Chapter 5
Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras
IN THIS CHAPTER:
The other crud in your System Folder: Enablers, System Updates, and more Details on the automatic System Folder subfolders A few words about the System file Apple Extras The Installer nobody knows
That handful of control panels, extensions, and DAs described in the preced- ing two chapters doesn’t completely explain why a System 7.5 System Folder can consume 30MB of your hard drive — 80MB or more if you have, for example, a Language Kit or most of System 7.6’s goodies installed. Your Mac comes with a lot of other fascinating software, too — and the flood doesn’t stop: Every few months, Apple releases some Updater or other, which you’re supposed to know about, get, and install. Your Mac even comes with some software the Installer doesn’t install; those additional programs get left behind on the original System software disks, or dumped into an unex- plained folder on your hard drive called Apple Extras. All of it is worth know- ing about.
181 182 Part I: System Software Revealed
THE SYSTEM FOLDER FOLDERS System 7 greatly reduced the cluttered, no-nested-folders setup of System 6. System 7 introduced a set of standard folders within the System Folder (see Figure 5-1): one each for Extensions (INITs), Control Panels, Preferences, Fonts (in System 7.1 and later), Apple Menu Items, PrintMonitor Documents, Startup Items, Shutdown Items (System 7.5), and Launcher Items (System 7.5). Depending on your model and System version, you may also have folders that collect things such as Speakable Items and Control Strip Modules.
Figure 5-1 The basic System Folder folders.
As you probably know, you’re not expected to place each System Folder- bound icon into the appropriate subfolder manually. When you drop a font, sound, control panel, desk accessory, keyboard layout, or extension icon on top of the System Folder icon, the Mac automatically dumps it into the cor- rect subfolder (and it tells you so, as shown in Figure 5-2). And by the way — we’re sick of reading that this only works if you drop the incoming items onto a closed System Folder icon. It makes no difference whatsoever whether the System Folder icon is open or closed, just so you drop the stuff on the icon. In fact, you can even drop a whole group of System Folder items of mixed types — even a folder containing them — onto the System Folder. All of the items still get stashed where they belong. In any of the System Folder’s placement proposals, you’re welcome to decline the suggestion shown in Figure 5-2 by Figure 5-2 clicking Cancel. If you want to place the item The System 7 System Folder has some drag-and-drop brains. somewhere other than the proposed folder, however, you can’t do it by dropping it onto the System Folder icon. First, you must open the System Folder into a window and then drag the icon into place. Here, then, folder by folder, are the System Folder folders. Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 183
Apple Menu Items folder TRUE FACT QUOTE FROM HISTORY Beginning in System 7, Apple programmers hit upon the clever idea of using a menu that’s been on your screen for “A fully loaded System Folder years — the Apple (Ú) menu — as an ever-present file can easily weigh in at 200K, launcher. You can put anything into this new, improved which doesn’t leave much room Ú menu — not just documents and programs, but fold- for application programs and ers, disks, the Trash . . . literally anything in the entire Mac documents on disk ...It is ironic that,for the time being,making universe that can be represented by an icon. the Mac an efficient computing To change what’s listed in the Ú menu, you simply add tool means eliminating portions icons to (or remove them from) the Apple Menu Items of the system that add folder. (More often, actually, you put an alias of the origi- convenience and appeal.” nal file there. And in System 7.5, you don’t even have to do Macworld magazine, April 1985 that — just highlight the original icon and choose Add Say ...would it help to throw Alias to Apple Menu from the Automated Tasks command out ISO 9660 File Access? in your Ú menu.) After you know about the relationship between this special folder and your Ú menu, you’ll discover that the System 7 Ú menu is one of the operating system’s most useful and well-designed features. See Chapter 3 for more on Apple Menu Items and desk accessories.
Control Panels folder Today’s control panels, as noted in Chapter 4, are increasingly more like indi- vidual, double-clickable programs than mere tiles of a central control panel, as they were in the bygone days of System 6. Actually, as mentioned in Chapter 4, most control panels don’t even have to be on your computer — they can live perfectly comfortably on some backup disk, or in another folder of your choosing, until you want to change one of your settings. You can open a control panel just like a double-clickable program, no matter where it is. Chapter 4 contains more information about control panels than you’ll ever want to know.
