TidBITS#495/30-Aug-99
Geoff Duncan
=====================
The world ends not with a bang, but with a kerchunking sound from
a hard disk. Jeff Carlson relates how DriveSavers brought his data
back from the dead. We also review Apple Confidential, a book
packed with insider stories and little-known details of Apple's
tumultuous history, and note recent changes in the PowerPC
universe. News this week includes the release of SkyLINE wireless
networking and updates to Anarchie, Documents to Go, and BBEdit
Lite.
Topics:
MailBITS/30-Aug-99
Shifts in the PowerPC World?
Summer Reading: Apple Confidential
DriveSavers to the Rescue
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-495.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/issues/1999/TidBITS#495_30-Aug-99.etx>
Copyright 1999 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
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This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
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MailBITS/30-Aug-99
------------------
**Farallon Ships SkyLINE Wireless PC Card** -- With Apple's
AirPort still under construction, Farallon has flown out of the
Macintosh wireless networking gate with the SkyLINE Wireless PC
Card, which provides 2 Mbps wireless Ethernet capabilities to Macs
and PCs with PC Card slots. SkyLINE uses the same 802.11 wireless
Ethernet standard as Apple's forthcoming 11 Mbps AirPort
technology, and Farallon's preliminary testing has shown the two
to be compatible. A SkyLINE-equipped Mac can also work with access
points (the equivalent of the AirPort Base Station) from Nokia,
Lucent, MaxTech, Nortel, and Zoom, or it can do peer-to-peer ad
hoc networking with another SkyLINE-equipped Mac. SkyLINE's range
is up to 1,000 feet (305 meters) outside or up to 300 feet (91
meters) indoors. Each SkyLINE card costs $300 and is certified for
use in North America, Australia, and Europe (except France and
Spain), with certification expected in France, Spain, and Japan.
Even once Apple's AirPort opens to the public, SkyLINE should
remain popular for bringing existing PowerBooks into the wireless
skies.
<http://www.apple.com/airport/>
<http://www.farallon.com/tidbits/skyline.html>
**Anarchie 3.6.1 Eliminates Version Control Bug** -- Stairways
Shareware has released Anarchie 3.6.1, a small but important
update to the just-released Anarchie 3.6. In 3.6.1, Stairways
fixed a bug that would prevent Anarchie from being able to check
for new versions of the program; this bug could also potentially
affect the stability of other features. The update is of course
free, and Stairways recommends that all Anarchie 3.x users
download the 1.4 MB update. [ACE]
<http://www.stairways.com/anarchie/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05516>
**DataViz Offers More Documents to Go for Palms** -- DataViz has
released version 2.002 of Documents to Go, its utility for viewing
word processing and spreadsheet documents on Palm handheld
devices. (We first mentioned Documents to Go in "Palm Desktop
Marks Return of a Familiar Organizer" in TidBITS-469_.) The
update, which is available for both Macintosh and Windows editions
of the software, adds the capability to create, edit, and delete
bookmarks within spreadsheets and word processing files, including
support for Word 98's Insert Bookmark command on the Mac. The
Macintosh version also now reads AppleWorks/ClarisWorks 5
documents, supports AppleScript, and provides a contextual menu
item for adding new documents without having to launch the
Documents to Go application. The upgrade is free for registered
users, and is a 4.9 MB download. [JLC]
<http://www.dataviz.com/Products/PIM-PDA/DxTG/DxTG_home.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05300>
**Free BBEdit Lite 4.6 Still Shines Brightly** -- Bare Bones
Software has released BBEdit Lite 4.6, the latest version of its
long-standing free text editor (discussed in TidBITS many times
over the years). Version 4.6 adds numerous interface and
performance enhancements, plus extensions to its pattern-based
grep search and replace feature and customizable key equivalents
for any menu command. As always, BBEdit Lite 4.6 is a svelte
application with small disk and memory requirements, and its
features can be extended through plug-ins, some of which are
included. BBEdit Lite remains a great way to start with advanced
text processing, such as managing a Web site or searching
collections of text documents. If you find that BBEdit Lite is not
enough, registered users can upgrade to the commercial version of
BBEdit at a discount. BBEdit Lite 4.6 is a 1.7 MB download, and
requires System 7.0 or higher (System 7.5 or higher recommended).
[GD]
<http://web.barebones.com/free/bbedit_lite.html>
<http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Archive/text/bbe/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbtxt=BBEdit%20Lite>
Shifts in the PowerPC World?
