Tag: Macintosh

The August 19 meeting was supposed to include a discussion of virtual machines, but that was put off; covering other topics proved to occupy the time fully. Next year will be Apple’s 50th anniversary, which should also serve as a reminder that microcomputers are old, and much of the information we’ve produced with them is also old. Hence, there is a need to have a plan for preserving old information and transferring or converting it to new formats, storage media, and uses.

Nerd warning: you can skip these three paragraphs if you wish

I used as an example a catalogue of books I read in college. While writing papers on the history of science fiction, I read 2,262 volumes of science fiction over seven years. I kept track of these books on Hollerith cards, which is the formal name for the classic 80-column “computer card” or “punch card” used to program early computers. After graduate school, I lost access to the university mainframe, which made it impossible to read my catalogue, so I took the 54-page printed listing, in all upper-case letters (because the mainframe line printer only did upper case), scanned them, and used OCR (optical character recognition) to turn the paper record into a computer file. I then wrote a program to turn the ALL UPPER CASE text into “Sentence Text,” with the first letter of every word capitalized, then wrote another program to make articles and conjunctions (and other less significant words) lower case, then another program to break the various parts (author, title, publisher, date of publication, etc.) into separate fields, then sucked the entire result into a database where it could be searched, sorted, and otherwise manipulated.

Around the same time, I found a microcomputer with a card reader running Xenix, a Microsoft version of UNIX, and used it to read in all the cards, useed the UNIX iconv onversion utility to turn the IBM-coded EBCDIC text into ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Exchange) text, and several years later used a Mac to turn the ASCII text into the more refined UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format 8-bit) character set used by modern computers. I then wrote a program to compare the OCR-based text to the text produced from the card reader to detect any transformation errors.

Why did I convert the listing two different ways? Because I could, and I did find errors, which were corrected.

Preserving information

In essence, this was an exercise in information preservation, a task faced by countless people throughout human history. Before the invention of the printing press, highly educated scribes spent much of their lives transcribing old records written on vellum (calf or sheep skin) onto new sheets of vellum, or rewriting sheets of papyrus (pressed plants) onto new sheets of papyrus, or recreating written records on rice paper onto new sheets of rice paper as the old sheets faded into illegibility. Printing presses vastly sped up the process of duplicating records, and the telegraph allowed records to be sent electrically over long distances. Microcomputers gave anyone with a computer and a printer their own printing press, and the advent of the World Wide Web allowed anyone to create their own “press” electronically and broadcast it to the world, with no paper involved.

Yet computers also posed new preservation problems. While Hollerith cards, created on acid-free cardstock, have a projected life of over a hundred years (if kept away from fire, water, and bugs), computers stopped using card readers decades ago. The original Macintosh had a 400K diskette drive, capable of holding 400,000 bytes (equivalent to the text on 222 sheets of typed paper), but it has been decades since a Macintosh had a floppy disk drive. The Macintosh SE could hold the equivalent of 11,000 paper sheets of text on its 20 megabyte hard drive, but those 20 megabyte drives aren’t even readable by modern Macs.

In fact, no Macintosh currently made has a floppy disk drive, a hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, or a DVD. If you have data still stored on floppy disks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, or older hard drives, your window for recovering information from these storage media is rapidly closing.

Recovery is only half the battle, as many of these old records are stored in formats no longer supported. The Macintosh II was the first Mac to support color images, and these images were stored in PICT (Macintosh Picture) format or in GIF (Graphics Interchange Format). While GIF is still used, it supports only a limited range of colors, and the PICT format cannot be viewed on non-Macintosh computers, and is no longer supported on the Macintosh, either. Written words in ASCII text, and the more modern UTF-8 text, are still universally supported, but old word processing files written with Apple Writer, MacWrite, WordPerfect, WordStar, FullWrite, and even old versions of Microsoft Word are either unreadable or require significant editing.

Some random facts about storage

A typed sheet of paper contains, on average, 1,800 characters, counting spaces.

A 400K Macintosh floppy disk could hold the equivalent of 222 sheets of paper.

A 20 megabyte hard drive can hold the equivalent of 11,000 typed pages of information, or 50 floppy disks.

A terabyte flash drive can hold the equivalent of 50,000 20-megabyte hard drives, or 2.5 million floppy disks, or 555.5 million typed pages of information.

A Hollerith card had 80 columns, each representing 1 byte, for 80 bytes per card.

Hollerith cards came in boxes, each of which held 2,000 cards, and the box weighed 14.5 pounds.

The song “Zombie,” by The Cranberries, is 5 minutes, 5 seconds long, and stored digitally on a Mac takes up 7,358,063 bytes. Converted to punch cards, it would take 46 boxes of cards (91,960 cards, 667 pounds of paper) to store this one song.

“Les Misérables,” the movie version starring Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, and Russell Crowe, takes up 6,817,819,698 bytes of disk storage. Converted to punch cards, it would require 43,000 boxes of cards (86 million cards, 312 tons of cards) to store this one movie.

Summary: punched cards might last for a century, but it would take a large forest to hold the contents of your iPhone.

Some random things mentioned in the video require a note

Export: At one point, I was trying to export an .mp3 file from GarageBand, but could not find the required command. It is under the Share menu, which allows music and sounds to be exported in AAC (Apple high quality), MP3 (can be imported by non-Mac computers), AIFF (older audio format), and WAVE (old Windows format).

News sources: There was a question about recommended Mac news sources.

Geeky

Daring Fireball, https://daringfireball.net, by John Gruber. Gruber talks about technology in general, but he has an emphasis on Apple technology. He also developed the Markdown language for writing easy to read, easy to write plain text that can be converted to XML or HTML.

The Eclectic Light Company, https://eclecticlight.co, by Howard Oakley. A very geekly look at Mac technologies, complete with free utilities to do things you probably should not do. Eclectic Light Company also offers deep dives into art, chiefly European painting.

SecureMac, https://www.securemac.com/news. Information aimed at security and privacy on Apple devices.

Non-Geeky

Macworld, https://www.macworld.com. A long-running website devoted to all things Apple. Most of it is written for the everyday user, but there is a fair share of clickbait, imaginary controversy, and rumormongering.

TidBits, https://tidbits.com. TidBits started off as an email newsletter decades ago, and has morphed into a reputable general technology site with a definite Apple emphasis.

MacTech, https://www.mactech.com. Apple-centric news. Years ago, MacTech was aimed at technically trained individuals who managed large networks of Apple products, but it now has a more general focus.

Cult of Mac, https://www.cultofmac.com. Apple news site with a dose of rumor.

9 to 5 Mac, https://9to5mac.com. Apple news site with a dose of rumor.

Take Control Books, https://9to5mac.com. Take Control Books publishes mostly Apple-centric books, in ebook format, allowing you to buy and download them immediately and display them on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. While not a “news site,” it does offer a staggering breadth of Apple-centric information on everything from how to use Terminal and interact with Unix on your Mac to how to take a decent picture with an iPad.

MacMost, https://macmost.com/video-list. MacMost is a video blog, with each episode focusing on a single Apple-specific task or technology.

xkcd, https://xkcd.com. xkcd has nothing to do with Apple products. Instead, it is “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” It is geeky, but very funny.

Utilities mentioned in the video

Audacity, a sound player and conversion utility, https://www.audacityteam.org/

BBEdit text editor and conversion utility, https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/

GarageBand, MIDI sequencer, composer, and sound conversion utility, https://www.apple.com/mac/garageband/

Preview, Apple image utility and converter, https://support.apple.com/guide/preview/welcome/mac

TextEdit, Apple text editor and text converter, https://support.apple.com/guide/textedit/welcome/mac

Video recording of the August 2025 SMUIG meeting

Transcript of the meeting

This transcript was generated automatically by Zoom, and Zoom is sometimes creative. Use your browser’s find function to search for particular words or phrases.

