It was in 1984 that a new technology -- and a new philosophy -- were born. The advent of the Macintosh on Jan. 24, 1984 betokened the emancipation of the fettered, downtrodden masses from their abysmal text-based existences and into the light of graphical interfaces.
It was a glorious day, heralded by a sledgehammer-wielding woman (a, um, well-endowed woman if I may add) who in one miraculous throw changed forever the way we use computers. What I'm talking about here is Apple's famous "1984" commercial, in which a gaily dressed woman bursts through the gloom and humdrum of a scene out of George Orwell's "1984" and destroys the indoctrinating visage of Big Brother. An announcer then intones, "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984.'"
Truly, we have seen why 1984 was unlike "1984." No other company has been so consistently innovative, software- AND hardware-wise, as Apple Computer. Releasing their graphical user interface concurrently with the first Macintosh, Apple quickly popularized the idea of clickable icons and an electronic desktop. The first Macintosh had 128K of RAM, a small monochrome screen, and a built-in floppy drive (no hard drive!).
The latest Macintosh comes with 64MB of memory, a 17-inch color monitor, and a 20GB hard drive (no floppy drive!). Progress exemplified. And the soon-to-be-released Mac OS X (ten) promises to combine ease of use with stability and blah blah blah.
That's right, blah, blah, blah. My Mac crashed while writing this column. I was several hundred words in, and I hadn't saved. It was one of those crashes that you're sure the Mac engineered itself to get your goat.
But the problem may be any number of things. I could be having an extensions conflict and if that's the case, I'll have to open my Extensions Manager control panel and switch my "selected set" to just the Mac OS extensions. Then I'll have to turn my third-party extensions back on one by one (restarting each time, mind you) to determine the culprit extension. Or I may need to rebuild my desktop. I should do that before attempting to zap my PRAM (parameter RAM, very important, very critical says the Help Desk). But I should start up with extensions off to do a clean desktop rebuild. Then zap my PRAM.
I may, however, have a virus. I'll need to do a virus scan, then a desktop rebuild (extensions off!), then zap the PRAM, then determine if there's an extensions conflict, and then, if absolutely necessary, do a clean system reinstall.
But there may be a new system update available that might fix my problem. In that case, I'll have to check the Apple web site.
But Netscape won't open. "Type 1" error or something like that. The Macintosh Bible (yes, there is such a book) says that I should try turning on virtual memory. But I thought memory was physical. Built-in or something like that. Okay, so I turned on virtual memory to 500MB (never can have too much virtual memory), restarted, and my Mac crashed again. A friend tells me (he works at the Help Desk) to try upgrading my backside L2 cache (this is the only and last time a friend will tell me to upgrade anything relating to my backside).
Well, after paying for that upgrade, Netscape now opens, and I was able to get to the Apple web site for the update. But it didn't fix anything. In fact, it made a few things worse. Now, when I start up, I get an "unexpected error."
Unexpected?
If the computer doesn't know what to expect, how can I expect to expect anything?
In other words, I can't get to the desktop. So I zapped the PRAM, I started up with extensions off and rebuilt the desktop, I re-scanned for viruses, I looked for culprit extensions, I ran Disk First Aid, I restarted, I restarted again, I shook the computer, I initialized the drive. I erased all my files. I erased the beginning of my senior thesis.
My Mac is blue and she's pretty. I named her Molly. yes yes yes yes.
