Nothing beside remains: Software long gone

We moved last year, and before the move I dumped boxes of 5.25" floppy (really floppy) disks. I made a quick list of what I tossed, and in memory to old software long forgotten, here it is.

Each of these products represented immense efforts, and all of them were commercially successful. Few are in use now, and even fewer are remembered. As each died thousands of old documents and files became unreadable and worthless.

Volkswriter: My first PC wordprocessor; prior to it I used
Grammatik: standalone DOS grammar checker
PFS First Publisher: ancestor to Apple's Pages
Harvard Graphics: create charts
Q & A: wordprocessing and lightweight database
Smart Software (Integrated: DB, WP, Spreadsheet): powerful and obscure
Sidekick: TSRs were awful. Truly awful.
Enable: Another integrated app. Wordprocessing, database, etc. Only Office survived.
WordPerfect, WP Editor, WP Library, DataPerfect: Remember the WP suite? DataPerfect was pretty bad. The WP Editor was excellent.
Reflex: Innovative database/analytics tool
Copy II PC: Before DRM, there was copy protection. Hence Copy II to break it.
PC File: Original shareware appl.
Quattro Pro: Borland's spreadsheet. Later bundled with WordPerfect.
Laplink: Connect machines before LANs
Grateful Med: PubMed is the inferior replacement
MS DOS 2.11: There grew the dark seeds of Gates' power.
DesqView and QEMM 386: The Horror, the Horror.
MS DOS "Leading Edge": Leading Edge had its moment of glory.
Software Carousel: Switch applications, not multitasking. Actually worked.
GeoWorks Ensemble: Shining moment of hope. Microsoft squashed it like a bug.
PFS First Write: another early wordprocessor
Norton Utilities: many versions, this was once a great product. Hard to believe!
Reams of medical software:
Cyberlog, Discotest, Grateful Med, PDQ, EpiInfo, Medical Letter Drug Interaction
Chessmaster
Sim City: This game is still around.
Falcon F-16
Turbo Pascal, C, C++: Those were Borland's salad days
Fastback: defrag
Spinrite: still in business I think ...
BBeard.arc: A BBS software package, from the modem days.
Procomm Plus: remember modems?
Ready 1.0: original outliner
GrandView: outliner/database
Folio Views: a wonderful product that fell when the web rose.
Norton NDOS (replaced command.com)
Norton Commander version 1, 2, and 3: never equalled. NCMail was my favorite email client for many years.
Magic Cap/General Magic (including letter reaffirming firm commitment from Apple)
Reference Manager: still around I think.

Yes, we do need standard document formats.

Firefox Google Toolbar updated

Google Toolbar for Firefox

It's now feature equivalent to the beta IE toolbar. Nice upgrade.

Boot Camp: inviting the devil into one's home

The Register outlines an imaginary future for Apple, now that Apple is providing the Boot Camp utility to support dual booting Apple hardware to XP or OS X. The real risk comes if Leopard really does run using virtualization technology, allowing Vista software to run seamlessly alongside OS X. At that point it's all too easy for Adobe or Microsoft to write XP software that fits that virtualization layer, rather than write OS X software.

It's a genuine risk, the counterbalancing force being that Apple is increasingly writing its own software for OS X. Aperture is a mean competitor to Photoshop for many users.

I hope it goes well. From my perspective it means if my old XP desktop ever chokes, it will be replaced by a MacBook. Similarly if I ever decide I need a Vista machine, it will be made by Apple.

Company that buys iBooks for parts

PowerBook Parts, and Repair Manuals - PowerBook Tech will buy an iBook for parts. My G3 is dying the hinge death, between the Airport card, the memory upgrade and the new battery and new 40GB drive I figure I might get $200 or so. Money to put against the replacement machine.

iBook: hinge of death

My G3 dual USB iBook is on its last legs. The drive died last year and I replaced it, but that was probably a mistake. Now the display is getting dimmer and the hinge is very stiff; these are known symptoms of a design defect that affects iBooks.

The G3 iBook has about a three year lifespan with average use. I think I fell a bit short of that, but I used it very heavily. Three years is the range of AppleCare coverage; if AppleCare service was higher quality I'd get it for my next iBook. Alas, it is not.