18:31:38 Good evening, can I ask a question?
18:31:40 Absolutely, that's what this time is for.
18:31:44 Haven't, uh… it seems to me that as long as I can remember Apple Mail on the Mac.
18:31:48 Has had, uh, a select all. Feature, so that if you wanted to delete.
18:31:56 Everything in your inbox, or one of those mailboxes, you could select all and then delete it.
18:32:01 Yes.
18:32:01 What… I ran into a lady who's got a… MacBook Air from 2017.
18:32:08 Let's select all isn't there.
18:32:11 Uh, it's… you have to click on at least one message.
18:32:15 So that it knows that you're in that pain, and then hold down the command key, press A, and it should select everything.
18:32:22 Oh, okay. I didn't try, you know, starting up in safe mode or any of that to see if.
18:32:28 I don't think that's necessary, but if you don't have. A message selected.
18:32:33 It doesn't know what you're doing, because that window isn't selected.
18:32:36 Yeah. I also noticed that she didn't have a junk mailbox or a trash mailbox, and I…
18:32:44 I thought that was odd.
18:32:45 Um, I've noticed that with some people who have corrupted mailboxes.
18:32:50 And if it's encrypted, then the, uh… the best thing to do is to rebuild a mailbox. There's a command to…
18:32:58 It's one of the menu choices to rebuild a mailbox. Depending upon how much.
18:33:00 Yeah.
18:33:03 Trash and junk and other mail that they have, and also on their internet connection, it can take quite a while.
18:33:12 And some people might need to try it 2 or 3 times, because.
18:33:10 Yeah. Okay.
18:33:17 The task might time out. Uh, before we get too carried away, I want to point out I am recording this.
18:33:18 Yeah.
18:33:23 And I did turn on closed captioning. Because unlike last month, I actually…
18:33:29 Have a note to remind myself to do that. So… Anyway, um, any other questions?
18:33:39 Well, first, I wanted to say hello back. I just couldn't find my unmute button.
18:33:45 Okay.
18:33:43 But… I do have… a question. I'm trying to get… I'm going to be getting rid of a 21-year-old PC.
18:33:53 There's some pictures I want off it, so I got a… I got the little thumb drives.
18:34:00 Is… is it difficult to… pull stuff off a PC and then put it on a Mac, it'll just…
18:34:09 Pictures.
18:34:10 The, uh… the only thing that is… I will… show you what I have. The only thing that's different is that Macs today all have.
18:34:21 A USB-C connectors. If you buy a new Mac, it has USB-C connectors.
18:34:27 And PCs, uh, generally have USB-A connectors, and. What that means, this is a USB-A connector, if I can show it, it's a…
18:34:37 It's a rectangular thing, and… This is a USB-C connector.
18:34:43 It's a much smaller, and it's oval-shaped. And the reason Macs have this is that the European Union.
18:34:52 Demanded that all, uh, electronics sold in the EU. If they have a USB-E connector at all, it has to be USB-C.
18:35:02 And this came about because. There are something like 80 different variations of USB-A.
18:35:10 Uh, there's micros, and there's mini micros, and there's about 80 different variations.
18:35:16 And, uh, when the USB-C came out, the USB-C. Electronics is much faster.
18:35:24 Now, just because changing the shape doesn't make it faster, but the electronics inside is much… are much faster.
18:35:29 And at that point, there's no particular reason. To make people go through all these hoops, so… new iPhones, new iPads, new Macs all have USB-C connectors. And I bought these clever little things at Costco.
18:35:44 It's got a USB-A at one end, so I can plug it into a PC, and it's got a USB-C at the other.
18:35:50 Um, so this is… this is my way around it. But if you have a bunch of USB-A.
18:35:57 Thumb drives. You can also get. Adapters. It's this little adapter that you stick on the end of it.
18:36:03 That gives it… it turns the USBA into a USB-C. The good news, bad news, just putting the USB-C connector on it won't make it any faster.
18:36:13 It will probably… It'll probably be painfully slow to take the images off of your PC, given the age of it.
18:36:22 Um, but it's well worth doing. It just started up, tell it to copy a bunch of photographs, and then go off and.
18:36:32 Okay, I think I got the right kind of. Um, it's got one end.
18:36:30 Do something else. Go shopping.
18:36:38 A C in one end is a A, so I think…
18:36:41 Absolutely, that's… that's what you want. But the next part is just finding everything, and uh…
18:36:47 And copying it over. And there are things other than pictures that you might want. Income tax things, and all kinds of stuff.
18:36:54 But just copy them off. And if you fill one up and you still have more, then the USB.
18:37:00 Drives are fairly inexpensive. Um, bike, just as kind of a FYI.
18:37:07 The first USB… flash drive that I ever got, uh, was…
18:37:16 100 megabytes, and I think it was 40 bucks. And now, for 40 bucks, you can go out and get a…
18:37:24 Um… I don't know. 128 gigabyte, I mean, it's just…
18:37:29 Orders of magnitude larger, so… That shouldn't really be a… a problem, but if you just… if you fill up one flash drive, just go out and get another.
18:37:38 All right, thank you. Um… So the old PC.
18:37:43 I know it has a motherboard still, because I used to know how to get in there and mess around. Is that what I should take out and smash up and…
18:37:49 No, the motherboard is… when you turn the power off, everything on the motherboard disappears.
18:37:55 The thing that you want to take out is the hard drive.
18:37:58 Because the hard drive, even if you think you erase it on a PC.
18:38:02 It doesn't really erase the drive. What it does is it deletes the directory.
18:38:07 But if you're some evil genius, like, I don't know if I'm a genius, but if you're somebody like me, I can get things off of a race drives.
18:38:15 And so the best way to deal with it is to just take the drive out.
18:38:21 And take a hammer and just beat on it. Or if you have… nephews or grandchildren or something.
18:38:30 Um, just tell them to destroy it, and they'll cheerfully do so.
18:38:34 Um, but, uh, the only safe way to, uh. To take care of the drivers, to destroy it.
18:38:40 There are, on the Mac, there are safe ways to. Erase a disk, but on PCs, it's… it's not at all.
18:38:51 Okay, thank you.
18:38:50 Easy. Just kind of as a background for that.
18:38:58 Um, I… I want… I needed some replacement drives, because I have a lot… I have a lot of photographs and such.
18:39:07 And I needed a replacement drive, uh. Last year, and I was procrastinating, and my spouse.
18:39:13 Goaded me into buying them. I bought these drives that I thought were at a really good price.
18:39:18 And when I looked at them, I thought, there's something strange about it.
18:39:21 And they were not new drives, which is what I was sold, they were used drives. In fact, one of them had.
18:39:28 54,000 hours of use. There's a way to find out. And I thought, oh, it's a U, so who had it?
18:39:35 And I used my. My, um, knowledge of this sort of things.
18:39:43 To find out it had belonged to a tax firm. And they apparently had just disposed of it.
18:39:50 And didn't realize people recovered, but… There were tax statements from people with social security numbers and bank account names and addresses, and…
18:40:01 For literally thousands of accounts. And, um, I reported this to the FBI, I reported this to.
18:40:11 Amazon, which, uh… It was not sold by Amazon, but Amazon was a delivery service.
18:40:18 Report it to the FBI, to Amazon, to a number of people, and things got really exciting.
18:40:25 But, um… I ended up buying more expensive drives from another.
18:40:30 More reputable firm. Um, but the first, if they had been new dries, it would have been a good bargain, but they were not.
18:40:40 Um, other questions?
18:40:42 Um, I had something, uh. Are you going to either today or next meeting, go over Mac OS26 and IOS 26?
18:40:54 Um, I talked about it a little bit last month, um… I'm going to put that off again until…
18:41:02 September, October, it depends upon when Apple. Releases the operating system. If you have a general question that I can answer in a couple minutes, I have been… I haven't played with iOS, because.
18:41:17 Um, it's out in beta, but beta is just the Greek word for not working.
18:41:22 And I'm not willing to experiment, especially given where we live.
18:41:27 I'm not willing to experiment with having a phone that's not working.
18:41:30 So, uh, I have put it on an iPad, iPadOS 26 on an iPad.
18:41:38 And I've put macOS Beta, uh, in fact, there's a new developer beta that just came out today.
18:41:45 I put that on, um… a laptop, so I have experience with them.
18:41:50 But I'm not going to demonstrate them until… Probably until they're released.
18:41:55 Simply because right now, some things are not working. And while they annoyed me greatly that some of the things are not working.
18:42:04 It's… that's where the state of the art is at this particular point.
18:42:08 One of the things that I always check. Is the help. There's a… there's a help, um…
18:42:16 Application on the Mac. So on the Mac, it's on the iPad, it's on the iOS. People… don't pay any attention to it, but it's still there. It's called TIPS.
18:42:24 And so I always launch tips to see if it says anything. And when tips comes up empty that I know they haven't got around to.
18:42:33 Writing the documentation. So it's kind of pointless to… to demonstrate it and tell…
18:42:40 Until it's actually working. But if you have questions, I'm more than willing to entertain questions.
18:42:48 Lawrence, I've got one. My wife has a whole lot of movies on her computer, and I says, you know, I think we ought to put this into the cloud.
18:42:57 Do you have any suggestions how you take a bunch of.
18:43:00 Movies, uh, they're… they're local movies, she's a dance instructor, these are all dances and things.
18:43:05 How to put them into the iCloud, and should you categorize them first, or.
18:43:11 What's the best way to do that so you don't have just a long list of alphabetical.
18:43:18 Files.
18:43:16 Um, I did this recently for my church. My church… I'm in… Don't ask why. I'm in charge of the audiovisual computer setup for the church.
18:43:26 And we started, um… videotaping… well, we didn't use videotape. We started redoing video recordings.
18:43:34 Of our services during the pandemic. Uh, because that was the only way we could have services. We'd videotape it, then I'd put it up on the web, and people could see it.
18:43:44 What we use is we use, uh, YouTube. Youtube, you can set up to… to either publish your movies so that everybody can see them, you can upload them in such a way that only people who have a link, like your relatives or whatever, can see them.
18:44:01 Or you can make it completely private. Um, and YouTube will do this, and it doesn't cost you a thing.
18:44:07 If you stick it on iCloud, which is much more secure, iCloud… Movies take up, uh, space, and so you'll have to buy more space in iCloud.
18:44:19 Um, I have 2 terabytes worth of space in iCloud. That's essentially.
18:44:25 Two fairly large, uh. Hard drives in iCloud.
18:44:29 Um, so that's… that's this, that's the space thing, the… Other limitation is your internet speed.
18:44:36 Depending upon the size of the video, it can take a while. Sometimes it takes me… Um, an hour and a half to upload a church service.
18:44:46 Because the longer the video, the longer it's going to take to upload, because we don't have the fastest.
18:44:53 Internet connections on, uh. Peninsula. Um… So, there's the space that you're going to be using, and then there's the time.
18:45:05 To your question, though, what you were asking about, should you do any work on it beforehand.
18:45:12 In order to… keep track of the church's videos.
18:45:17 They're all, um… there's a prefix before the title. And the prefix is the date.
18:45:24 And the data's done in ISO fashion, International Standards Organization fashion.
18:45:29 In the United States, we go month, day, year. Nobody else on the planet does that. In Europe, they do day, month, year.
18:45:37 Which is also brain dead, but for completely different reasons. The ISO standard is year, month, day. So today would be.
18:45:46 2025-0819. Why this is important?
18:45:53 They alphabetize perfectly on a computer. It keeps them in nice numerical order, so if you put them up in date order… well, if you, first of all, name the files.
18:46:01 With that date, and you maintain that. You can put anything you want after that date.
18:46:06 You know, like, Nancy dances with Sugar Plum Fairies, or whatever it is you want to have.
18:46:13 Is the title. That's fine. But that date thing will actually.
