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Troubleshooting

A restructuring footnote: Mac OS releases shift to once a year

Lost in the myriad of last week's announcements regarding Apple's lay-offs and restructuring, I forgot to mention one additional item of special relevance to troubleshooting: New reference OS releases are going to be only once per year, rather than twice per year. However, this year (1997) will still see two reference releases, with Mac OS 8 (Tempo) coming out this summer. As cited in MacWEEK: After Tempo, "the next major release, code-named Allegro, will ship in the middle of 1998 rather the early 1998 as previously announced. Starting with that version, Apple will upgrade the Mac OS … Read more

SAM 4.5.1 installation problem: a follow-up

Regarding our report last time of readers having problems installing the SAM 4.51 Update, here is what appears to be happening:

When you install SAM 4.5, you can choose (via a Custom Install) between installing a Fat version or a PowerPC (or 680X0) only version. I am not certain here, but it appears that an Easy Install installs the Fat version. If (for example) you installed the Fat version of 4.5 but download the PowerPC only version of the 4.5.1 Update, the Update Installer will not work. The quickest solution is to go back and … Read more

Kaleidoscope 1.5 problems?: a follow-up

Regarding our report last time ofvarious bugs in the just released Kaleidoscope 1.5, many readers wrote in to say that they were having no problems at all. As is usually the case in these situations, the appearance of the bug may depend upon what other software you are using.

For example, Roger Dubar notes that his conflict with Kaleidoscope and SimpleText appeared to be due to a further interaction between Suitcase 2.1.4 and Kaleidoscope. Reversing the loading order of the extensions fixed the problem.

A couple of readers noted some largely cosmetic problems, with menubar items being … Read more

Claris File Fixer for Canvas 5.0.0

Deneba has a Claris File Fixer program available. It states: "Download the Claris File Fixer application for fixing certain Claris Impact and ClarisDraw files that may have been damaged after installing Canvas 5.0.0. Files affected in this way will not open in the Claris applications that created them." (Thanks, Kurt Christensen of Version Tracker.)

ATI Xclaim VR software update is out

The promised 2.01 update to ATI's Xclaim VR card is now out. It includes QuickDraw 3D 1.5 support, Weekend Warrior support, a PowerMac 7200 (Catalyst) sound fix and numerous other bug fixes. The Update is not yet on ATI's web site. Meanwhile, readers report that ATI told them that a copy of the software will be shipped to them.

Spring Cleaning 1.0.1 is out

Aladdin is sending out copies of Spring Cleaning 1.0.1 by email to those who had previously written to them with bug reports or complaints. Aladdin writes: "This release has many significant improvements, especially in the area of memory management." (Thanks, Bob Clarkson and Bob Patterson.)

So far, there has been no sign of an update file posted online.

Update: Hillel Cooperman (of Aladdin) informs me that the 1.0.1 updater will be posted on their web site ASAP. They sent out the full installer to "some customers who were having 1.0 issues so … Read more

Alert: CrashGuard and RAM Doubler conflict

Many users have complained that installing Symantec's CrashGuard beta had the opposite of the desired effect: crashes occurred almost immediately on startup. In this regard, the following message appeared in a Symantec newsgroup from John Harrison, Symantec Quality Assurance (Thanks, Dana Baggett):

"The Norton Utilities team has discovered a conflict with CrashGuard 3.5b1 and RAM Doubler. This issue is currently being resolved and an updated version of CrashGuard (3.5b2) should be available via Symantec's web site within the next few days. If you experience problems with your machine crashing on restart after installing CrashGuard, please … Read more

Week-end Updates

For this edition of Week-end Updates, we feature some new and updated web sites - in addition to the usual updated software. (As usual, this listing is selective and focuses on items of troubleshooting relevance.):

a. Kaleidoscope 1.5 is out. Unfortunately, I have already gotten several reports of problems with it, including crashes when using SimpleText (Dan Lefresne) and one with SuperBoomerang when accessing Open/Save dialog boxes, perhaps only with SB set to enlarge the dialog box (Stephen Giles and Chuck Bouldin.).

b. Aaron 1.6 is also out. It's mainly a bug-fix.

c. StuffIt Lite 3.6 … Read more

Good news: PlainTalk Lives! PowerBook 3400 soars

a. Last time we had some good news about Game Sprockets; today it's good news about PlainTalk. The following was posted (by Apple's Joseph Mankoski ) on the PlainTalk Mailing List. (Thanks, Mark Brooks.)

"Apple's recent press release failed to mention that our core speech research team was preserved in Apple's research lab. (And that, in fact, more speech people were retained than were laid off.) I can assure you that we are all working diligently to make sure that our speech technologies live on in current and future Apple products and operating systems. (In fact, … Read more

Apple Technical Support policies: one more time

Last time, I summarized the latest information on Apple's expected changes to its support policy. It may have been correct as of yesterday, but things have already changed (and will very possibly change again before this is over!). Here's the latest:

a. Apple is now strongly considering dropping its planned toll-call assistance for owners of pre-April 1996 products - and sticking with the toll-free SOS-APPL (yeah!). A final decision on the matter will be made within a week or so.

b. Apple still plans to go ahead with its fee-based system for post-April 1996 products, but has delayed … Read more