Control Panels (Disabled) See “Extensions (Disabled) folder.”
Control Strip Modules folder This folder is required for the glorious Control Strip found on PowerBook laptops (beginning with the 500 series) and any Mac running System 7.5.3 or 184 Part I: System Software Revealed
TRUE FACT later. (If you don’t have the Control Strip, as described THE FOLDER THAT WASN’T in the previous chapter, use your System 7.5.3-or-later Installer and use the Custom Install option.) Any “tile” System 7 was supposed to include one on the Control Strip has a corresponding icon in this more special System Folder subfolder: the Help folder.The Help folder was folder. designed to be another anti-clutter repository — it was supposed to be Desktop PrintMonitor documents where all your programs stored their Help files.A Help file contains all the on- See “PrintMonitor documents,”later in this chapter. screen information that appears when you use a program’s Balloon Help,Apple Guide,or any other online help Extensions folder mechanism. If you read Chapter 4, you know about all the different But as the release date of System 7 things — extensions and not — that go in the drew near,there was intense debate. Extensions folder. An extension also works fine loose Darin Adler,the head of Apple’s “Blue in the System Folder or even in the Control Panels Meanies”squad of System 7 bug-killers folder. and project overseers,thought that a Help folder would be superfluous.In the end,the Help folder was nixed. Extensions (Disabled) folder Of course,the Help folder wasn’t the In the very old days, if you didn’t want some extension only System 7 feature to get yanked out (INIT) to load when you turned on the Mac, you’d of the software at the last moment.We have to drag the extension’s icon out of the System can think of at least three other features that were promised but not Folder. Then came better days, in which programs like delivered in the original System 7 INIT Picker let you selectively turn extensions on and software:a rebuild-the-Desktop method off from one central window. Those programs worked that didn’t wipe out comments you by changing the extensions’ behind-the-scenes Type typed into the Get Info boxes of your codes from init to xnit. The Mac didn’t recognize them files (incorporated into System 7.5.3, as INITs anymore, and thus ignored them during the five years later); background sound startup process. playing (double-click a sound file,then Trouble would occur, however, if you found your- start word processing while the sound plays); and a new printing architecture, self without that INIT Picker-type program — you known today as QuickDraw GX. had no way of changing that extension back into a real In the absence of a Help folder,most extension! software companies store their That’s why all of today’s extension managers, programs’help files in their own including Extension Manager (included with System proprietary folders.A Claris program,for 7.5), Now Startup Manager, and Conflict Catcher example,creates a Claris folder inside (included with this book), use a much safer method of your System Folder to contain its Help turning extensions off. Instead of modifying the exten- (and spelling and translator) files. sions, they simply move the extensions — into a folder Aldus,Quark,Microsoft,and other companies use a similar tactic. Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 185 they create themselves, called Extensions (Disabled). This method has two advantages: First, you can restore an extension simply by dragging it back into the Extensions folder yourself. Second, the file itself isn’t changed, so your virus-checker program won’t go shrieking bloody murder. You’ll also see Control Panels (Disabled) and, sometimes, System Folder (Disabled) folders. They’re created by those same extension-managing pro- grams, this time to handle control panels and items loose in the System Folder, respectively.