18:46:18 It's more help to you than the title. Because YouTube doesn't really put up with anything in any particular order. It puts them up in the order in which they were uploaded.
18:46:28 Which may have nothing to do with when they were taken, or edited, or whatever.
18:46:33 So, uh, I would urge you, the first thing you do is to.
18:46:37 Rename them with the very first part of the name being the date and year, month, day.
18:46:44 Format.
18:46:45 Yeah, so they would go with, like, numerical order. It'd be… Yeah, so I was thinking, you know, if she wants to select something, you know, how does she find it?
18:46:49 It'll be in numerical order at that point, so it'll be… It'll be…
18:46:56 She'd have to do it by year, and then identify the name of what she's looking for, like the name of a dance, and… But can you search… can you search in there for…
18:47:05 You can easily search for dates, and you can also just search for movies. Like, for example, if they're QuickTime movies, it'll have the extension MOV.
18:47:13 And so you can say, find, and then say, if you're looking for something that has Susan in the name and it's a movie.
18:47:21 Find, space, Susan Space. Dot Mov, and it'll look for things.
18:47:26 That have Susan in the name and have MOV. So you get all the movies that have MOV.
18:47:05 So if she names the names the movie. And then she could search on that name and find it.
18:47:40 Yes, uh, yes.
18:47:41 Okay, okay, that's… I think so. She's got a ton of movies, and I'm just thinking, I put it all in there, and it's gonna disappear in a list of, you know, chronological.
18:47:52 Would see the… Chronological is good.
18:47:52 Files, that'd be terrible.
18:47:55 Because chronological is less arbitrary than what you type in. What you type in, did you call it…
18:48:04 Thanksgiving, or did you call it dinner for Thanksgiving? Or, you know, there's no… There's no rhyme or reason for that, but the date, you have no control over.
18:48:17 Okay.
18:48:14 That's… that's by divine, you know, they… the divine calendar covers that. You have no control over that. So that's the point that you should focus on.
18:48:23 So when…
18:48:23 And if you don't sure… if you're not sure what the date of that is, look at the date that the file was created in the finder.
18:48:30 And use that as the date.
18:48:31 Info. And then, how do you do this on YouTube? Where do you go on YouTube to make that happen?
18:48:37 On YouTube, you create an account, you create an account. If you have a Google account, then you also have a YouTube account, you just don't know that.
18:48:44 You go into YouTube with your Google account name. And you create a channel.
18:48:50 And then you just start uploading videos. And at the time that you upload the video.
18:48:56 It'll ask you to fill in a bunch of metadata and so on and so forth.
18:49:00 And then it'll say, you know, next screen, and when you get to the last screen, it asks you.
18:49:05 Is this public? Is this private that people can see with the link, or is it just private?
18:49:10 And that's where you can decide whether or not you want to show the world about it.
18:49:15 Just as an FYI. More video.
18:49:14 Okay.
18:49:20 Is uploaded to YouTube. Every day, every day.
18:49:25 Then was taken. In all of human history up until the year 2000.
18:49:31 Every day.
18:49:32 Oh my god. Okay, thank you. Well…
18:49:38 I've got a project in front of me, then it sounds like.
18:49:42 Okay, may I ask a question? Um, so many, many years ago, I used to be subscribed.
18:49:51 To all of the Mac magazines, like Mac Addict, Mac World, etc. I enjoyed reading them like celebrity gossip magazines, only it was about Apple products.
18:50:01 Um, so, you know, I assume that paper media is totally ancient history now.
18:50:06 What are people reading these days to get informed on. Product reviews, new Mac products, you know, editorials about Apple policies, whatever.
18:50:20 Well, I'll give you my answer, and then we can ask other people.
18:50:18 What websites can I go to?
18:50:25 Um, there are two different types of, um… electronic media for this. One is the, uh, the… what you call the popular press.
18:50:33 And there are things like, um… I can't remember the name of it, but there's a… There's, um, a MAC Daily News and an iPhone Daily News, which are mailing lists that have stuff.
18:50:45 With an associated website. And then there are some things that are much more for the nerdy types for… for Mac photographers, for iPhone photographers.
18:50:56 For people who are doing movies, and then there are the really, really geeky ones. There's one called, um… Oh, I actually need to bring up my email.
18:51:09 Because that's the easiest way to tell. Uh…
18:51:17 And…
18:51:33 There's one called the Electric Light Company, which is a mailing list.
18:51:37 It's a guy who's absolutely a genius at art, and he has.
18:51:43 Art histories, about, you know, Picasso and whatnot, depending upon whatever he's doing.
18:51:48 But he also writes programs that do strange things, like look at your log files.
18:51:56 Set up firewall rules and all kinds of stuff. His is at the high end of the geekiness. Um, there is, uh…
18:52:05 There are other mailing lists that, um… that are, uh, talking more about the.
18:52:11 Nuts and bolts of what the day-to-day user might do. But more at the geek end, and… I can't remember the name of it. It's, uh…
18:52:24 I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head. The, uh… The author's been… he used to work for Apple, and uh…
18:52:32 That's the sort of thing that, why don't you… send me a message, and I'll post a…
18:52:39 Okay.
18:52:40 Because, uh… Just off the top of my head, I might read these, but I'm one of these people who can go to a movie, I like the movie, and I tell you what the plot was.
18:52:50 And people say, who are the actors? Have no idea who was the director, have no idea. Who wrote it?
18:52:56 Beats me. That's not the part I pay attention to. Um, so I'm… I would need to, uh, actually go and look and see what it is that I…
18:53:07 Read. But, uh, um… There are quite a few things out there.
18:53:12 The difference between the really geeky ones, the really geeky ones, you have to have a fairly.
18:53:17 High level of technical understanding to understand what it is they're.
18:53:21 Talking about. The popular ones, the difficulty there is that. A lot of the popular ones I wouldn't trust.
18:53:28 With anything at all. Um, they tend to re… they tend to review things that people gave them, or they… solicited, and they often review things that they just want.
18:53:40 To have, so they took the right positive reviews of things that I wouldn't give the time of day to.
18:53:41 Hmm.
18:53:46 Um, so I don't trust a lot of the popular. Review sites, and then there are some that delay… that deliberately.
18:53:57 Work in controversy. So, uh, uh, Apple's going down the tubes because they don't have a good, uh.
18:54:05 Artificial intelligence, uh, plan. Apple doesn't know what they're going to do after the iMac.
18:54:12 They said this in 2001. Um, some… a guy I know.
18:54:17 He found over 8,000 articles in doing just an internet search, unique articles that said that Apple was going to go bankrupt.
18:54:27 And some of the earliest ones date back to, uh. Um, 1978.
18:54:34 Uh, when they first went public, that they were going to go bankrupt, IBM was… that IBM hadn't even… wasn't even in the PC market, but.
18:54:42 Ibm is going to introduce the IBM PC, and it was going to kill.
18:54:46 Apple. Well, IBM's no longer in the PC business. Commodore is no longer in the PC business. All of their…
18:54:54 Competitors basically aren't around anymore, so it's… that's… but that… that kind of controversy… Apple's gonna go bankrupt.
18:55:02 That gets them, uh, subscribers, that gets them people linking to their website. So there's just an awful lot of the, um.
18:55:10 Clickbait stuff out there. But the nerdy stuff doesn't tend to be that way.
18:55:17 Uh, but the difficulty is that you have to really know what you're… Um, talking about in order to understand what they're talking about.
18:55:24 What I'm going to talk about today is actually fairly nerdy, so…
18:55:28 All right. Well, thank you.
18:55:31 Yes.
18:55:30 I had a question, uh, Lawrence, and this might be what you're talking about today. And if it's nerdy, I'm probably not going to understand a lot of it, but someone gave me.
18:55:41 A scanner, because it was so old that she said, um, you know, she wasn't using it, and it only works on old computers, and so I… I came home, and I thought, wait a second, I have one old computer, the, um, highest operating system that it will be… use is Snow Leopard, and my computer has Snow Leopard, and I hooked it up, and it works beautifully.
18:56:05 What I'm afraid of is that this computer is already. Being funky, and I'm like, well, how do I get…
18:56:15 And then I have a new computer that's the, um, you know, the new chip.
18:56:21 Well, that won't work with this, so I really love this high-end Cano scan, um, but it needs Snow Leopard, so… I was looking online going, okay, I'll buy an old computer with Snow Leopard. Well, no, I can't find any.
18:56:37 I mean, I don't know where to look, so I need your advice. Is this what you're… something… yeah.
18:56:45 Um… just as a… just as an FYI, Canon makes fantastic flatbed scanners. I mean, the… and the Cano scan is a flatbed scanner.
18:56:49 Okay.
18:56:54 Yeah.
18:56:55 The, um, um… You can go out and buy a machine old enough to use Snow Leopard.
18:57:01 It's going to come with several downsides. One is. The hard drive in it's going to be 15 years old.
18:57:09 The average life expectancy of a hard drive is about 4.
18:57:15 Oh, okay. Okay.
18:57:14 So, that's not great. So that… that's an issue. The second thing is that I was really irritated. My printer has a scanner.
18:57:27 But the printer, and actually, any printer scanner, the resolution tends to be very, uh.
18:57:35 If you take a scan of a human face, you can see where it actually.
18:57:40 It has little, uh, terraces as it's going through the very gradiations of skin.
18:57:46 Because it's not very good at the subtle variations that you have in photographs.
18:57:52 Yes. Okay.
18:57:52 And this irritated me greatly, so I went out and spent $89, and I got a brand new Canon.
18:57:59 A Kano scan. That runs off… the power in everything comes from the USB, so.
18:58:06 You just plug it in, and you've got a flatbed scanner.
18:58:09 And I don't… I didn't even use the software that came with it, uh, until I found out that the software that came with it does one thing that I really like.
18:58:18 At that point, I installed it. But your Mac has the ability to just.
18:58:23 Hop2 scanners. You go in there, say, there's a new device out here, go out and grab the driver for it, and it'll install it.
18:58:30 The Canon scanner that I bought for $89. The reason why I installed the software, I can put 4 snapshots down on the bed.
18:58:40 And when it scans it, it gives me 4 separate files, rather than just.
18:58:44 Yes.
18:58:45 One giant one, which is really cool. So my… my thought is, yes, you probably can get a machine that runs Snow Leopard.
18:58:52 There are some companies that sell those. Um, um, that's not what you should search for. Search for a particular model, like, say you want a, uh.
18:59:04 A PowerMac G3 or something. That will get you in the right ballpark.
18:59:10 But I wouldn't do that, because. The new Canon scan… Cano scan that I bought.
18:59:11 Okay.
18:59:16 Much higher resolution than one that works with Snow Leopard. The software is up to date, it runs on your current computer.
18:59:24 I just wouldn't do that.
18:59:23 Okay. Oh, I didn't know they were so cheap. I didn't even… I was afraid to look. I mean, I haven't really looked at scanners, but you mean…
18:59:31 You can… you can get some that are, like, $300, $400, or $500. The $500 ones have one neat trick.
18:59:37 When you put down the lid, the lid also has a light in it, so you can put in slides, 35mm slides.
18:59:43 It'll shine. Light through the sky, the, um, slide.
18:59:50 So it'll scan the slides.
18:59:52 Well, that's what I need. I have transparencies, and they're… I need high resolution, but they're two and a quarter, so they're big transparencies that I need very high resolution.
19:00:01 Then you… you probably need… you probably need to have… the $89 one I have doesn't shine the light down.
19:00:02 Yeah. Okay. All right.
19:00:12 All right, all right. Um, I'll have to go that route.
19:00:08 Uh, for that, it's like the $300, $400 ones. And if you're looking…
19:00:16 If you're, uh, looking for that, you should also look really quick.
19:00:20 Because those are going to be subject to tariff. Because none of them are made in the U.S.