----------------------------
by Geoff Duncan <ge...@tidbits.com>
The future of the PowerPC chips has recently lain in quiet, murky
waters between IBM and Motorola, the chips' manufacturers. A
little over a year ago, the companies disagreed over the
forthcoming PowerPC G4 processors - specifically, whether to
include the AltiVec vector processing unit - and parted ways, with
Motorola keeping AltiVec and taking over the primary PowerPC
design facility, and IBM focussing on developing PowerPC chips for
use in embedded systems and its server products. Two developments
in recent weeks have made the PowerPC's waters more turbulent, but
no clearer: IBM plans to release free motherboard designs for
PowerPC-based computers, and Motorola announced plans to buy
Metrowerks, the leading maker of development tools for the Mac OS
and PowerPC processors.
**On Board with IBM** -- At this month's LinuxWorld conference in
San Jose, IBM engineers announced that manufacturers could freely
build computers using an IBM motherboard design based on the
PowerPC 750 processor (known in the Macintosh world as the PowerPC
G3). The design derives from the now-defunct Common Hardware
Reference Platform (CHRP) specification, requires no novel parts,
and has no proprietary or legal barriers to immediate production.
IBM apparently does not intend to build products based on the
design, but other manufacturers could use it as-is, or add
additional options. The idea is that other computer manufacturers
could produce PowerPC-based systems running Linux, which would
offer significant performance gains over other Linux systems
(especially in floating point operations, often used in rendering
and graphics processing). A strong market for PowerPC-based Linux
systems would, in turn, allow IBM to sell more PowerPC chips.
It's too early to say what impact PowerPC systems running Linux
might have on the Macintosh world, or whether Apple would allow
the Mac OS or the Unix-based Mac OS X to run on third-party
hardware. (It seems unlikely, given Apple's negative stance toward
Macintosh clones since Steve Jobs's return.) In any case, the
availability of inexpensive, high-performance PowerPC Linux
systems should boost the profile of the PowerPC, which could
indirectly be good for Apple. It's unlikely Apple would lose many
Macintosh customers to PowerPC Linux boxes: comparatively few
people buy new Macs explicitly to run Linux. More interesting is
the possibility that Darwin, Apple's open source initiative
surrounding the foundation layers of Mac OS X, could be modified
by the open source community to run on these PowerPC-based
machines.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04119>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05318>
**Motorola Buying Metrowerks** -- Motorola recently announced that
its Semiconductor Products Sector plans to buy Metrowerks for
approximately $95 million in cash, pending shareholder and
regulatory approval. Metrowerks develops the CodeWarrior product
line of programming tools; CodeWarrior is the leading development
environment for the Mac OS, but versions are also available for
various flavors of Linux, Microsoft Windows, Solaris, Java, Palm
devices, game consoles, and more. According to Motorola,
Metrowerks products and technology will help form the software
backbone of Motorola's DigitalDNA initiative for embedded systems,
ranging from cell phones and digital television to communications
and automotive systems.
<http://www.mot-sps.com/>
<http://www.metrowerks.com/news/index.taf?function=PR&rowid=225>
<http://digitaldna.com/>
However, Metrowerks will be operated as a stand-alone subsidiary
with its current management, so CodeWarrior products for desktop
operating systems (including the Mac OS) will probably continue to
be developed and enhanced. Motorola's move may have complex
implications for Apple, since Motorola will both supply PowerPC
CPU chips used in Macintosh products and own the most widely used
software development environment for the Macintosh.
Summer Reading: Apple Confidential
----------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <a...@tidbits.com>
Having just finished writing a pair of books that should appear in
October, I've switched to a more relaxing gear and done a little
summer reading. The first book on my list to finish was Owen
Linzmayer's Apple Confidential (No Starch Press, ISBN 1-88641-28-
X, $17.95 or less via Amazon or for a signed copy direct from
Owen), a record of the tumultuous history of Apple Computer from
Apple's founding through 1999's Macworld San Francisco.
<http://pweb.netcom.com/~owenink/confidential.html>
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=188641128X/tidbitselectro00A/>
Despite the new title and publisher, Apple Confidential is
essentially a second edition of Owen's 1994 collection of
historical Macintosh quotes, facts, and stories, The Mac Bathroom
Reader. Although I'm one of those for whom reading in the bathroom
is a foreign (and uncomfortable) notion, calling that book a
"bathroom reader" was actually quite appropriate, since the book's
chapters are short and full of quotes, sidebars, and other easily
digested bits of information. Apple Confidential, in contrast,
suffers somewhat from this design because it ends up feeling
choppy and repetitive in areas where the independent chapters are
forced to duplicate information to convey the different aspects of
Apple's history.