Fonts folder This Fonts folder, introduced in System 7.1, is a sweet idea, too long in com- ing. In all previous versions of the System, you installed fonts into the System file itself (into the little suitcase icon inside the System folder). That method had a few problems: Installing a font was time-consuming. You could only install a font if no programs were running. Having a lot of fonts led to a hugely bloated System file — never a healthy situation. If your System file somehow got damaged, all your fonts got Figure 5-3 Double-click a TrueType font file,or a regular nuked. PostScript screen-font file,to see what the font By keeping all your fonts — not just TrueType fonts, but also actually looks like.Cute sentence,huh? It uses all the letters,but it’s not quite as plausible as screen (suitcase icon) and printer files for PostScript fonts — “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” safely in one folder, you circumvent all of those hassles. (As Then again,as the owner of this book,you can change the sentence to say anything you want! you’ll learn in Chapter 24, QuickDraw GX makes storing fonts See Chapter 21 for instructions. even simpler — but makes understanding them harder.) The maximum number of font files that can be in the Fonts folder is 128. This doesn’t mean 128 fonts, however — it’s 128 font files (suitcases). Each suitcase, in turn, can contain as many as 128 different individual fonts. Even so, big-time desktop publishers and font zealots still find a font-management pro- gram, such as Suitcase, to be a necessary and handy add-on. (Much more on these topics in Chapter 24.) A last note on font files: A delightful feature of System 7, if you hadn’t already discovered it, is that you can double-click a screen font file (or a TrueType font file) to see what the font looks like (see Figure 5-3). 186 Part I: System Software Revealed
Launcher Items folder If you have the Launcher, you have the Launcher Items folder. The Launcher, of course, is the handy one-click icon-launching window. You have it on your Performa or on any System 7.5-or-later Macintosh. The Launcher Items folder works exactly like the Apple Menu Items folder described earlier. In this case, any icon (or alias) you place into the folder shows up immediately in the Launcher window (and not the Ú menu). For the full scoop, plus some Launcher Items folder Secrets, see “Launcher” in Chapter 4.
Preferences folder A Prefs file (or Preferences file) is a storage bin for a program’s settings. Every time you tell PageMaker that you prefer to work in picas instead of inches . . . or you change the font used for icon names in the Finder ...or you select a new “scratch disk” for Photoshop ...or you store your name and password into some Internet program . . . the program in question records your settings in a Prefs file. In the early days, a program might record such options settings in the body of its own code. But self-modifying programs are considered a programming no-no. Today, there are numerous drawbacks to programs that modify them- selves: they trigger anti-virus programs, they can’t be run from a CD-ROM (because nothing on a CD-ROM can be changed), and they can’t be shared from a network server (see Chapter 32). Therefore, most well-behaved pro- grams today never modify themselves; your settings changes are recorded in a Prefs file. The contents of your Preferences folder, therefore, aren’t for your use at all. The Preferences folder exists for the benefit of your programs. There’s virtu- ally nothing you can accomplish by messing with Prefs files, except to read an error message that tells you so. These files do, however, represent cumulative hours of work over many months. As such, they should be backed up with great reverence and trans- ferred carefully whenever you perform a clean system install, as described later in this chapter. We also believe that this folder gets gunked up rather quickly with Prefs files from programs you no longer use. Every little shareware program you try, every program you delete from your hard drive, leaves behind that little piece of itself in your Preferences folder. Review the contents of your Preferences folder every couple of months, and throw away the Prefs files of programs you don’t actually use. (This process is much quicker if you use the Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 187
CASE HISTORY LAST RESORT AND THE PREFERENCES FOLDER
Generally,our statement is true that nothing in the Preferences folder is there for your benefit.It’s definitely not true,however,if you have the miraculous control panel known as Last Resort (from Working Software). Last Resort lurks in the background and records everything you type,storing it automatically into a text file stamped with today’s date.These text files reside in a Last Resort folder in your Preferences folder.Over time,you accumulate dozens and dozens of little text files,each containing everything you typed on a certain day.