19:00:23 Oh. Okay, do you… even the… so, would you… is it the Kano scan? Is that a good brand for the higher… for the transparency?
19:00:33 Um, I… I like the Cano scan that I have, it's not the fancier one that does transparencies, but.
19:00:40 Okay.
19:00:41 I like the one I do, the, uh… the image quality is just exceptionally good.
19:00:47 Especially compared to one that works with something that's like Snow Leopard.
19:00:53 Um, the first scanner I ever worked with. Only did black and white, didn't even do gray.
19:00:59 And it costs the U.S. Government $1,000. So, things have changed a bit.
19:01:08 We're spoiled, aren't we? Well, thank you.
19:01:09 Yes, we are spoiled.
19:01:11 This scan you're talking about, is it color and black and white, the one you're talking about for $89?
19:01:17 Yeah, for $89, it'll lose color and black and white. And if, uh, 8.5x11, yes, it does paper and…
19:01:22 Prince. But it's print.
19:01:26 And photographs, and so on and so forth, but it doesn't do transparencies. Transparencies… it needs a light shining through it onto the… receiving surface. And, uh, Canon does make one that's got a light in the lid.
19:01:40 So that if you tell it you're a shining slight transparencies, it shines light downward.
19:01:46 Um, but that's a… that's fancier than what I needed.
19:01:52 Okay, well, thank you. That's good advice.
19:01:56 Any other questions? Uh, it's about time to start program.
19:02:01 I have a real quick one. Um, will we be able to go to the new library at the end of the year that's opening up?
19:02:08 The public library?
19:02:10 The, um, library has… they said they were going to try and open it by July, obviously that did not happen.
19:02:17 Um, apparently they were having parts shortage, not the library, but the.
19:02:23 Contractor was having parts shortage. And the last I heard, they have not given a definite date.
19:02:30 Um, I'm hoping that they have it. Um, I really… the temporary library location that they have is by far the.
19:02:39 Nicest temporary library I've ever seen, but it's still a temporary place, and the new place is.
19:02:45 Has a computer lab, and, you know, it's got… It's got stuck.
19:02:48 We'll have a conference room large enough to hold our meeting, or…?
19:02:51 I do not know that. The other thing is that, uh.
19:02:53 Oh, okay.
19:02:56 When it comes to fall and winter. Uh, given the, um… our makeup in terms of our demographic. A lot of people don't like to go out at night, so unless we wanted to do it on weekends, which tend to be a.
19:03:11 Difficult time to get space. Um, I… we might have trouble convincing people to go out at night.
19:03:21 I shall turn it over to the… president who hasn't turned on her microphone.
19:03:29 Good evening, everybody. Nice to see you.
19:03:29 Now…
19:03:34 Charles, are you by chance new? I haven't seen you before. Welcome to our meeting.
19:03:38 I am.
19:03:43 Thank you very much. Sorry?
19:03:42 How did you guys? How did you hear about us?
19:03:49 Internet search, um… I used to belong to a Macintosh club in my homeland of Austin, Texas, called Capital Macintosh.
19:03:58 Really, really enjoyed it, and I've not been active in a group for many years, so… Um, this is actually the only group I found in the entirety of western Washington, but…
19:04:10 Oh, great. Um, well, that's wonderful. We're happy to have you.
19:04:09 I'm not dissatisfied.
19:04:15 And, uh, welcome everybody else, and I'll just turn it back over to Lawrence.
19:04:20 Uh, first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to paste into the chat window.
19:04:25 The URL for the, uh… sign-in sheet.
19:04:30 I actually made one this time, and I found out why the one last.
19:04:35 Month wouldn't allow anyone in. Google has improved their security.
19:04:42 Which is not a bad thing, but it's just that. I didn't realize that. I have to explicitly tell people.
19:04:50 That they can go into the… Uh, form. In the past.
19:04:54 Can I please stop some breaks?
19:04:54 They didn't care. Uh…
19:05:02 Wake up? Okay.
19:05:07 I'm going to talk about, um, two things to tonight. Um, they… have a lot to do with what I was doing recently. I was trying to recover.
19:05:18 Old data from, uh… CDs and DVDs. I got rid of…
19:05:23 Floppy disks a long time ago, when we moved. I actually held on them to him until we moved out here in 2018.
19:05:32 Uh, and, um… The Navy was not going to pay for our move, so I threw away about 40,000, uh, discs.
19:05:42 Uh, which is a lot of discs, but, um… I was, among other things, the, um… Software librarian for the Washington Apple Pie user group.
19:05:51 Which at one point had 5,000 members. And I was the bulletin board operator for the San Diego user group, which one had.
19:05:59 5,000 members, and between the two of them, there were just a lot of things that I had on floppy disks.
19:06:04 So I threw those away, but I kept the… data DVDs and CDs. And the trouble with that.
19:06:10 Is that CDs have… At best, a projected life expectancy of 10 years.
19:06:16 And I have some CDs that I purchased, audio CDs that I purchased in Japan in the 1980s.
19:06:22 So I went into the process of recovering. Anything I could off of these, uh, CDs and DVDs, and that.
19:06:30 Uh, was interesting. And along the way, I found out that there were… I could read the files, but once I had the files onto a modern machine, I couldn't actually open them up.
19:06:41 And so, one thing I want to talk about today is, uh, file formats and how to recover.
19:06:49 Information when you actually have the file in hand. And there's a related topic, which is.
19:06:55 Transferring files. When you send a ma… when you send a… if you have an iPhone, a modern iPhone, you take a picture with it.
19:07:04 If you have set it up properly, it's going to save everything in a very high… resolution format.
19:07:11 And they're also going to use a high-efficiency format that Apple calls HEIC, and I don't remember what that stands for.
19:07:19 And I don't care. If you email one of those photographs to somebody who has an Android phone.
19:07:26 They can't see it. So… It's one thing to recover files, but then it's another to actually transfer them off to some people.
19:07:35 And then, after I'm done talking about that for a while, I want to show you some virtual machines, unless you want me to do the virtual.
19:07:43 Machines first. A virtual machine is… is running a…
19:07:48 A machine as if it's an IBM or a Unix machine.
19:07:51 Even though it's not. So…
19:07:57 Anybody have a preference? Okay, I've got to, first of all talk about.
19:08:05 File formats. And I'm gonna share my screen, so don't go away.
19:08:15 And I'm going to move this menu bar that you can't see out of the way, so it stops irritating me.
19:08:21 Um. What happened to my…
19:08:27 Oh, there you are. Um… As I was recovering things off of, uh…
19:08:35 Diskettes, I noticed that I had some things that… We're problem children.
19:08:40 And, uh… Let me see if I can change the resolution here without screwing up, uh…
19:08:51 Zoom. Okay, can you see it better? I hope.
19:08:58 This file here says that it is an AU file. And if you know anything about science, you'll know that an AU is basically a unit of astronomical.
19:09:09 Measurement which has nothing to do with what this is. This is a sound file, and it's done in… it's stored in a Unix format.
19:09:17 So, if it's a Unix sound file, how can you hear it?
19:09:22 And the answer is, if you have a Mac, you can open up.
19:09:25 Ah, that's not what I wanted to open up. Uh, you can open it up with QuickTime.
19:09:32 And you can play it. Now, whether or not you can actually hear it is another matter. Well, I don't think there is any question about it.
19:09:41 It can only be attributed for… Consume an error.
19:09:44 I don't know if you could hear that, but it was from 2001.
19:09:48 This was recorded at least. Sometime in the 20th century, so it's quite old.
19:09:56 Now that you have this file, if you want to share it with someone, especially a PC user.
19:10:02 It's completely useless, because they can't hear a Unix, uh. Sound file. So if you go up to cook time, you'll see that QuickTime has an export command, and you can say.
19:10:14 Export it as audio only. And that'll try to save it as an.
19:10:20 M4a. Which is a modern audio format.
19:10:24 But it's a modern audio format. For Macs. It's not… generally speaking, something that.
19:10:32 A, uh, Android or PC user can use. So what can you do with something like that?
19:10:38 And the answer is, there are other tools out there. And the tool that I prefer for this sort of thing is called, uh, Audacity.
19:10:46 Which is a pun, because it's, uh… It's an audio pun. Um, and Audacity, he can read these files, so if I…
19:10:55 Drag it over to Audacity. I can play it.
19:11:00 Well, I don't think that is… well, I don't think… Yes, yes, yes, stop that.
19:11:04 But I can also go say, up here and say File, Export Audio.
19:11:09 And I went to export it to a computer. I have a whole bunch of different kinds of formats. I can have an MP3 format, an AIF format… oh, but you're… you don't care.
19:11:20 If you're gonna send it to a PC. Or anybody else, if you don't know what's going on.
19:11:25 Use MP3, say, export. And… now that audio format…
19:11:34 Uh, go away. Is someplace on my desktop.
19:11:40 And… I have an MP3 file that I can send off to a Unix… to a… to a PC user or an Android user, and they'll be able to hear it.
19:11:50 So, I took a file that was. Produced in the last century.
19:11:55 On a Unix machine, and I've saved it in a format that modern computers can read.
19:12:01 And listen to on both PCs and Macs.
19:12:06 Do you lose quality when you do that?
19:12:08 Um, it depends upon the original quality of the audio file. I… this was such an old one that any format I save it in today.
19:12:16 Any modern format is going to be a better format than the original audio. So it's not going to improve it.
19:12:22 But it's not going to decrease the quality. If it was a high-resolution audio file.
19:12:29 Um, you can save it in an MP3 format, and it'll be pretty good, but it won't be as good.
19:12:36 As the max native audio file. If you go to any.
19:12:42 Almost any audio workshop, or… movie producer or something like that.
19:12:46 Um, they use Macs. For their video, and they use Macs for the audio.
19:12:51 Um, and Apple's aware of this, and they work really hard at doing this.
19:12:55 Uh, making sure that it sounds and looks as good as possible.
19:12:59 But, uh, for an audiophile this old. If you get an MP3, that's as good as it's going to get.
19:13:08 It was probably mono, among other things, so… Um, unless somebody made an effort.
19:13:15 Next file format that I'm going to look at is this one up here. It's another audio format.
19:13:20 It's a wave file. And I'm going to open that in QuickTime.
19:13:25 And this is a finale to Rachmaninoff Concerto.
19:13:34 And it runs through the same issue. If I save it.
19:13:38 I can export it as a M4AV file, or whatever it is.
19:13:43 Um, and that's not gonna do it. But I can use Audacity to save it into another format. Audacity, by the way, is free.
19:13:52 You just go onto the internet, look for Audacity. And it's… it's free. It does a really good job on audio files.
19:14:00 I'm going to show you something that's a little bit different now.
19:14:05 I'm going to open up… Well… I'm going to drag this file over onto something called BBEdit.
19:14:13 Bb Addit is a, um… is a text editor that's designed for programmers.
19:14:19 And, um, so this is what this file looks at like. It looks like garbage.
19:14:25 And there's a way to make it look… Um… slightly less like garbage, so I'm going to tell it to dump it as, um…
19:14:34 Hexadecimal file. So now you can see it's numbers, as far as… the computer is concerned. But, uh…
19:14:42 This is what is called a MIDI file, and a MIDI file.
19:14:46 Stands for musical… instrument digital interface.
19:14:52 Um, a lot of, um… keyboards and other instruments today output things in MIDI format.
19:15:00 And since it's basically just. Text, um, it can be opened up pretty much universally.
19:15:08 By, among other things, but except that QuickTime doesn't want to open it. Well, heck with QuickTime.
19:15:13 Normally works with QuickTime. We're gonna use GarageBand instead. If you don't have GarageBand, you should. It's a really good.
19:15:21 Free program for doing all kinds of weird stuff. And this, if you look at it, the mini file, which is just text.
19:15:29 Is broken down, it had inside of it. Commands to play these instruments. The instruments are actually inside of GarageBand. So these are just instructions.
19:15:40 To software instruments that are in GarageBand. And I come up here, and I find the play button wherever the play button is.