But what a story it is, and what a job Owen has done! Thanks to
TidBITS, I've followed Apple for nearly 10 years and the aspect of
the job that I enjoy most is learning the real story behind the
public faces of Macintosh companies. Subtitled "The Real Story of
Apple Computer, Inc." Apple Confidential doesn't disappoint, with
information that you're unlikely to have seen elsewhere. Owen
talked to a vast number of Apple insiders while putting together
the book, which enabled him to ferret out more of the reasons why
various events happened, along with the stories of how they
happened.
The stories of Apple's most famous commercials, the Big Brotherish
1984, anchored by blond model Anya Major (who got the job because
she was also an experienced discus thrower), and the dismal
Lemmings, with its line of suited business-people blindly walking
off a cliff, highlight this inside information. Both commercials
were so controversial with Apple's executives that former CEO John
Sculley ordered ad agency Chiat/Day to sell back the Super Bowl
commercial slots. With 1984, Chiat/Day managed to sell back 30
seconds of the 90 seconds Apple had bought, and John Sculley left
the decision of whether to run 1984 in the hands of William
Campbell (then a VP of marketing, now chairman of Intuit's board
of directors) and E. Floyd Kvamme (an executive VP of marketing
and sales). They gambled on 1984 and won. With Lemmings, though,
Chiat/Day managed to sell Apple's 60 second slot and had to
repurchase it when Sculley again passed on the decision and left
it to marketing manager Mike Murray, who made the mistake of
running Lemmings. In retrospect, which imbues the entire book,
Owen points out that 1984 was backed up by the ground-breaking
Macintosh, whereas Lemmings was meant to introduce the Macintosh
Office, which was essentially the concept of connecting Macs to a
LaserWriter and sharing files on a fileserver. Unfortunately,
although the Macintosh Office was a good concept, the fileserver
part wasn't to ship until two years later, prompting the quotable
Jean-Louis Gassee, then general manager of Apple France, to refer
to it as the "Macintosh Orifice."
Similar stories abound, providing a look inside the company during
the tenure of each of the CEOs: Steve Jobs, John Sculley, Michael
Spindler (who was intent on selling Apple for his three year
stint), Gilbert Amelio, and Steve Jobs again. Here is where people
who had previously read The Mac Bathroom Reader will especially
appreciate the update, since the last five years have been a
roller-coaster ride for Apple. Technologies like Copland have come
and gone, Apple's stock price has risen and fallen and risen
again, and we've seen the Macintosh clone manufacturers sprout
from nothing only to be cut down by Apple. As much as Apple as an
entity has been notoriously difficult to direct throughout
history, Apple's CEOs have still been responsible for the pivotal
decisions that made the company we now see, so it's instructive to
read their stories.
Owen Linzmayer writes primarily for Macintosh magazines, and his
journalistic experience shows throughout Apple Confidential in
ways other than the article-like style of individual chapters.
Most refreshing is the level of accuracy he's brought to the book.
It's always distressing to read a book about a topic you know well
and to disagree with either facts or the analysis, since then you
begin to doubt the veracity of the rest of the book. Although I'm
certainly no expert on Apple's internal affairs, especially during
the early days, I never found myself questioning either Owen's
facts or his commentary about what happened.
You also get the sense that Owen has researched many of these
facts for magazine articles, since figures like the timelines of
Mac OS and Macintosh model release dates are not only interesting,
but tremendously useful to anyone trying to write about Apple.
Similarly, it's instructive to see the chart of Apple's quarterly
profits over the last four years, broken up by CEO (Spindler,
Amelio, Jobs).
In the end, I'll end up using Apple Confidential as a resource
when I'm writing - there's no better source for Macintosh facts,
quotes, stories, and code names (an interesting one that came
after the book's publication is the bronze keyboard PowerBook G3,
commonly known as "Lombard;" amusingly, everyone I've spoken with
inside Apple refers to that PowerBook's code name as "101"). You
may not need Apple Confidential as a reference the way I do, but
anyone interested in Apple and the Macintosh can easily spend many
enjoyable hours poring through the book's inside information.