(Now Save,part of the Now Utilities,works similarly.) So what’s the point? Safety.If you ever have a system crash,but forgot to save — or typed something you liked,then erased it,and later wished you had it back — then Last Resort is there.You just open up the appropriate text file that was created behind the scenes,and there’s everything you ever typed. Last Resort has a few fascinating aspects worth mentioning.First,it records (in each text file) which program you were in when typing.That’s wonderful when you can’t remember where you typed something.One of your two cheerful authors (who wishes to remain unidentified) regularly types phone numbers as they’re read to him over the phone. Trouble is,he can never remember whether he typed them into his Rolodex program (QuickDex),his calendar program (Now Up-to-Date),or whichever Word document happened to be on-screen at the time.More than once he couldn’t find the phone number at all when looking for it days later and wound up having to open the Last Resort file for the appropriate day.When all other ransacking fails,he can count on Last Resort to record the typed phone number,regardless of the document or program that was open at the time. Along the same lines,Last Resort can be a handy note-taker on the spur of the moment, even when no document or program is running.Suppose that you’re on the phone — and in the Finder — and the person you’re talking to starts spewing forth great ideas.You don’t have time to launch Word and wait while it loads! Instead,you can start typing away, blindly,of course,but typing nonetheless.Last Resort,your invisible word processor,will dutifully log everything you type.You can open it up later with a word processor. Finally,remember,for better or worse,that Last Resort is something of an electronic wiretap.If people don’t know it’s installed,scary things can happen.We know one poor guy who went away for a week but gave his fiancée free use of his Mac while he was gone. Shortly after he returned,he was using his Mac and had a System crash.But when he began looking through the Last Resort files for the text he’d lost,he found everything his fiancée had typed while he’d been away — and discovered that she’d been dialing up a BBS and typing graphic sexy messages to men she met there. Is there such a thing as suing for electronic infidelity? 188 Part I: System Software Revealed
trick we described in Chapter 2, in which you use your Labels menu to tag all the official, Apple preference files. Then, when it comes time to clean out all the irrelevant reference gunk you’ve accumulated, you can see at a glance which icons to throw away.) On a related topic: A corrupted Preferences file is one of the most common causes of computer-induced insanity. You try everything — zap the PRAM, rebuild the Desktop, reinstall the software — and some phantom glitch remains, much to your exasperation. The problem is likely to be a corrupted Preferences file. More on this topic in Chapter 33; for now, simply remember that if you throw away a Preferences file, the program it belongs to will auto- matically generate a fresh, clean new one the next time it runs.
PrintMonitor Documents folder When you use the Background Printing feature, described in Chapter 25, an interesting thing happens each time you choose Print from a program’s File menu. Instead of sending the printing information to your printer, the Mac sends it to a file on your hard disk. Then, as you continue to work on your Mac, these saved-up print files get fed, little by little, to your printer. While they’re waiting to be printed, your files’ waiting room is the PrintMonitor Documents folder. (Or, if you’ve installed the Desktop Printing extension [see Chapter 25], this folder is called Desktop PrintMonitor Documents.) Under normal circumstances, you’ll never have need to interact with this folder’s contents. But in times of troubleshooting, or when you’re being particularly clever with one of the techniques described in Chapter 25, it’s useful to remember that this is where your printouts-to-be live.
Shutdown Items folder System 7.5 posed this fascinating question for the first time: If there’s a Startup Items folder, why isn’t there a Shutdown Items folder? And now there is. Any icon you put into Shutdown Items gets magically “double-clicked” by the Mac’s ghost when you use a Shut Down command. Whereas the self-launching items in the Startup Items run just after the Mac starts up, anything in Shutdown Items — need we say — runs just before the Mac actually cuts off its own power. And what possible purpose could that serve? We can think of a couple, off- hand. First, you could put a sound file there — maybe Porky Pig saying “Th- th-that’s all, folks!” — so that your Mac can bid you adieu at the end of a hard day’s work. Second, you could put in a backup program’s alias, or the alias of Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 189 an AppleScript (see Chapter 22), so that CASE HISTORY it runs automatically before shutting THE LASER PRINTER FROM HELL the computer down for the day. Judy is the wife of an extremely famous director.(This is a true story.) She fell in love with her first Mac Speakable Items folder immediately.She played with it for three days.And then she moved to a different state and didn’t have a Here’s a folder exclusive to owners of chance to use the Mac for two weeks. AV and four-digit (PowerPC) models. When she arrived at her new home,she set up the Mac As you’ll find out in Chapter 23, those and printer.Then she turned on the Mac — and it so-called speech-recognition Macs actu- immediately started printing the same ten-page ally have a pretty limited vocabulary. In document over and over and over again! She panicked and fact, you can see a list of the phrases they turned off the Mac.She waited patiently for 15 minutes understand — just open your Speakable while it “cooled itself off”(as she described it later). Items folder. But when she turned the Mac on again,the same thing In other words, anything you put in happened! Pages spewed out of the printer like crazy. this