19:15:57 It's a rock song that I like to use to irritate people. I like the rock song, but uh… It's interesting. And that ticking sound, if you heard it at all, the ticking sound is the, um…
19:16:10 Metronome that's built into GarageBand, and I exited before I finished showing you what the trick was.
19:16:19 And… So now we have this song up here.
19:16:23 If you wanted somebody to hear this, they don't probably have GarageBand. If they have a Windows machine.
19:16:30 But if you go, say, save as, you can now. Um… that's not what I wanted… I wanted.
19:16:43 Save as… I don't want it to say that way.
19:16:56 Uh…
19:17:08 I'm looking for the export button. And it's hiding. But anyway, this thing will export it as a…
19:17:18 As an MP3. All they have to do is figure out where it's located.
19:17:23 And… I don't see it right now. But anyway, GarageBand can actually take that.
19:17:30 Midi file and turn it into an audio file. That you can then share with other people.
19:17:37 Um… And…
19:17:42 Uh… There was one more I was going to…
19:17:48 Show you which easiest way might be. To… ah, yes.
19:17:54 Um, this is a WAV file, which is a Windows, uh… a Windows format.
19:18:04 And if you're gonna… because this is a Windows format, I'm kind of irritated if you send people.
19:18:09 This is a… is a Windows file if they have a Mac, but this is where you can save it as just an audio file.
19:18:16 And it'll save it as an audio file that they can play with QuickTime, or they can… play with, uh.
19:18:23 Uh, the, uh, music. Application.
19:18:27 A new music player application. So they're… when it comes to…
19:18:32 Audiophiles. There are different ways in order to. Convert them into something that either you or somebody else.
19:18:39 Can make use of. Sometimes, though, it gets a little bit, uh, tricky.
19:18:46 Um, as an example. I will give you my science fiction library.
19:18:53 And… where is my science fiction library?
19:19:00 That's one… where's the other one? There it is.
19:19:06 This is my science fiction library, which I haven't actually updated this in… um, 20-some years.
19:19:14 When I was in college. I… kept track of the science fiction novels as I was reading.
19:19:22 Because, among other things, I was writing about the history of science fiction.
19:19:26 It's not what I was told my department I was doing, but that's what I did.
19:19:31 And this text listing. Has 2,262…
19:19:38 Science fiction novels that I read while I was in college.
19:19:43 Um, and I keep track of each one of them. And I did it on Hollerith cards.
19:19:49 A hollerith card, where is a Hollerith card? Let's go back, can we…
19:19:55 This is a Hollow Earth card. I would punch these out on a key punch machine.
19:20:01 One card per book. And then, after getting my bachelor's and master's.
19:20:09 Kathleen decided we were going to move to, uh, San Francisco, because she was joining the.
19:20:14 Public Health Service, and I was going to lose access to the IBM mainframe.
19:20:21 So, let us now consider something. This particular card. Has 80 columns on it.
19:20:26 And that limits the amount of information you can stick on the card.
19:20:31 And the cards themselves are a little on the hefty side.
19:20:35 Um, there are 2,000 cards in a box, and a box of these cards weighs.
19:20:41 14 and a half pounds. So, on one box, you can store 160,000 bytes of information.
19:20:51 At this rate, if you took the, uh… Cranberries, cranberries are Irish rock group, they have a very famous song called.
19:20:59 Zombie, which is about, uh. Um, how bad the IRA was.
19:21:04 And, uh, Zombie… is about, uh, 7.5 million bytes long.
19:21:11 It's 5 minutes and 5 seconds long for the song. It would take 46 boxes of cards.
19:21:20 Weighing 667 pounds. To record zombie.
19:21:27 On paper. So you punch stuff out on the cards, and.
19:21:32 If you've got a nice paper record. The good news is that.
19:21:36 These cards have a life expectancy of 80 to 100 years. They're acid-free.
19:21:41 Paper, it's not… it's not regular paper, it's actually cardstock. Really good stuff. But the problem is, they weigh a lot, they might last forever, but they weigh a lot.
19:21:52 Les Miserables, the movie, if you streamed it, that's about 6.8 billion bytes. It would take 43.
19:22:00 Thousand boxes of cards, 86 million cards to record it. And that's 312 tons of paper.
19:22:07 So, I now had… I wasn't trying to record music or video, I was just trying to get my library. My library was recorded on these cards, and by the way, they only recorded in uppercase.
19:22:19 No lowercase. And I wanted them someplace else. So what I did, I kept the printouts, and eventually I used a scanner.
19:22:28 To scan them into my computer, ran OCR recognition against them to turn that scanned image into text.
19:22:35 And then I wrote a program to change them from all uppercase to upper and lowercase. I had to write a custom program to do that.
19:22:44 And I then produce this, uh, and then I wrote a separate program to break them into fields, so that the author was separate from title, which was… Separate from publisher, and so on and so forth.
19:22:54 And this… Um…
19:23:01 2,500 cards, what was it, 2,300? I don't remember how many I said it was.
19:23:07 2,262 cards worth of information, which came out to 55 sheets of computer… paper are now one file.
19:23:16 That's searchable on my computer. Um, 50 years later.
19:23:22 So that's one way to convert things. But you might already have things on your computer that you can't.
19:23:30 Read. For example, if you have one of the old Macs before Mac OS X.
19:23:35 They didn't put file extensions on things, and in fact, you can go into the Finder.
19:23:40 You can go into Settings, into advanced, and you can say.
19:23:44 Don't show the file extensions. And, uh, the next time I would reboot, they would disappear, but I want those, so I'm gonna put that back.
19:23:53 These file extensions are very, very useful. Uh, your Mac can look inside of files and tell what they are.
19:24:02 Sometimes, but not always. So, this file here that's black. If I look at it, over here it says it's an executable Unix file, so I click on it.
19:24:12 And it says I couldn't do anything, so it stopped. So it's not a Unix file, so what is it?
19:24:19 I drag it over onto BBEdit. And BBEdit says, oh, it's actually a text file.
19:24:26 So how do I convert this text file into something that I can read today?
19:24:35 Any ideas? No ideas?
19:24:41 This one's easy. Watch this. It's magic. I come here at the end of the file, I type in text.
19:24:51 T, and it says you want to add that? I say, sure.
19:24:54 And I click on it now, and it opens it up.
19:24:59 That's all I did. So I changed it from having no extension to having an extension, and the Mac says, oh, that's a text file.
19:25:06 I can open it up with something that opens text files.
19:25:09 So that's… that's easy. Some of them are a little bit more difficult.
19:25:15 Like, for example, this one down here, it says PowerBook 540C.
19:25:20 What is that? If I click on it again, it thinks it's a… a, uh… Unix program, it's not really a Unix program, doesn't know what to do with that, so I drag it over here.
19:25:31 And it says, oh, it's actually an EPSF file. In EPSF file is a PostScript file.
19:25:38 Now, most of you don't have PostScript programs, but I do.
19:25:43 So I'm going to type in… EPS, and say, do you really want to change that? I do.
19:25:50 And when I click on it now, it's going to open up.
19:25:53 Adobe Acro… well, it's opening Photoshop. Should have opened up Acrobat, but what the heck?
19:25:59 And… And… you can't see it particularly well, because it's small.
19:26:07 But it's a picture… it's a drawing of a PowerBook. From, uh…
19:26:14 Don't say. God save. Go away.
19:26:20 And that file's from 1994. And in 1994, the Mac knew that that was an EPSF file.
19:26:29 Because Max didn't use extensions back then. But the Mac today is running on Unix, and Unix kind of likes those extensions.
19:26:38 So, I created this… I made this into a usable file by just finding out what it was.
19:26:44 Giving it the appropriate extension. And that's… that works sometimes.
19:26:51 This one that says, read me first, that looks important. We should click on that, and again, it says, oh, can't do that.
19:26:55 So I drag this over here. And it says, oh.
19:27:00 Well, what is this? This is a PDF, it says. Hmm. Let's see if it's really a PDF.
19:27:07 So I come here, click on it. Type in PDF… PDF.
19:27:15 And PDF is a shortcut for Acrobat. A lot of you don't have Acrobat, but if you click on it.
19:27:21 You can say open with, you'll see that preview can open Acrobat files. So let's see, yep!
19:27:26 It's an Acrobat file. So I took an unreadable.
19:27:31 Ancient file from 1997, and I turned it into a readable file.
19:27:37 By just changing the extension. A lot of people, though, they do this the wrong way. For example.
19:27:45 We had a member a couple months ago who said that they.
19:27:49 They, uh, were changing files for somebody else by just changing the extension.
19:27:54 And most of the times, that's not going to work. You have to make sure it's the right.
19:27:58 Kind of extension. I can take this file here that says it's an HEIC file.
19:28:04 If I change this to say that it's a JPEG file.
19:28:07 And send it to somebody on a PC, it won't open.
19:28:10 Now, what is it? It is… an image file, but it's a high-efficiency image file that's Mac only.
19:28:20 Pcs, Android can't see these. So what do you do in this case? In this case, I come up to the File menu, and I say.
19:28:27 Export this as… and I'm in preview. As I say, exponent is JPEG and says save.
19:28:35 And it'll save it now as a JPEG. Image that PCs can see.
19:28:40 By the way, this picture is of an old NOAA ship.
19:28:43 Um, it's actually at, uh, Pierside. In, uh, Port Angeles.
19:28:50 It's had all the logos taken off of it, and I… was driving by one day, and I said, that's a NOAA ship, and it is.
19:28:57 Uh, the, uh… Uh, it was slightly damaged, although it wasn't slightly damaged. It was damaged about…
19:29:04 Five, six years ago, and they were going to send it in for repairs, and they decided, given the age of the ship.
19:29:10 That it wasn't worth the repairs, and I have no idea why it's in Port Angeles.
19:29:15 But it's been sitting there for, um… several months. But anyway, this is a… this is an image file.
19:29:23 But if you send this to a PC user, they won't be able to use it.
19:29:28 They just can't read it. There are other things that…
19:29:33 Are kind of imagery and really aren't. That are worth looking at.
19:29:38 Uh… did I get rid of them? Oh, no, they… there they are.
19:29:49 Uh… That's a text document, don't want that one.
19:29:57 These are all pictures. These are the very first pictures that I ever.
19:30:03 Worked with on a computer. This is, uh, Venus de Milo.
19:30:09 This is the Starship Enterprise. It's printed out, uh… 90 degrees, this is the Mona Lisa.
19:30:17 And this is a dragon. In the very early days of computing, when I was running… when I was using an IBM mainframe, this is how you created pictures on a computer.
19:30:28 You couldn't get graphics, graphics… graphics hadn't been invented. I used… I used to tell my daughter, she was born in 198.
19:30:36 She wanted to know why old pictures were in black and white, and I just told her that color hadn't been embedded. Everybody just… saw things in black and white.
19:30:44 Um, she didn't believe me, but uh… To some extent, that's true. The early computer art was just…
19:30:52 A bunch of text that was typed on a page. I'm going to turn off file sharing so that I can.
19:31:02 Answered questions. Any questions about that? I went through that fairly quickly, I recognize that.
19:31:14 One thing that, um, that I want to… kind of emphasize is a lot of the tools you have.
19:31:21 For converting old things into new things you already have. Preview can read all kinds of image files and save them back as JPEGs. You're not saving them, you're exporting them.
19:31:34 And you can do the same thing with sound files, either with, uh.
19:31:38 Quicktime, or you can use, um… Audacity, which is free.
19:31:44 A lot of the tools either you have or you can get quite easily.
19:31:48 And if you've had a Mac for some time, especially if you're trying to.
19:31:53 Think things from an old Mac. Put them onto a new Mac, you might find that you have the files, but you.
19:31:59 Really aren't sure how to re… how to read them. And one of the ways to find out how to read them.
19:32:06 Is when you click on the file, instead of just double-clicking on it.
19:32:09 Click on the file, use the right mouse button. To pop the little thing that, um, this menu that pops up and say, open with.
