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Apple acquire's Power Computing's "core assets"

The big news yesterday was Apple's buy out of Power Computing. The basics of what has happened are covered in an Apple press release:

"Apple Computer, Inc. announced today that it will acquire Power Computing Corporation's core assets in a deal valued at $100 million in Apple common stock. Included in the key assets Apple will acquire are the right to retain key employees with expertise in direct marketing, distribution, and engineering; Power Computing's customer database; and the license to distribute the Mac OS operating system."

Further insight as to why Apple made this decision … Read more

Odds & Ends: Clearing out the backlog...

With an ever increasing number of potential Late-Breakers items piling up at my doorstep, I thought I would use this Labor Day week-end to reduce the pile a bit. Here, in no particular order, is assortment of odds and ends:

Mac OS 8.0.1 to fix PowerBook 3400 "wake from sleep" crash? We have previously reported a problem where, if you have AppleTalk active and Ethernet selected from the AppleTalk control panel, the PowerBook 3400 will crash when it wakes from sleep - with a Finder Type 10 error. Reports are that this bug will be fixed … Read more

Freeware: a Mac OS 8 substitute font and an AOL 2.7 add-on

Sand font Tracy Valleau (with Greg Landweber's permission) has released a modified version of the Epsi font, designed to work with Mac OS 8. He calls it Sand. Just drop it in your Fonts folder, use the Appearance control panel to select it, and restart.

Ronald Leroux offers a general caution about using these substitute system fonts (of which Sand is just one example). In most cases, they "do not do all the job. Only the menu bar font is changed. The font in the menus themselves is not - especially noticed in the Apple and Help menus.&… Read more

ARA 3.0 possible PPP connect problem

According to Bill Vlahos: "Apple Remote Access 3.0 will have problems with most Cisco AS5200 dialup servers using PPP based connections (I have not tested ARAP based connections). There will be an Cisco IOS upgrade which should fix the problem (IOS 11.2(9)) but it is not out yet (expected very soon). Anyone attempting to connect to an AS5200 via modem will get stuck "Starting Network Protocols...". At that point the user must click the Cancel button which terminates the session. The user will have to use other software such as OTPPP to connect until … Read more

ClarisWorks 4.0v5 import/export glitch

Since updating ClarisWorks from version 4.0v4 to 4.0v5 (quite some time ago), I have had the same problem on two different Macs. Recently, reader Alan Mitchell reported a similar problem. Essentially, I am unable to import (or export) certain types of documents, most especially plain text (TEXT) files. When I first tried to import a text file after updating, I got a message that said "The file 'Text' couldn't be found." This happened both on my PowerBook 3400 and my Power Mac 7500. To try to fix this, I deleted the XTND Translator List Preferences … Read more

Microsoft Word 6's unwanted extras in Mac OS 8 on a PowerBook 3400

Several readers have reported a strange conflict between Microsoft Word 6.0.1 and Mac OS 8 that seems only to happen on PowerBook 3400 models. The exact symptom seems tovary from user to user, but the nature of the symptom is the same: a Word element keeps getting duplicated every time you do an action, such as pressing the return key.

The most common report is that of an additional ruler bar appearing after each press of the return key. As noted by Martin Berg, this has been an item of discussion on Apple's PowerBook Discussion Board. John … Read more

TechTool 1.1.5 is out; InformInit updated

TechTool Jeff Baudin (of MicroMat) has informed me that TechTool 1.1.5 [538K] is now available. I have already added the update to MacFixIt's Download Library. You can also get it from the MicroMat web site. It adds support for the U.S. version of Mac OS 8 and International versions of Mac OS 7.6.1.

Also available from the MicroMat web site is DNA 010 update [230K] - which allows TechTool Pro to test Mac OS 8 files. TechTool Pro 1.0.5 is still undergoing beta testing and should be available very soon.

Kurt Kroeger … Read more

Yet another blinking question mark startup problem:

Apple recommends affected Power Mac 5400/6400/6500 users revert to Mac OS 7 Last week, we had a report on the growing number of users encountering startup problems with Power Mac 6400. As it now develops, this issue appears to affect some, but not all, Power Mac 5400/6400/6500 models. Apple recommends that affected users downgrade back to Mac OS 7 until this problem is solved. Here is Apple's official statement, as noted on the Performa Discussion Board:

Q. I installed Mac OS 8 on my Performa 6400. It ran fine for a few days, but then … Read more

Week-end updates

As now listed in the Download Library, CopyThru 2.9.4, File Buddy 4.2.2 and Fonts Manager 3.7.1 are all new versions of these programs - which seem to be updated almost daily.

AGNetTools is a free utility suite of IP tools. For example, it includes PING (pings Internet devices with a specified number of packets, timeout & time interval; minimum, maximum & average response times are reported back), TRACEROUTE (traces the route packets take from your computer to any device with an IP address on the Internet), and NAMELOOKUP (uses DNS to resolve names to … Read more

Good news for the Mac from Consumer Reports

This was reported on the "web" several days ago, but I wanted to wait until I saw my own copy before mentioning it. I can now confirm it: After several years of misunderstanding and misrepresenting the relative merits of the Macintosh, the September issue of Consumer Reports finally gives the Mac its due. It lists the Mac as best in (1) Performance and Reliability, (2) Customer Service and (3) Frequency of Repair. The Power Mac 6500 was also one of the highest rated computers in the article (all the rest were Windows machines).