DriveSavers to the Rescue
-------------------------
by Jeff Carlson <je...@tidbits.com>
Late one night when I was writing for my high school's newspaper,
I finished an article using the staff's new Mac Plus and saved it
to my floppy disk. Perhaps because I was glad to have finished the
piece, or maybe just because adolescent males seem predisposed to
the motion, I wound up my body like a major league baseball
pitcher and then uncoiled in a pantomime of delivering a winning
fastball over home plate. Except in that case, because the floppy
was tenuously gripped between the thumb and forefinger of my right
hand, I actually delivered the disk directly into the side of a
metal filing cabinet halfway across the room.
That pitch still haunts me, a ghosted slow-motion memory of the
type experienced by cinema sports figures graced with good
lighting and a soft lens. Little shards of beige plastic erupted
horizontally, then settled on the bent magnetic platter that
seconds before had represented the _only_copy_ of my article. That
was my first lesson about how fragile most of our high tech
devices can be.
The memory of that floppy disk's wreckage returned with a
vengeance recently when my PowerBook's hard drive began making a
nasty kerchunking noise before suffering a major hardware failure.
Salvaging the drive, and more important, the data stored on it,
required more than a diagnostic pass with Disk First Aid. I had
previously wondered whether the much-lauded data recovery services
of DriveSavers was worth its reputation; this was my chance to
discover firsthand.
**This Is the Way the Drive Ends** -- I'd always thought a severe
hard drive crash would be a visual spectacle. After looking at the
various ways data is represented onscreen, you'd think that having
it all disrupted would make for bright colors and digital
fireworks. Instead, my drive's demise was an audible event: after
pressing Command-S to save a file, the drive spun for a bit then
made fast clicking sounds, punctuated by louder clacking noises.
I shut off the PowerBook and rebooted, but got nothing but a
blinking question mark icon. Starting up from the Mac OS 8.5
CD-ROM worked fine, but my drive's partitions didn't appear, and
weren't visible to Disk First Aid or Drive Setup. Each time I
powered up the machine, however, the clicking and clacking sounds
remained. Spurred on by visions of the read/write mechanism
chopping into the disk platters like a lumberjack, I shut down,
hoping to minimize additional damage.
Fortunately, prompted by Adam's articles on backing up your
Macintosh (see "Backed Up Today?" beginning in TidBITS-432_), I
had finally purchased a DAT drive and Retrospect at home, which
meant that I had a backup of my data. Unfortunately, as it too
often is with technology that seems to be working fine, I hadn't
been diligent about verifying the integrity of my backups. So
although I had been backing up information on a fairly regular
basis, an error on my part meant that Retrospect was backing up
the wrong data: instead of _excluding_ each day's Web browser
cache files, they were the _only_ files being archived. Oops.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1041>
I had done a full backup two weeks earlier, so much of my data was
available. A separate incremental backup at my office reduced the
bulk of my data loss to one week. But email! I get a lot of email,
and over the years my email program has come to rule my life. A
full week of notes, deadlines, conversations, and agreements were
gone. And, of course, I was juggling multiple deadlines.
A cold, odd sense of terrified calm came over me, like Roy
Scheider's character in the movie Jaws when he first sees the
killer shark and says, "We're gonna need a bigger boat." I knew it
was going to be a long week.
<http://us.imdb.com/Title?0073195>
**Damage Control** -- After contacting DriveSavers (at 800/440-
1904; outside the U.S. and Canada they can be reached at 415/382-
2000) and verifying that the problem was most likely a hardware
failure, I removed the drive from the machine - a simple process
thanks to the PowerBook G3's accessible design - and shipped it to
the company's headquarters in Novato, California.
In the meantime, I restored what data I could from my backups to
an external APS hard drive, which then became the primary startup
drive for the PowerBook G3. There were times when I needed
portability, and since toting the external drive was a poor and
inelegant option, I re-enlisted my PowerBook 5300cs and loaded it
with my week-old email and essential files. The speed difference
between the two machines was dramatic, but I was able to remain
mobile, which minimized the collateral damage to my work. In this
case particularly, that PowerBook 5300 was worth more to me as a
second-string machine than anything I could have made by selling
it.
**DriveSavers to the Rescue** -- While I was scrambling to patch
together fragments of lost work and communications, the
technicians at DriveSavers were performing triage on my
malfunctioning hard drive. If you're not familiar with
DriveSavers, you may recognize them from descriptions of their
booth at Macworld Expo. Walking past the PowerBook 100 on display
at the bottom of an aquarium or an unidentifiable half-melted PC
laptop tells you that DriveSavers is serious when it comes to
recovering data from all sorts of catastrophes. (You can read more
about similar feats of recovery at the company's Museum of Bizarre
Disk-asters on their Web site.)