19:32:18 And it'll list all the files that can open that file.
19:32:21 Which may not be the file that you used to create it.
19:32:25 Pages, for example, can open up Microsoft Word files. So can simple text.
19:32:31 Not SimpleTouch. Uh, so can… what's the name of that? Text editor. Uh, it's called TextEdit. Can open up, uh, Word files. So a lot of, a lot of.
19:32:43 Things that you already have on your computer. Can open up these old files.
19:32:48 But maybe not if you directly click on it. If they directly click on it.
19:32:53 It may say, I have no idea what this is. And, um, you have to give it a little bit of help.
19:33:00 Do you ever use an open office, Lawrence?
19:33:04 I stopped using OpenOffice, uh, oh, like, 10 years ago. My reason for use… stopping using OpenOffice is that, uh.
19:33:14 The, uh, pro… the… the project was being starved for money by the Mozilla Foundation.
19:33:23 The Mozilla Foundation. Heavily funded that at the start, because Mozilla.
19:33:29 Wanted to be a, uh… they wanted to be a rival to Microsoft.
19:33:32 And they thought that if they just stuck with browsers and things like that, that they wouldn't be.
19:33:37 And, uh, so they… we're helping with OpenOffice and a lot of other open software projects, but when they starve for funding.
19:33:45 A lot of the… a lot of these, um. Software projects are done by teams of people.
19:33:52 Who have jobs, but a lot of them don't, and they were getting stipends from the foundation, and when the.
19:33:58 Stipends, uh, dried up, uh, they… went and did something else.
19:34:02 Yeah, I can drop stuff in open off sometime that I can't open, whether an open office opens some of the stuff up for me that I can't normally open up.
19:34:11 We'll open our office, among other things, does… will open files and formats that are no longer supported, and they're not just.
19:34:18 Yeah.
19:34:18 Not just from Microsoft, but from other. Companies. Um, because I am a writer at one time or another, I probably used.
19:34:27 Close to 100 different word processors. And I'm not talking about different versions, I mean different word.
19:34:34 Processors. And, uh, one of the problems you run into. Is that I have some… I have some… files that I wrote was something called FullWrite.
19:34:44 Oh, 15 years ago. I can't read them anymore. Um, there's nothing out there that can convert them.
19:34:50 So, being cognizant of maintaining your archives. Is an important problem. The…
19:34:59 I want to have… access to the bibliography of things that I've written.
19:35:04 And when I first wrote that, I wrote it in something called, uh, Scriptsit, which was a word processor.
19:35:12 With a TRS-80. Trs-80 was made by Radio Shack. In the 1970s.
19:35:17 And when… And later on, went into CPM and…
19:35:24 And Apple IIs, and so on and so forth, I had to convert that into something else.
19:35:29 And the most common denominator for that was just save it as text.
19:35:33 Which gets rid of the formatting, which is inconvenient, because. You're writing especially a scholarly paper, and it's got… you italicize the titles and things like…
19:35:43 Italicized foreign phrases, all that goes away. So, uh…
19:35:47 Um, on files that are, like, black, and it says EXEC on it, which I think's a PC.
19:35:52 Kind of a format. Do you do anything?
19:35:54 No, EXEC is an executable. It'll… that's a program.
19:35:59 And it'll try and run it on a PC.
19:36:03 Okay, can you convert that on an iMac from that format?
19:36:07 No. And you also want to be a little bit careful, because a lot of things that say that they are text.
19:36:07 Okay.
19:36:13 But they end on EXE, or EXEC, are actually viruses that… They masquerade as text.
19:36:21 In order for you to click on them and try and open them.
19:36:24 And then the virus attacks you. Now, there are PC viruses, so it won't do anything, but it'll torque you off a bit.
19:36:31 Um, but it, it… It can infect your machine, but it doesn't mean it won't… raise your blood pressure a bit.
19:36:39 I don't need that.
19:36:41 Yeah, EXE and EXEC. It means it's an executable program, which means it's a…
19:36:49 Okay.
19:36:48 Windows program. The Windows world, by the way, is, um… I… I don't know if I'll get into it today, but the Windows world right now is in a…
19:36:58 Is in a state of flux. Um… Apple, over its livelihood, when they first started out with the Apple II with the 6502.
19:37:11 Processor. That was just kind of a lucky break that the 6502 was available and it was cheap.
19:37:17 Apple built the Apple II around that. Then when they went to the Mac, they went to the 68,000, which was a molar roller chip.
19:37:24 And they went from a 8-bit to a 16-bit chip, and then they went to.
19:37:30 Uh, 32-bit chips, and then they went to the PowerPC, which was made by.
19:37:35 Ibm, and they went even farther than they could go with the Motorola chips.
19:37:41 And then they went to Intel chips because. Uh, when they had the iMac, they wanted to have.
19:37:48 They wanted to lower their manufacturing costs and increase their software compatibility, so they went with.
19:37:54 Intel chips, which are also used by the. Windows world, so the processors were very cheap.
19:38:00 And then Intel processors kind of plateaued. So, the way to make the machines faster and more capable, they put.
19:38:09 More processors in the machine. My iMac Pro over here has 8.
19:38:16 Intel Xeon processors, which are their high-end processors. 8 of them. Um… my M1 Mac.
19:38:24 Can run races with it and beat it most of the time.
19:38:27 So, in order to get beyond that hump. Apple started making their own processors.
19:38:34 When Apple started doing that, and they were successful. Then you can now go into, uh… Costco, and you can buy.
19:38:43 Chips that don't have Intel processors in them. They're using what's called ARM processors, and don't… Don't worry about what it's called, but it's the same kind of…
19:38:53 Technology that Apple is using. They're not Apple processors, but they're built using the same kind of.
19:38:58 Manufacturing. And they're doing that because they can get faster processes than you can get from Intel.
19:39:06 Well, Intel… is now saying that they're going to start making ARM processors.
19:39:11 So the Windows world is going through these. Changes as well.
19:39:16 And part of it is that if you look at your Mac today.
19:39:20 I'll give you a different analogy. If you had an Apple II using whatever the Apple.
19:39:26 WordPress or what sort of was, which I don't remember, because I never actually owned an Apple II.
19:39:30 I just taught courses with it. You cannot out-type the Apple II processor. If you're sitting in fast space and you're typing away on your Apple II.
19:39:40 You can't out-type it. That was on a 1MHz. Processor.
19:39:47 Now, the processor I have on this machine, it's got, like.
19:39:52 16 cores, all of them a thousand times faster. Than that Apple II, so… it… does that mean I've got 16 million times more processing power?
19:40:04 Yes. Can I type any faster than I did before? No. That extra power and the extra memory.
19:40:14 Is being used to do things like video and audio. Like, this… there's no way an Apple II could have a Zoom session.
19:40:22 Takes a staggering amount of horsepower to do that. But the other thing, aside from the horsepower for the things we're doing, the other thing it uses.
19:40:30 Is it's using that for intelligence to make it easier to use.
19:40:35 If you had an Apple II and you wanted to print.
19:40:39 Apple IIs weren't designed with printers in mind, so on an Apple II.
19:40:42 You didn't print to a printer, you printed to a card in your machine.
19:40:46 And then the card would talk to the printer, and it was… it was weird.
19:40:52 It was very weird. You couldn't have two monitors. You couldn't… You couldn't change the resolution of the monitor. The monitor that, when you bought it, it was that resolution forever.
19:41:02 And about half of all apples actually had monochrome monitors. With dark green and light green dots on it.
19:41:11 So that power is being used to make things. Easier for us, and to make us… to give us the power to do things we never did before.
19:41:21 How many of you have ever edited a movie? Raise your hand if you've ever edited a movie.
19:41:27 How many of you would have edited a movie if you didn't have a Mac?
19:41:33 The Mac allows you to do things you haven't ever considered doing.
19:41:38 When I started using computers, when you typed it out, and you printed it, it came out in 10-point pica.
19:41:46 Monospaced. Every letter was the exact same width. You can do that now on a Mac, but you have to work at it, because it normally puts out things in…
19:41:55 In proportionally spaced letters, and if you want to have italics, you can do that. If you want to have colored letters, you can do that. If you want to insert a color picture in your text, you can do that.
19:42:05 All of that's new stuff that didn't exist back with the Apple II.
19:42:09 But that doesn't mean that the information that you. Created back then. Doesn't mean you don't want to have.
19:42:15 Access to it, and to… sometimes to get access to it, you actually have to convert it to a… more modern format.
19:42:22 And that's what I've been doing for the last several months.
19:42:27 I went through 500 and 600 and 600 deaths. Taking stuff off of them, and this…
19:42:36 Throw them away. You know how you recycle a CD-ROM or a DVD?
19:42:42 You throw it in the trash. The only useful thing that you can do, and I've done this before.
19:42:48 We used to have, when we had Christmas trees at work.
19:42:52 It's a federal building, so we didn't have Christmas trees, we had holiday trees.
19:42:56 And you want to democrate it, I take CD-ROMs that we weren't using anymore, and I turn them into.
19:43:01 Danglies on the… on the Christmas tree. We had one tree one year that had 600.
19:43:08 Cds on it, and while, uh, during the Christmas vacation, one of the, uh, janitors accidentally hit it.
19:43:16 And it crashed, and the security people had to come and rescue him because the weight of the CDs, he couldn't get out.
19:43:22 From under the tree, but uh… There's really nothing you can do with them other than, uh… If you take a CD.
19:43:29 And you put it on fishing line, and you dangle it off your roof.
19:43:33 Uh, the birds will love it, because they like the flashy.
19:43:37 Object, but can you turn it into anything useful? No, it's… It's, um… the… you can't reuse the.
19:43:45 It for anything at all. And they oxidize over time, which is why there's a… you have a…
19:43:52 There's a timeline button on CDs and DVDs, you have to… Uh, if you have something that you want off of it, you need to take it off.
19:44:00 Now, because among other things, they stopped making optical disk drives. You can still buy them on Amazon.
19:44:06 But they've stopped making it. Lg was the last manufacturer of optical disk drives.
19:44:11 And they stopped it last, uh, December.
19:44:18 Questions?
19:44:28 What's the topic of our next meeting?
19:44:26 No questions? Well, I did not talk about virtual machines, and I kind of went to do that because.
19:44:37 Um. I have a number of computers, but most people don't want to have a number of computers.
19:44:43 And with virtual machines, it allows you to have. On your Mac, you can also have a Windows machine.
19:44:51 You can have a Linux machine, you can have a Unix machine. Actually, Microsoft, uh, Microsoft.
19:44:56 The Mac operating system is Unix. Most of you don't ever need to know that, but a lot of the things that I do on my Mac, I'm actually doing in Unix.
19:45:07 Underlying the glossy. Front, uh, veneer, there's a full-blown, certified Unix operating system.
19:45:15 Unix was invented by Bell Labs as an experiment. And, uh, the Unix world.
19:45:21 Officially came into being in January 1st, 1970. The clock inside the Mac thinks that January 1st, 1970 is the beginning of the universe.
19:45:33 Um, and that's because that was when they licensed it to, uh.
19:45:37 University of California, Berkeley. And the University of California, Berkeley created the Berkeley Distribution.
19:45:44 Of Unix, and if you… There's a way to look inside of the Mac operating system, and it credits the university.
19:45:51 California Berkeley. Um, so that's… You can do Unix on your Mac right now.
19:45:57 But you can also do Linux, you can do Windows. You can do different types of windows.
19:46:03 Will you go over a terminal?
19:46:05 Um, I will… I will definitely talk about Terminal, but… Talking about terminal in detail.
19:46:13 I kind of find… I want to kind of poll people, because.
