories still abound of what
people are doing on any variety of 68k machines, some still in System 6!
Nonetheless, time marches on and so does the technological frontier.
Computing, even at home, is less text based and is now becoming a
multimedia machine with intense static graphics, near audiophile
sound quality, and the ability to process video. All of these tasks
even 10 years ago were still topics of discussion in senior seminar
computer science classes and a handful of R & D labs. Steve Jobs
has continuously pushed the Mac platform to be network-centric and
the hub for all of these elements so the days of simple text emails,
Usenet newsgroups (you do know about Usenet?), IRC, and even HTML
have been pushed aside for digital photo management, home video
editing and related post-production, CSS, and even getting recognized
as a up and coming media personality via podcasting.
Compare the specs of RAM and disk storage space from 10 years ago to
what is now typical. Getting a Mac with 64 MB RAM and a 5 GB drive
was thought to be hideous almost ridiculous in capacity--only the
hard core Pagemaker jocks would even approach those limits. For the
past couple of years the C series owners are asking how to break the
144 MB RAM ceiling because there's not enough to get multiple tasks
done. Even putting Mozilla on a machine would put a big dent in hard
drive capacity now.
And so the internal deliberations begin--what is the strategy? There
are essentially two choices that are realistic. The first is to
simply accept current limitations of machine and the software that
can be run with the existing configuration. This acceptance can be
either like a resignation to one's fate ("I can't do anything about
it and I have to live with it") or a conscious acceptance that the
machine is doing precisely what you want and have little or no desire
to do more("I just want to email a couple of friends and keep recipes
handy"). The latter is where the vast majority of the 68k users are
and they are perfectly content because they don't need any more
capability than what they have.
But the other strategy is that of non-acceptance and the restlessness
that often accompanies this. New technologies are being adopted,
invariably at affordable costs, and the desire is to get on board.
However, the machine that may have been the envy of the geek
neighborhood has become the proverbial aging family sedan that's been
to more than its share of ball games with the attendant dings, dents,
and scratches. Mechanically, everything under the hood runs fine as
the oil gets changed every 3000 miles and the tires get rotated but
its so ordinary. The commercials for the latest models with the GPS,
media units, and better safety (oh yeah, lots of vroom, vroom) all
say we need vroom vroom. And right now.
So the decision gets made not to necessarily trade the sedan in for
the mid life crisis machine but maybe we can get the media center for
the kids by replacing the existing AM/FM/cassette radio with an in-
dash 6 disc CD changer with an underseat subwoofer. Now the current
discs can be played without having to resort to dubbing tapes. Ah,
peace and tranquility from the back seat passengers, for a time.
Upgrades to existing components are always possible but eventually
there's a limit to what is realistic and the cost/benefit analysis
will eventually tip to changing the platform rather than adding the
next widget.
That cost/benefit for most of us here was rather steep as the price
of a new Mac was realistically over $1500 before adding a monitor.
We could say with considerable certitude that buying an ATA card,
processor upgrade, network card, USB/1394 card, and boatloads of RAM
still made considerable sense. In a gross way it was like dressing
up a pig but packing even $1000 of upgrades especially into an S box
made that machine really something. Except for the relatively slow
main bus, an S box did everything any current Power Mac could do with
perfect aplomb. The folks at OWC have done us all a great service by
marketing to the upgrade market while Don and the folks at Small Dog
decided to cater to the new/refurb market. We're all staying plugged
in with the various adds we've done the past couple of years.
But with Tiger, the newest switch to Intel, and especially the advent
of the Mac Mini, that cost/benefit just got turned on its ear. The
family sedan is looking more and more like a '83 Plymouth Reliant
with the noisy exhaust and puff of smoke that comes out in the
morning startup which almost invariably means there's a cylinder not
getting good compression. Its pretty much assured that Classic
compatibility is not going to happen in Leopard and Mactel boxen. As
significant break with the past as likely as has been seen since the
close of the Apple II era/dawn of the Mac is now upon us. The Mini,
even as seemingly limited as it appears, has reduced the cost of
upgrading to current hardware to essentially the cost of a 1 GHz
processor card. The Mini now is the bridge for us with legacy
hardware to be a part of the current Mac environment and run Leopard
and any future software for the next 5 years without extensive
hacking and significant tuning or even overhauls of that Reliant.
Many, including me, have taken great joy out of poking under the hood
and doing all of these upgrades and making them work. It's been a
really great ride especially here on this list swapping stories back
and forth as to what works (or doesn't) and performing various acts
of contrition for the sins of SCSI and all the little things that
these Umax boxen taught us. Learning from this list got me a couple
of gigs a few years ago and indirectly my present job doing e-
commerce customer service for a rather forward looking DCX dealer in
northern NJ. (Yeah, I'm not in active ministry for the moment) But
even with all the hacking I'm at the point of the decision I
mentioned earlier--that of either knowing that the box I have is all
I'm going to have (I do so need to upgrade the CPU from a G3/400) or
get a Mini. When the iMacs were $1299 and up it was a far easier
decision but as I laid out what is now quite evident for the Mac
roadmap, sinking money into this box is likely not the wisest course
of action.
In a way, making a decision like this is tantamount to losing a close
friend or a beloved pet. After all the work, sweat, and reasons for
saying the prayer of confession on Sundays when the box didn't boot
or there was an extension conflict or bus error or other annoyance
that needed an evening or weekend to figure out it is just doggone
hard to essentially put that box out to pasture. You know this box
like the back of your hand, you know exactly how it responds and you
instinctively pick up how long a program loads or a screen redraws.
Anything outside that instant of time immediately makes you sit up
and ask what might be wrong. You sit down, grab the mouse, and
there's the familiar sounds of the drives coming back to life and the
screen lights up with the desktop and all the icons just as you set
them. It's the familiar place where everything is just as it should be.
But you also know that when you change to another machine that sense
of familiarity, that almost sense of bonding, is not there. Things
aren't, well, like they were. Getting another cat after the first
one you had is never the same. I know its a stretch to compare
inanimate machines with our feline rulers but we've invested
ourselves in our machines and its hard to let go to get into
something else, even something with a lot of vroom vroom because you
didn't put the vroom vroom in there in the first place.
But, alas, the time does come for those not content with the way
things are. For me the time is soon. The Mini is just too much to
keep my Umax box going. I suspect more than a few here see this as
well. And so another chapter begins...
Pax,
Pastor Mac
On OS X
Grace is when life itself is more than good enough.
--Garrison Keillor
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