folder (almost always aliases) gets Here’s how it happened,and what she could have done added to the Mac’s vocabulary (almost about it. always files and folders). If you’re work- At the end of one day,she tried to print her ten-page ing on a spreadsheet called “Fourth document.She chose Print from the File menu.Nothing Quarter” a great deal lately, put its alias happened. into Speakable Items; from now on, the She had Background Printing turned on,so instead of Mac will understand you when you printing,she was actually creating a disk-based file in command: “open Fourth Quarter.” See the PrintMonitor Documents folder in her System Chapter 23 for details. Folder.Of course,she didn’t know any of this.She just knew that no printing was going on. So,what did she do? She tried to print the document Startup Items folder again.It didn’t work again,so she tried to print it again. Anything you put into this folder gets Little did she know that she was creating one PrintMonitor document after another,all piling up in automatically double-clicked when you her PrintMonitor Documents folder,waiting to be turn on the Mac. Normally, you might printed.When no printing had started in those 30 place a program (a word processor, say, or seconds,she gave up and shut down the Mac. its alias) in the Startup Items folder, so that Of course,the next time she started up,good old you can start working on it immediately reliable PrintMonitor took up from where it had left off when you turn on the computer. You can and sanguinely began to print all of those ten-page also put a particular document (or set of documents,one after another. documents) in this folder to ensure that Judy could have solved this problem by calling up your Mac will be ready for you to start PrintMonitor and deleting the items from the list,as work immediately. If you put several items described in Chapter 25.But perhaps a simpler method in here, they launch in alphabetical order would have been to open the PrintMonitor Documents — two alphabetical-order cycles, really: folder and physically trash all the little icons therein. first all the “real”icons, then any aliases. 190 Part I: System Software Revealed
Just remember that whatever icons you put into this folder will behave as though you double-clicked them. You may get unexpected results if you put something you’re not supposed to interact with (such as a Preferences file) into the Startup Items folder. On the other hand, with a little creativity, you can come up with some useful innovations. For example, you can put an alias of your Monitors (or Monitors & Sound) control panel into the Startup Items folder. That way, each time you turn on the Mac for the day, you can quickly switch to color or black-and-white, depending on the job you’re about to do. For details on the Mac’s startup process, see Chapter 7.
Loose in your System folder Every System folder contains several other files that aren’t stored in one of the subfolders described in the chapter thus far: the Clipboard file, Scrapbook file, and Note Pad file. The Clipboard file stores whatever you have most recently cut or copied. It’s wiped clean whenever you shut down the Mac. It exists as a file primarily so that you can double-click it to remind yourself of what’s on the Clipboard at the moment. The Scrapbook and Note Pad files, of course, store the information you’ve typed or pasted using those desk accessories (see Chapter 3).
ALL ABOUT ENABLERS An enabler is, we suppose, a relative of the extension. It, too, is installed into your System Folder for the benefit of the Mac itself and has no settings that you can make. An enabler, however, is supposed to be stored loose in your System Folder and not in the Extensions folder. And it only works in System 7.1 or later.
Why Enablers exist In days gone by, Apple unleashed a new, improved (and newly numbered) System software version about every six months. There was System 6.03, then 6.04, then 6.05, and so on. What necessitated each new version of the System was the introduction of a new model of Macintosh. Each had slightly differ- ent circuitry, requiring a slightly modified version of the System. Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 191
Unfortunately, keeping up with Apple was no easy feat. With each new ver- sion of the System, power users lurched into action, getting their hands on the new System by hook or by crook (which usually meant downloading it from an online service such as America Online). The rest of us slogged along in quiet obsolescence, or got so much anxiety over having somehow been left in the dust that we finally got the new System from an Apple dealer. So, Apple did what they hoped was a clever thing: They left a convenient software outlet in System 7.1. Into this socket could be plugged a little file that explained a specific Mac’s circuitry to the System. As each new model of Mac came out, Apple wouldn’t have to rewrite (and rerelease) the entire System Folder; instead, Apple could just make available the appropriate plug-in file, now called an enabler. Sure enough, beginning in 1992, every new Mac model came equipped with an enabler. The enabler is important; without it, those models can’t even run. (Before enablers, there were only two absolutely essential files: the System file and Finder.) And each enabler only works with one specific Mac model (or model family — there was only one enabler for the original three Power Macintosh models, for example). Your enabler came on its own disk, usually called Install Me First.