19:46:16 After about 30 seconds, most people's eyes are gonna glaze over, because they're never gonna want to look at Terminal.
19:46:23 But, uh, um… That's definitely on the geeky side.
19:46:29 Um, but, uh, you can run a Chrome operating system on the Mac in a virtual environment.
19:46:36 Um, I have multiple machines, including two Windows machines. The two Windows machines, the only thing I use them for.
19:46:43 Is teaching people how to use safely use Windows. I don't do any of my own work on Windows.
19:46:51 Um, but as an example. With a virtual Windows machine, if Windows comes up with an update, and they say, you know, this changes something, and I think.
19:47:00 Do I want to do that? I can make a copy of my virtual machine and save it.
19:47:06 I know that one works, and do the update on the original, and if it torches it, I don't care, I just throw it away.
19:47:14 It's really hard to do that. Well, you can do that with real machines, but it's expensive.
19:47:20 I had a Windows machine that died. Last December.
19:47:26 I was doing an update, and it died. And, uh, I'm… it was just… it wouldn't do anything, it wouldn't even turn on.
19:47:33 And… I don't want any of you to tell people about this, because if you do, then they're going to want me to help them, and I don't want to, but…
19:47:43 A couple weeks ago, I had a brilliant idea, and I got it working again.
19:47:46 And I told some friends on the East Coast. And they, uh… We're laughing at me that people would fly from the East Coast out to the West Coast to see if.
19:47:56 I could do the same thing with their machine. When Windows machines die, it's really hard to get them working again.
19:48:03 But I got this where I'm working again. That's why I like the idea of having a disposable Windows machine.
19:48:10 I get one working on my Mac. It's doing what I want it to do, I want to do something that might be dangerous, I make a copy.
19:48:17 So I can always go back to it, do my experiment. If it works, great, and if it doesn't.
19:48:23 Um, I can just throw it away. Because all it is is just space on the hard drive.
19:48:30 Anyway, I…
19:48:30 Lawrence, I asked you this some time ago. Did you ever install iCloud for Windows on one of those PCs?
19:48:37 No, because it was about that time that that Windows box died, and that torqued me off.
19:48:44 I don't want to do it on my virtual Windows machines, because I'm using those for a different purpose.
19:48:49 I want to do that on my real Windows machine, and I just… I just haven't got around to it. That was going to be on my list of things to do when it decided to kill itself.
19:48:58 Um, so… But it was… it was a… It was a temporary suicide. I managed to revive it.
19:49:06 Well, I would… I'd like to hear how that goes. If you ever do it.
19:49:10 Well, I'm curious about it because it gives me an excuse to try something I'd never done.
19:49:15 Which is to share… resources from a Windows machine.
19:49:21 On a Mac via the cloud. And I haven't ever tried that, so that'd be… a worthwhile experiment.
19:49:24 Yeah.
19:49:28 I just don't… I just don't know. I'll give it a shot.
19:49:34 Yes.
19:49:33 Lawrence? I have a question. Earlier this summer, you told us to clean up our phones and clean up our computers with.
19:49:42 Old messages, and get the photographs to the cloud. And have you updated the operating system?
19:49:50 Now, or are you waiting?
19:49:53 I've updated… I have my, uh… I would not recommend that you go out and use the betas of the new operating system. You can… there are public betas of the Mac operating system.
19:50:04 Of the, uh, uh, iPad operating system and of the, um.
19:50:08 Iphone operating system. You can download them for free and try them out.
19:50:13 I do not recommend that you do that with a phone at all.
19:50:16 Because we live in a… at the edge of the known universe, and if your phones stop working because of a bug.
19:50:21 That would be bad. Uh, if you have a second Mac, and you can afford to experiment.
19:50:28 With the betas, then go ahead and try the public betas.
19:50:32 I have the, uh… I have the beta on one of my iPads.
19:50:37 And I have… for the… I have the beta of the operating system for the iPad.
19:50:42 And I have the beta for the Mac operating system on one of my laptops.
19:50:47 But I have more than one Mac. And I have more than one iPad.
19:50:51 If I had only one, I'd be very reluctant to do that.
19:50:55 The iPad…
19:50:57 I was gonna say, would you say that the new… 26 operating system is overhyped.
19:51:04 Or is there really big advantages that we don't have now?
19:51:10 There are… there are advantages to what you have over… right, at the present, and one of the things that I'm most looking forward to.
19:51:17 I'll have to wait until it actually comes out in release, and I can put it on my phone.
19:51:22 And that is, it does… that you can set up the iPhone with the new operating system to do phone screening.
19:51:29 So that if it's… they're not in your contact list, they actually have to identify themselves.
19:51:35 And little robots can't do that, which should cut down on the spam calls.
19:51:39 I think that's definitely something I want to do. But it also allows you to do the phone screening from your Mac, so you don't even have to be near your phone.
19:51:48 Yet a phone call in, you can screen it from your Mac.
19:51:52 And… I think that's just fantastic, but I have to wait for them to actually come out.
19:51:58 Because, I'm not going to try that right now. There are other things about it. On the iPad, it's a huge step up on the iPad.
19:52:06 Because you can have… you can have overlapping windows, like you do on the Mac, and you can move… you can do multiple things at one time.
19:52:14 On the iPad, and that's… It's not… it's not the same as a full-blown Mac operating system.
19:52:21 But it's much less confined than. The one screen at a time that you have with a… with an iPad. And I've had great fun with that.
19:52:31 What… the one thing I don't like about the iPad operating system, and it has a security flaw.
19:52:36 It's not a big one, but it's… it irritates me, and I've sent in, like.
19:52:41 Two dozen bug reports about it. It's something I'm sure that they will fix, but it just…
19:52:48 It, uh, irritates me. And that's one of the points of having the betas out there, is that people find false flaws, and you…
19:52:57 Uh, there's a little feedback. Application, you click on that and send them nasty notes.
19:53:03 Um, so I've been doing that.
19:53:10 Any other questions? Um, I would like to show you virtual machines, uh, next month.
19:53:19 Um, and probably the new operating systems, whatever they've released. Uh, in October.
19:53:26 Uh, is there something else you'd like instead, or in addition, or…?
19:53:32 Lawrence, can I ask you a quick question? It has nothing to do with that, though.
19:53:30 Anything?
19:53:37 Did you by chance know how to… you know, on your keyboard.
19:53:42 You can choose different ones. Well, I have several for different languages, and then I have an emoji.
19:53:48 Keyboard selected as well. And in my emoji keyboard, there are some emojis in there that are so ridiculous, and I never use them.
19:53:57 But evidently, I've used them a couple of times, I think?
19:54:01 Somewhere way back, but I can't get them out of there. So I went and I reset my keyboard, I took all of my different keyboards away, except for English.
19:54:13 Then I even took English away and put a different language in, so that it wasn't hooked to that, and reset everything.
19:54:21 I cannot get those emojis to go away. You know how after a while, if you haven't used them, they fall off?
19:54:27 Are you talking… are you talking about emojis on. A Mac or an iPad.
19:54:28 I must…
19:54:34 Ipad. Oh, and of course, it's so smart. It takes these emojis and puts it on all three of my iPads, plus my phone.
19:54:42 Uh, that, yeah, they're syncing through iCloud. Um, on your…
19:54:49 This is… Pardon?
19:54:48 Oh, I also decided that iCloud. Trying to get rid of it. I signed out of iCloud trying to get rid of it.
19:54:57 As soon as you log in to get your mail, it's gonna be there. Um… the, uh… On the iPad in particular.
19:55:06 Some emojis are added by applications. So, for example. Um, I can't remember, but there's probably… there might be an emoji associated with Zoom or something like that. A lot of applications will add emojis.
19:55:20 And you didn't add them, they're added by just having that application on your iPad.
19:55:27 Gives you that emoji. And the only way to… get rid of it that I know of is to delete the application.
19:55:35 The problem is, I don't care that it's in the, you know, 100 and whatever.
19:55:39 Emojis. But under your 20 most used, where the little clock is.
19:55:44 It's those emojis that… it bothers me immensely.
19:55:50 I'm sorry. There are limits on what you can do with artificial intelligence, and a lot of it's.
19:55:55 Based just on math. If you've used it, and it's… it was the… you use those.
19:56:02 18, and you'll use that 19th one. Several months ago, but it was still the 19th one most used. It'll show up.
19:56:11 It bothers me so much, I think I'm going to call AppleCare. It drives me nuts!
19:56:10 Um, it's… it's…
19:56:17 The people at AppleCare would not appreciate your call.
19:56:23 Oh, just be that special person that day that just there to irritate somebody.
19:56:31 It's weird, the things that can aggravate me, and the emojis are one of them right now.
19:56:36 Well, the, um… someday I should probably talk about that, too.
19:56:44 I did a short little. Video presentation for somebody that was done entirely with memojis, not emojis, but…
19:56:53 Emojis. So there was a talking… Uh, all the animals in the, uh, oriental zodiac were talking, and.
19:57:02 Um, and then there's a memoji of me, so it's a cartoon version of me that was talking as well.
19:57:10 And, uh… the person I sent it to, they're a video editor for, um…
19:57:17 Lucasfilm. And he's been demanding that I tell him how it…
19:57:22 I did it. And he's gonna be really torqued off when he finally figures out that I just use my iPhone.
19:57:32 That's funny.
19:57:35 Such is life.
19:57:37 Well, yeah, I'm… I'm of no help for choosing topics.
19:57:42 Uh, any questions? No questions? If you have some… if you don't want me to talk about virtual machines, uh, next month.
19:57:51 I was prepared to do it today, but I think it's… I think it's going to be… It's gonna be as involved as talking about file formatting, so…
19:58:01 Put it off until next month. Um, if you don't want me to talk about that, you want to do something else, then, uh… send me a suggestion. But right now, it's looking like we'll talk about new operating systems in October.
19:58:14 Um… And, uh, just… I don't know, I… there's one other thing I wanted to mention.
19:58:21 Um, if you subscribe to the website. And you get the automatic.
19:58:26 Messaging when… post… things are posted. You'll see that I posted a whole bunch of meeting recordings.
19:58:34 And I also had, uh… a thing of things of interest for this month. One of the things that, uh.
19:58:41 I post to Wes, they're gonna be these new operating systems coming out this, uh, next, um.
19:58:47 Four to six weeks. And the other one was that so far.
19:58:52 Apple has given no indication that they're going to release any new machines.
19:58:57 As in computers. They may… release, uh, new iPhones.
19:59:03 But that's based upon nothing other than the rumor sites say so.
19:59:07 But at the Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple made no hardware announcements, and it's the first time.
19:59:14 I think they've never made any kind of hardware announcement. I think they were afraid to commit themselves.
19:59:21 To, uh, to commit their supply chain. To building stuff when they didn't know if they'd be able to sell them at a reasonable cost.
19:59:31 The, uh… threaten 100% tariff on China, for example.
19:59:37 Would double the cost of an iPhone, double the cost of a Mac.
19:59:40 And they didn't like that idea. And even Taiwan, where a lot of the chips and.
19:59:47 Displays, and so on and so forth are made. We've stuck tariffs on them as well.
19:59:53 And I think they were just… leery of making announcements that then they couldn't.
20:00:01 Give any indication of how much they were going to cost.
20:00:05 And, um, how quickly they could… bring him into the country.
20:00:09 So, I think they're… I think they're playing it cautious. And the other side to that is if you want a new computer, go out and get it now.
20:00:21 They'll probably go up in price. I had a friend.
20:00:28 In Vermont, who was torqued off. That the price of maple syrup has gone up.