I'd hoped I'd make it to the Intel ibook, but the roll out of the Intel MacBook Pro has been so troubled I figure I'll just buy a G4 iBook. The old one may end up attached to an LCD panel in the kitchen, or it may just be junked.

I wouldn't mind a four year lifespan for a laptop, three is a bit short. My old PowerBook 165 lasted about five years, but nobody makes anything that reliable any more.

Update 4/2/06: Macintouch has the best information on this. Nobody mentioned iGlide in that query, it does show up in the few remaining Apple discussion posts on this (they archive older posts and there are few G3s left). WD-40 is a bad idea, it destroys the plastic. I wonder if iGlide is just Teflon spray but I may give it a try. I'll try loosening the bolts slightly to each side of the hinge then spraying it.

Update 4/9/06: Tried iGlide. It had no effect. The instructions require one to remove the rubber feet and loosen the associated screws, that broke 2 of the 3 feet. I sort of expected that from past experience, crazy glue holds them on now.

Update 4/11/06: Oddly, the function is now improving. It just took a couple of days. Crazy glue works well on those iBook feet ...

Update 5/11/06: Still works fine. I sent the company a note saying how pleased I was. I did mention the feet braking, and they sent me a set of replacements. The crazy glue will likely last the lifetime of the iBook, but that's impressive. They also gave me a strong hint of where the lubricant comes from. No, it's not WD-40 -- that would dissolve the plastic. I won't repeat it (sorry), but the source is consistent with the successful results I saw.

Update 11/18/06: The hinge is again in bad shape, and now the cracks are growing and the alignment is off. The treatment gave me 6 months, time enough for the MacBook Core Duo 2 to come out. Worth it really, but not a cure. I suspect the hinges go when some teflon like surface wears off; they probably can't be cost-effectively repaired. I could probably reapply and get some more time, but instead we leave the iBook permanently open. It's not bad for carrying around the house.

Aperture: can't import iPhoto Library

When Apple updated iPhoto 6, they broke the ability of Aperture to import iPhoto libraries: Aperture can't import iPhoto Library from iPhoto 6.0.1 or 6.0.2.

Wow.

That is so extraordinarily stupid.

I have a draft post somewhere about Apple's attitude towards quality. Briefly, quality has never been a big deal with Steve Jobs. Look and feel yes. Out of the box experience, sure. Quality and reliability - no.

I remember some versions of OS 7.x that were so bad they made me want to weep. Apple had good machines back when all PCs were well made, but their build quality over the pasts 8 years has been average to below average. Dell might be worse, but Apple has nothing to brag about.

OS X has improved overall, but new releases seem to break as much as they fix. Sometimes they break what they fixed in a prior update. Let's not talk about how many external firewire drives have been killed in the past few years.

Unfortunately the quality blight is industry wide. As bad as Apple is, and they're pretty bad, there aren't any good alternatives. This most recent blunder, however, is pushing me towards Adobe and away from Apple. I"m going to start using Lightroom beta two for image acquisition and initial work, even if I save them in iPhoto for now.

The joys of rich text format wordprocessing

I needed to lookup something I'd written in Living with the Beast so I googled on faughnan OS X word processor. I found my page, but next to it I found a great article that referenced it:

O'Reilly Network -- TextEdit's Default Format: RTF... Why?

... A quick glance at Planet Jeffery's list of text and RTF editors for Windows gives you an idea of the level of demand for utilities like this. Writers, or anyone who needs to meddle with text every day, have been known to find the bloat and weight of well-known word processors too much to handle. Those who have to use Word come up with strategies for coping--see John Faughnan's Living with the Beast for an entertaining example.

Many people have simple requirements, such as access to simple formatting controls while writing. A lightweight processor, especially one that uses the RTF format, is often the best solution...

Aside from the reference to my page, it's a terrific reference that describes the pros and cons of using RTF as a file format. Today RTF is still the most interoperable file format, though I think every RTF user is hoping that a more robust open document format will replace it (such as the OpenOffice entry or even, shudder, Microsoft's maybe-sort-of-pseudo-open-for-now-kind-of alternative).