System 7.5 resets the counter The next phase in Enabler History began with the introduction of System 7.5. Millions of Mac fans gasped — the enablers were gone! Apple did indeed incorporate the computer instructions contained in all 20 or so of the different enablers that had been released into System 7.5’s System file. System 7.5 by itself could run any model Mac that had come before it, even including the very first three Power Macs, without any separate enabler files. If you put any of those existing enablers (040, 001, 065, and so on) into your System 7.5 folder, you’d just be wasting disk space. As soon as new models continued to roll off Apple’s assembly line, how- ever, enablers reappeared — with a vengeance. Not only did Apple revert to the whole enabler scheme, it began releasing updated versions of existing enablers, making matters even more confusing. A PowerMac 8100/110, for example, required not only System 7.5.1, but also PowerPC Enabler 1.1.1. The 1995 Power Macs required yet another enabler, the mysteriously-numbered System Enabler 701. Unfortunately, confusingly, the same new Power Macs also require another one of those double-decimal-point system-version upgrades — they come with System 7.5.2! Doesn’t that defeat the entire pur- pose of enablers? 192 Part I: System Software Revealed
Ah well. Anyway, if your Mac was one of the 90 models introduced before the fall of 1994, you don’t need an enabler file with System 7.5.
System 7.5.3 resets the counter again As you’ll read in Chapter 6, System 7.5.3 and System 7.5.5 were intended to be other attempts at global, runs-any-Mac System folders — the last universal System file ever. Once again, enabler consolidating has taken place: now a sin- gle enabler, called System 7.5 Update, incorporated enabler information for all Macs released hitherto.
32-bit enabler and Mode32 Those model-specific enablers aren’t the only enablers. For years, owners of the Macintosh II, IIx, IIcx, and SE/30 were limited in the total amount of memory their Macs used — the upper limit was 8MB. The 32-Bit Enabler solves the problem, letting them use more than 8MB (up to 128MB, or more if your Mac can use virtual memory). After you install this enabler (by dropping it into your System Folder), a new pane appears in the Memory control panel, offering you an on/off switch for “32-bit addressing.”See Chapter 9 for much more detail on the two mem- ory-related enablers, Apple’s 32-Bit Enabler (for System 7.1 only) and Mode32 by Connectix.
THE SYSTEM UPDATE SERIES As the Mac gets more complex, Apple’s challenge — adding new features that work with all the existing features and models — becomes more and more difficult. As such, Apple programmers are spending more and more of their time fixing (“patching”) their own system-software code. They release these fixes in the form of System Updates — collections of debugged control panels or extensions, new enablers, faster printer drivers, and so on. Unfortunately, there’s virtually no logic to these updates’ names, their timing, or their distribution. Your only hope is to stay alert — subscribe to a Mac magazine, hang out in the Mac forums of the Internet or an online service, join a user group, or sign up for Apple’s free e-mail software-update notation service. To do so, send an e-mail to [email protected] and put the words Subscribe Infoalley and Your Name into the message area. (Type your actual name in place of Your Name. What you put into the subject line makes no difference.) Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 193
System Update 3.0 If you use System 7.1-point-anything, this most crucial file belongs in your System Folder. SU 3.0 incorporates all the bug fixes and enhancements intro- duced in its predecessors, Hardware System Updates 1.0 and 2.0.1, plus a huge number of other improvements. Dozens of bugs die when you install SU 3.0 (each affects only certain mod- els): Various mysterious crashes; the famous HFS disk (blinking question- mark) bug; creeping-System memory syndrome (where the System seems to use more and more memory all day); the About This Macintosh memory-bar- draws-too-long-and-grows-out-of-the-dialog-box problem; but Sound-con- trol-panel-won’t-remember-my-Playthru-CD-ROM-setting bug; and so on. In addition, SU changes your Mac world in several interesting ways. For example, when you’re viewing an Open File or Save File dialog box, you now get to see the actual color icons for your files and folders, instead of generic document and folder icons (see Figure 5-4).
