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So Much to See I didn't expect my last month's column to go by without indignant people wondering why their favorite Mac websites weren't mentioned. I was right - and d'ya know what? I did revisit a few sites and found they'd changed and developed from what I'd known. The moral: keep bookmarks of sites and take a surf around every few months. You'll be rewarded with some pleasant surprises.
Identify Your Model One thing that bothers a lot of us is the confusion amongst Mac model names and numbers. Pre-Jobs, there was a plethora of Power Macs and Performas, and they changed so often that nobody could keep up with them. One of Jobs' first tasks was to rein in some of this lunatic proliferation, and we hoped that now we'd finally be able to keep up with stuff. Unfortunately, Jobs' reign introduced another wrinkle to the scene: there weren't as many machines, but the ones that there were all had the same name -- by that I mean the same official name. If I tell you that the machine I'm now writing this column on is called "Macintosh PowerBook G3", it doesn't tell you a whole lot. Does my machine have SCSI? Does it have USB, FireWire? What color are the keys I'm tapping? You have no idea, right? So Macs are now identified by other names, such as Sawtooth, Wall Street, or Blue. Even within these categories, there are multiple models, some very different from others. And how many iMacs have there been, and what's the difference between them? If you're confused, join the club. To help get it all sorted out, surf on over to everymac.com. There you'll find the ultimate guide to... well, every Mac ever made from latest G4s right back to the original 1984 128 k nine inch 8 MHz model that turned the computing world on its head forever. Also described are clones from DayStar, Umax, Power Computing, and Motorola, and, believe it or not, upgrade cards as well. Don't buy or upgrade a Mac without paying a visit.
Reviews Everywhere! Also of note is another site which takes a different tack. MacReviewzone works by going through five of the most reliable Mac publications and indexing their reviews, both of hardware and of software. Included are MacWorld, MacAddict, Mac Home Journal, MacGamersLedge, MacNN, and MacUser - yes, MacUser still exists, but only in the UK. It would, of course, be more useful if there were more sources of reviews, even maybe including Mac OS Journal (hint, hint!!), but it has allowed me to discard the enormous heaps of old Mac mags from their shelf in the basement. Write me if you want, but I haven't finished with Mac sites yet. More next month. If you want to write an indignant letter to me, go ahead. But I suggest you wait until you read the next section of this column. If you really want to get mad...
Americans Are So.. American I'm writing this from Saba, a tiny volcanic island in the Netherlands Antilles where my wife's work has brought us at the moment. It's easy to feel cut off, because the local radio and TV doesn't really say all that much about what's going on in the wider world. There's cable TV, but not at the top of the hill where we live. Thank goodness for BBC Short Wave, but I really wouldn't have consented to come here had it not been for reasonable internet access -- although it's charged by the minute, which has a definitely inhibiting effect on my surfing habits. Nevertheless, I do love the radio, but not music -- because I can get all the music I want and at the time I want it, from my CDs. But good, worthwhile talk radio -- that's my lifeblood, or at least part of it. Furthermore (and I'm not sure how to say this to a predominantly American readership), American media, even the best, aren't enough. With one or two exceptions, there's very little to be had that deals with events outside that part of the Earth's surface known as the United States of America. Just watch the network news programs tonight, or read tomorrow's newspaper, to see what I mean. Even when a non U.S. event gets shown, it still seems to be related back to the American place in the story. I'm not sure that's a criticism; of course the U.S. is not a country that can really be ignored. But it's not the whole world, and I think Americans are well served by travel, and by other kinds of exposure to non-US ways of looking at things. It even illuminates many domestic situations; there are worthwhile insights to be gained by an understanding that many of the issues are the same all over the world, but the ways in which they're addressed are often very different. And the impossibility (or at least the unwisdom) of transplanting one way of addressing an issue from one part of the world to another -- that's an insight that Americans could sometimes use as well. I don't want to exaggerate the differences between American media and those of other countries. Domestic media always have lots of domestic stories, of course, and many of the international stories are the same. But once the hard news of hurricanes, sunken subs, and downed airplanes are disposed of, there are many different perspectives also. Sometimes these differences only become apparent after a time, and often a story isn't interesting until its development and its background become clear, so listening to foreign radio does take a bit of perseverance.
OK, End of Soapbox, and Now Onto the Sites Sorry Steve, sorry Bill, not a lot of QuickTime or Windows Media in this section. For all of these links, you do need Real Audio, from www.real.com. My own current favorite site is Radio Netherlands, which does a great deal of programming in English. In a recent newscast, there were two Dutch items, one about Rembrandt, who would, it transpires, pull faces in the mirror for hours on end, study his reflection closely, and learn to draw the various expressions he saw. A selection of his beautiful and sometimes funny graphic art is now hanging in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Also, Amsterdam's Artis Zoo is organizing a series of tours and lectures showing just how common homosexuality is among our feathered and furry friends. Different from what was on your local newscast today, I think you'll agree. Other items on the same newscast concerned Moldova, Somalia, Australia, Russia, Turkey, Sierra Leone, and there were two about the U.S.: if you don't agree that "Americans will miss Clinton", you'd probably have approved of "Gore the Bore". Probably the most extensive source of radio programming in the world in the BBC in the UK. There are five national domestic radio channels, as well as multitudes of city and regional broadcasts, most of which are available both live and in archived form. There are the major current-events programs, such as "Today", a three-hour morning program with some astonishingly aggressive questioning of important personages from all around the world. That's all apart from the programs intended for an international audience, whose quality and breadth have made the BBC World Service famous around the world for well over half a century. Then there are the other English-speaking countries around the world. Over the last couple of weeks, I've enjoyed these: From New Zealand: http://www.rnz.co.nz From Australia: http://2gb.com From Hong Kong: http://www.rthk.org.hk/engguide/ From India: http://air.kode.net (This site often works really well, but not always. If it's slow, or if the Real Audio doesn't come over, don't give up. Just try again another time. There may be some good and bad times of day, but if so, I haven't found them yet.) And finally, from the U.S., by any standards an superb broadcaster with an excellent site: www.npr.org Enough for one month. Try some of these broadcasters. My two wishes: 1) that I didn't have to pay by the minute, and 2) that I could listen to these programs walking the dog or in the car. The first isn't a problem which most of my readers will have, and the second: well, it's amazing what you can do with a tape recorder connected to the PB's Headphone jack.
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