20:00:33 In Vermont. Vermont… makes maple syrup, but most of the maple syrup that Americans, um.
20:00:40 Buy is coming from Canada. And now it costs more.
20:00:45 So… we had an interesting transcontinental discussion about this. And, um, they've never worked for the federal government, and I used to.
20:00:55 So, it was my fault. And they were trying to get me to… fix this. And I told them the government doesn't really work that way, but…
20:01:06 They were still upset.
20:01:08 So when they say Apple's been… they're going to invest $600 billion or whatever in.
20:01:14 Production here in the United States. From them saying that to the… point that they are, like.
20:01:20 It's working, and they have the plants, and they're actually manufacturing here. Do you have any idea roughly how long that takes?
20:01:26 Well, the announcement of those things, they were investing in Corning.
20:01:33 Corning makes the, uh. The Gorilla Glass, well, actually, for Apple, it's not Gorilla Glass, but it's a very strong.
20:01:41 Glass that's on the front of the iPad, and the iPhone.
20:01:45 They were investing in Corning. Corning was thinking about going bankrupt.
20:01:49 And that really upset Apple, because they want that Gorilla Glass for their… Or their phones and… and… everything, computers and everything else.
20:01:58 So, they made the investment in, um… Corning to keep Corning afloat.
20:02:04 But in terms of new plants, if you take things like the liquid crystal displays that.
20:02:10 Right now are made mostly in Korea and Taiwan. Building one of those plants takes 5 to 7 years.
20:02:18 One plant. There is a plant in, uh… Arizona, that Intel…
20:02:25 Started building, uh, to build, um. Cpu chips, and they started that in 2018, it's still not finished.
20:02:35 They're very expensive, because basically. Uh, for these chip plants.
20:02:40 And the, uh, that… the screen on your… on your iPad is essentially one.
20:02:46 Big, huge chip. The chip plants have to be about 100 times.
20:02:54 Cleaner inside. Than an operating room.
20:03:00 And that's expensive. And it takes a long time to do.
20:03:05 And that's just to keep them clean. That's not actually talking about.
20:03:09 Taking silicon and purifying it to turn it into… chips and adding just the right contaminants to make them conductive, and…
20:03:17 All that sort of stuff. Uh, it's just extremely expensive. And then, after they create the chips, one reason why they're done in.
20:03:25 In China, in Thailand, in India. Is that after you have the chips.
20:03:30 Somebody has to hand-wire. The connectors to the circuit boards. They have machines that can.
20:03:39 Can plug in components, and that's one reason why Apple now has their system on a chip. On the… on my Mac Mini.
20:03:46 The memory, the disk drive, the, uh… CPU, it's all one chip.
20:03:54 One chip. But then you have to connect that chip to the motherboard.
20:03:57 And that takes hand labor. And that's why they're done in Thailand.
20:04:03 They've tried to do that in the United States. Apple had a plant in Fremont, Arizona.
20:04:09 Uh, to build Macintoshes. And they stopped using that plant, I think, in 1998, 1999.
20:04:16 And because they could not get the workforce to, uh. To run it. And right now, that same building right now, I think, is used by Tesla to build.
20:04:26 Something. But, uh, it's just, uh, it's very labor-intensive.
20:04:33 It's very… it's very exacting to build the plants themselves. They had one example at the apple plant. A guy shut them down for 20-some days because he refused to put on his clean suit.
20:04:47 He was having problems with his girlfriend, came in on a temper tantrum, went into the clean room.
20:04:54 Without dressing properly, and it shut it down for 20 days to clean it.
20:05:01 So… It's not easy to do. It looks like magic when you have your phone in your hand, but…
20:05:08 There's a staggering amount of effort that goes into making that, Maggie.
20:05:16 Any other questions?
20:05:19 Um, I'm… so I'm assuming we should, uh, for everything now, we should be buying them now.
20:05:27 Like, for, um, external hard drives, um, the LG optical disk thing we were going to get.
20:05:34 They're all going to get really expensive.
20:05:37 Or, in the case of the optical disc, they're just going to… the market's going to dry up because they've stopped making them.
20:05:43 There aren't any computers anymore that come with a built-in optical disk, so if you want to.
20:05:48 If you want to access an optical disk, you better go get one now, because they just stopped making them.
20:05:47 Right.
20:05:53 Um, and when it comes to the computers, because of the tariffs.
20:05:57 The tariffs are not a tax paid by Taiwan or China.
20:06:03 A tariff, you pay it in the price when you buy it.
20:06:05 Yeah.
20:06:06 And, uh, if it's 20% more, it's 20% more. If it's 50% more, it's 50% more.
20:06:14 Uh, so, yeah, if you… And the other reason why I want to talk about Apple.
20:06:20 Not even hinting at new. Machines, if you're waiting to see if they're going to introduce a new machine.
20:06:27 I will be astonished if they introduce a new machine, because they've had no hints.
20:06:32 Whatsoever. From anyone.
20:06:36 And that goes as far as, um, iPads and phones as well?
20:06:39 Um, there are lots of rumors that they will have new phones.
20:06:43 However, these are just rumors. Um, and also, if you look at the, uh, at the app, at the iPhone operating system, the iPhone operating system has.
20:06:53 Placeholders for a new phone. It doesn't mean that they're going to bring it out in September, October, November, December, just means that there's a…
20:07:01 There's a placeholder, so when the new phone comes out, they can plug in some.
20:07:05 Stuff. But, um… Apple has not said anything, but a lot of the rumor sites say that there will be.
20:07:12 However, rumor sites get clicks by having rumors, and if they.
20:07:16 Don't even have any rumors, nobody goes there anymore, and they don't make any money, so… They have a vested interest in having rumors, even if there's nothing to substantiate them.
20:07:26 How's that for a disclaimer?
20:07:29 Um, uh, Lawrence said. Hank just asked you, by AppleCare, when you purchase a new Apple product, I understand that they'll answer any questions without it.
20:07:39 True? You see it there?
20:07:41 Um, the… okay, here's the, uh… I buy AppleCare for my devices.
20:07:49 Uh, particularly things like iPhones and iPads and, uh… laptops, because if you're buying a laptop and it never leaves your desk, you probably shouldn't have bought a laptop. Laptops are more expensive than.
20:08:04 Desktop machines. A Mac Mini with a big display and a nice keyboard.
20:08:11 Is going to cost less money than a laptop, so you might as well just buy the Mac Mini.
20:08:17 Uh, and if you buy a laptop, then you're going to move it, and if you move it, you're probably going to drop it.
20:08:22 And so that's why I buy AppleCare for my, um, for all of my machines.
20:08:28 Um, the question, I think what they're asking is. If you did not buy AppleCare, but you called up the helpline, will they help you?
20:08:36 If you are asking a question about an operating system. And a computer that's still being made, yes, they'll probably help you.
20:08:46 If you go up and you ask about your Performa 650.
20:08:50 The person that you're talking to probably wasn't born when they made a performance 650.
20:08:56 So you're not going to get an answer to that. But if it's something that's still being made, and uses.
20:09:02 Current software, and you ask, hey, I'm getting this strange noise when I do this.
20:09:08 The answer that you get might be, well, stop doing that, or they might give you a more useful answer.
20:09:14 Uh, you don't have to have AppleCare for that. They just answer questions like that.
20:09:20 They're…
20:09:20 The understanding was that software is… not necessarily that you need AppleCare for, but if it's for hardware, that's when you want AppleCare, correct?
20:09:29 Well, the question was, if you did not have… I think the way it's phrased, if you don't have Ansel Applicare, will they answer your questions that you have?
20:09:37 Yes, if it is about a currently made machine. And you're using current software.
20:09:44 If you have… If you're using current software, but you're using an older machine, the answer may be that they won't give you an answer.
20:09:56 Does that help, Peg? I see her, but I don't hear her.
20:10:03 Yes. Sorry. Yes, that does.
20:10:04 Yeah, okay. Okay, I… Okay.
20:10:08 Thank you so much.
20:10:09 You're welcome.
20:10:11 Uh, any other questions? Okay.
20:10:16 I do, I do. If, uh, say you're, uh, I want to buy a Mac Mini.
20:10:21 Any suggestions for… and I use it for photography exclusively, and some video.
20:10:28 What are we looking at? What should I look at for amount of memory and that type of thing for, I mean, for RAM?
20:10:35 All of the Macs currently sold by Apple. It's different if you go through somebody else who has an old stock, but all of the Macs currently sold by Apple.
20:10:46 Come with 16GB. That is the… that is enough. To do what you would want to do.
20:10:53 Well, I have 32 on my MacBook Pro, and sometimes it's struggling.
20:10:53 Uh, I… Well, in my particular case, I don't remember. I shouldn't go check. I have at least 32.
20:11:04 But I do weird things, like run virtual machines. I have 24 gigs, um, on my Mac Mini.
20:11:11 Mm-hmm.
20:11:11 And I'm very happy with it. I do video, I do… photographs, I do all kinds of stuff.
20:11:18 Uh, so the Mac Mini with 16 or 24 is probably going to be fine.
20:11:24 The internal drives, you can get as low as half a terabyte. I got two… terabytes, and the reason is that even though I have external drives that I store the video and…
20:11:31 Right, and I have that too.
20:11:38 Um, even though I have those external drives, the Mac, by default, uses the internal boot drive.
20:11:44 To do… if we're scrap… if we're, uh, um… scratch space. So as you're doing.
20:11:51 Photography, and you do undoes and re-dos and so on and so forth.
20:11:50 Mm-hmm. Right, right.
20:11:55 It's stored on the internal drive. And I was finding that with the one…
20:12:00 Terabyte internal drive that I had on my, uh… Mac Studio, that every once in a while, I'd just be short of space. I never really ran out, but I get.
20:12:11 Short, and things would take longer than I wanted to. So, I got, uh, 2TB, even though I store everything on external drives.
20:12:20 And the other consideration with the Mac Mini. Is a good screen. I happen to have an Apple Studio.
20:12:27 And yes, they are expensive. But, uh, color rendition and everything is, uh, great.
20:12:32 I have a second monitor, it's an Asus. Uh, and it's their art.
20:12:09 Right. Artisan or something, yeah.
20:12:39 Color art or something like that line. It's not… it's not as good as the Mac Studio, but I'm happy with it.
20:12:50 And I…
20:12:49 Okay. I have an HP that is his… Pretty good. A 32 inch, that's whatever, that's 4K, and yeah.
20:12:57 I also got my keyboard with an extended keyboard with a numeric neat keypad, and the reason why I did that.
20:13:03 Is that a numeric keypad has them arranged like they were on old telephones. I've memorized that as a child, I still memorize that.
20:13:13 If I'm doing a lot of stuff with numbers. That numeric keypad is much handier than taking my hands off the keyboard and go finding the numbers up at the top.
20:13:22 Uh, so that's just kind of a hint that… spend the extra 20, 30 bucks and get the extended keypad, if you, uh.
20:13:30 If you do numbers at all.
20:13:37 Any other questions? Oh, one more thing about the Mac Mini.
20:13:43 The Mac Mini does not have a camera. My Mac Studio has a camera. My Mac Studio Display has a camera.
20:13:50 And, uh, it also has a microphone. I have an external add-on microphone. I like this one.
20:13:57 Because if I tap it on the top, the light goes out, and I can tell the microphone's off.
20:14:01 But with the Mac Mini. If you want a camera and a microphone, you're going to have to either get a, uh.
20:14:09 A video screen that has those, or you're going to have to add them.
20:14:13 Microphones and… And, uh, video cameras are not that expensive.
20:14:13 Perfect.
20:14:19 Right. I'm very true, thank you.
20:14:19 But, uh, it's just something else to think about.
20:14:26 Any other questions? Okay. I shall see you next month, and if you have any suggestions on what you want to talk about.
20:14:35 Um, send them in. And plus, I stuck a lot of stuff up on the website that you've never seen before, so go take a look.
20:14:42 Thank you, Laura. Have a good night.
20:14:42 Thank you, Lawrence. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah.
20:14:46 Thank you. Okay. Alright, bye.