Figure 5-4 The Open File dialog box — before (left) and after the installation of SU 3.0.Note the icons,the spacing of items,and,best of all,the fact that you can now read the entire names of the files (but only,for some reason,in certain programs).
Of course, all of these improvements were automatically rolled into System 7.5. System 7.5 Update 1.0
This four-disk set, available for free from online Figure 5-5 services or user groups, turned any System 7.5 The new Mac OS logo of System 7.5.1.Kind of com- System folder into System 7.5.1; see Chapter 6 for mercial,and yet nicely a complete description of the new features. For related to the original now, feel free to hold a moment of silence to “happy Mac”logo that still appears when you first remember that this upgrade introduced the turn the machine on. Picasso-esque Mac OS logo (see Figure 5-5) in place of the “Welcome to Macintosh” startup screen. 194 Part I: System Software Revealed
TRUE FACT System 7.5 Updates THE MOST USEFUL BUG EVER FIXED For details on this confusing series of patches and update files, see Chapter 6. When we read the technical documents that describe System Update 3.0,one particular item caught our interest.It seems THE SYSTEM FILE ITSELF that SU 3.0 fixes a long-standing Mac users almost never think about the System file — that System 7 bug that,frankly,we’re little suitcase icon inside the System folder. And why would sorry they fixed. they? The System file’s primary duty is to serve the machine, Try it for yourself (in any version not you. It’s supposed to lurk behind the scenes, working of System 7 before 7.5).Get with the machine’s ROM chips (see Chapter 7) to manage ready to save a new document for the first time,so that you’re windows, fonts, and menus. looking at the Save File dialog But as savvy Mac users know, you can indeed interact box. with the System file. You can drag-and-drop keyboard lay- Now then.You know,of course, outs, Fkeys, or sound icons on top of it (or onto the System that you can press Ô-S instead Folder icon), instantly installing them. Similarly, you can of manually clicking the Save double-click the System file icon to open it into a window, button,right? where you can see all the keyboard layouts, sounds, Fkeys, But did it ever occur to you to try and (up until System 7.1) even fonts you installed. Ô-O? Yes,a slinky little bug (For more on keyboard layouts, see Chapters 9 and 21.) slipped through Apple’s hands — the keystroke that usually means Open also triggers the Save box! Now you’ve got one APPLE EXTRAS AND APPLE LEFTOVERS all-purpose keyboard shortcut Even if you install the full System using the Installer onto a for both the Open File and Save hard disk, there’s a lot of System software left over on those File boxes. white floppy disks (or that black CD-ROM) that came with Until you install SU 3.0,that is your Mac. Every new Mac also comes with a folder called Apple Extras on the hard drive. In either case, the Apple Extras folder contains such mis- cellany as the PlainTalk software (see Chapter 23); Apple’s telecommunications and fax software; MegaPhone, a pro- gram that allows you to use your Mac as a speakerphone; the Pointer Mode control panel; QuickTime movie-recording software (on Macs with video inputs; see Chapter 23); AppleScript miniprograms; and so on. Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 195
Adobe Acrobat Reader MACINTOSH SECRET GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN Acrobat Reader is a program designed to let you read elec- tronic manuals. The goal of the Acrobat file format was In order to prevent this book ambitious: to provide a way for anyone to read electronic from breaking that sales-killing instruction sheets that are fully formatted with fonts, col- 6,500-page limit,we’ve had to ors, pictures, and so on — to be able to view them with offload the descriptions of exactly the layout and fonts the original designer had in several older Apple Extras components onto the CD-ROM mind. Unfortunately, Acrobat Reader is a monster, requir- that comes with this book. ing lots of RAM, disk space, extensions, and even an For the purposes of making sure installer. they’re mentioned in the index, Frankly, we were perfectly content reading our instruc- however,so that you would find tions in SimpleText documents. this sidebar when searching for them,here are the programs Apple HD SC Setup (or Drive Setup) we’ve moved into the electronic attic on the CD:Apple File Here’s a useful utility program that Apple gives you free Exchange,Font/DA Mover,Apple with your Mac. It’s used to prepare a brand-new Apple Classic Fonts,Hardware System hard drive for use. One reason most Mac users aren’t Update (HSU),Desk Accessory familiar with this program is that internal Mac hard drives Mover (DAM). come preinitialized and loaded. And most external hard drives, purchased from non-Apple manufacturers, come with their own hard-drive formatting programs. Still, Apple HD SC Setup and its successors, Drive Setup and Internal Drive Setup, are important. They can partition your hard drive, and even unlock several hidden megabytes of space on your hard disk! These tech- niques, and more, are described in Chapter 8.