<http://www.drivesavers.com/0/museum.html>
John Christopher, my contact at DriveSavers, was able to determine
that the crash was due to a failed actuator, which is the armature
that holds the drive's read/write heads. To make the
determination, they used a proprietary hardware device that
enables them to test various physical drive functions. Failed
drives are never mounted on a computer for diagnostic purposes,
since mounting could change a disk's structure and overwrite
important information needed for the recovery.
"We have dedicated clean-room technicians who do nothing but
assemble and disassemble drives daily," he said. "The technician
on your drive identified the physical failure of the drive,
removed the actuator assembly, and replaced it with one from an
identical model drive." DriveSavers has about 100 Macintoshes of
all flavors from the 128K on up, plus at least one unit of nearly
every removable drive ever made and parts for over 3,000 drives.
"From there we clone the drive for safety, making a mirror image
of every sector. We figure that once a drive comes in, we may only
get one shot at doing a recovery before everything goes south."
In my case, actually recovering the data was an easy task because
the hardware failure had not disrupted the information on the
disk. "We had a perfect directory, so I was able to mount my clone
and copy the data over," John said. "In most cases it's not that
easy, so we rely on software we've had written to scour the drive
and give us the best possible recovery."
The diagnosis, recovery, and restoration of my data took about
seven hours. Disassembly and reassembly typically take one to two
hours; cloning and recovery take at least two hours, depending on
the amount of information recovered. DriveSavers then verifies and
checks the data for viruses before being loaded onto whatever
storage media you prefer, such as CD-ROMs, Zip disks, Jaz disks,
hard drives, etc. A DataExpress service offered by DriveSavers
also lets you download your data from their FTP site, an option
that can be timed well for customers on the east cost of the
United States.
"I did a priority job one time for a guy in New York," John said.
"He shipped it to me counter-to-counter service. The drive arrived
at 9 P.M. Pacific time and I finished the recovery at 3 A.M., so
he was able to start his download from the DataExpress site at 6
A.M. Eastern time. He got his server back up and online before 9
A.M."
Six days after hearing my drive fail, I received a box via UPS
containing my dead hard drive and five CD-ROMs containing the
complete contents of the disk at the time of the crash, which now
have the added benefit of being permanent archives of my data at
the time. The cost in a situation like mine, where DriveSavers
performed the recovery on a 4 GB hard disk under their standard
1-2 day service, started at about $900 and could run to $2,800 or
more depending on the nature of the problem. DriveSavers also
offers priority, economy, international, and on-site service
options, as well as a high security service plan. In short,
DriveSavers isn't cheap or for casual use, but if your data is
truly important to you, the costs are worthwhile.
**Warranty Woes** -- With my data in hand, my remaining hurdle was
replacing the damaged drive. Since the PowerBook was less than a
year old, the failed drive was replaceable under warranty.
However, since DriveSavers had opened the drive casing (an action
that would normally void the warranty), I needed to make sure I
was still covered. Fortunately, my fears were unfounded.
DriveSavers handles nearly 400 drives each month, and therefore
works closely with hardware providers and every hard drive
manufacturer. I was able to have the drive replaced while
retaining my warranty.
The biggest surprise at this late stage was finding a local
service provider who could order a new drive with a minimum of
fuss. One company wanted me to bring in the entire PowerBook,
diagnose the problem (which was impossible since the original
drive had been opened and modified by DriveSavers), order the new
drive, and install it themselves - meaning that I would be without
my perfectly functional PowerBook for at least five days. After
asking around, I went to MacTechs, a local Apple-authorized
service center, which ordered the replacement drive and handed it
over in exchange for the damaged one.
Calling Apple directly was not helpful in this case but did
provide some amusement. After I explained the situation, the
technical support person I spoke to asked if DriveSavers had
removed the drive. When I answered no, he pointed out that I may
have voided my warranty by pulling the drive myself, since Apple
considers RAM to be the only user-installable part of the
PowerBook. This is despite the fact that pages 81 and 82 of my
PowerBook manual specifically explain how any user can remove the
hard drive "for repair or security reasons." When I pointed this
out, he got a bit defensive, so I didn't press the issue. Since I
already had a lead on a local company, I didn't try to follow up
with someone else at Apple, so this very well could have been an
instance where the individual was misinformed.
Late that night, after installing my new drive, copying over the
recovered data from the DriveSavers CD-ROMs, and merging them with
that week's changed files, I performed a different action than the
one in my high school's newsroom: I went to bed and got a good
night's sleep (while my DAT drive created a good backup, of
course).
$$
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