Apple Video Player/FusionRecorder If your Mac model has a Video In RCA jack on the back panel, it’s capable of converting footage from your VCR or camcorder into a QuickTime movie. The software responsible for this digitizing is FusionRecorder or Apple Video Player, depending on your model. For complete instructions, see Chapter 23.
AppleScript AppleScript is a programming language that lets you automate certain tasks on your Mac. As programming languages go, it’s a simple one — but that’s not to say that it’s easy. Learning to program any language is a true hobby, not to be learned in one sitting. 196 Part I: System Software Revealed
Fortunately, your Apple Extras folder (System 7.5 and later) doesn’t just contain the tools you need to write your own little programs (called scripts); it also contains several ready-to-run scripts. To run one of these little pro- grams, you either double-click it or drop one of your own icons onto it. For example, the program called Add Alias to Apple Menu (in your Useful Scripts folder) is one of the latter kind: Drop a regular icon onto it, and — presto — after a moment, an alias of that icon appears in your Ú menu. For descriptions of the included ready-to-run scripts, see “Automated Tasks” in Chapter 3. For more on AppleScript, see Chapter 22.
Disk First Aid Like Apple HD SC Setup, Disk First Aid can be extremely important. It’s your first resort when a disk — hard or floppy — is acting up. You can think of Disk First Aid as an economic version of, say, Norton Utilities (a commercial disk-repair program). For details, and a few great Disk First Aid Secrets, see Chapter 8.
For PowerBooks Only Today’s Mac laptops come with a couple of special software bundles pre- installed on the hard drive. They’ll be in folders called things such as Utilities, Applications, as well as the familiar Apple Extras folder. Inside, you’ll find an assortment of useful information and utility programs like these: PowerBook File Assistant — This program is useful if you have two Macs — a PowerBook and a desktop machine at home, for example. File Assistant solves the age-old problem of updating the appropriate machine’s documents before and after you leave on a trip. In other words, it can synchronize a folder (or set of folders) on each machine, making sure that the most-recent files from each Mac exist on both Macs. Battery Recondition — Use this program to fight the memory effect of NiCad batteries, the type used in most PowerBooks (and camcorders, by the way). The memory effect is a problem that develops if you repeatedly use up a battery only partway — and then recharge it. Eventually, the bat- tery may come to believe that that halfway-discharged point is its fully dis- charged point. In other words, your battery now holds only half a charge. Clearly, the solution is (whenever possible) to use your battery until it’s empty, and only then recharge it. Battery Recondition is a little program that does exactly that, automatically — it uses up the remaining juice in your battery, then recharges it completely. Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 197
Floppy Disk Maker or Disk Mounter — When you buy a desktop Mac, you usually get a CD-ROM or a stack of floppy disks containing a backup of everything that came on the hard drive: the system software, for exam- ple, plus the Apple Extras described in this chapter. But when you get a CD-ROM-less PowerBook, you get no backup at all. Instead, you’re sup- posed to make a backup onto your own stack of floppies using this pro- gram: Floppy Disk Maker. It’s pretty idiot-proof; most new PowerBooks, in fact, automatically launch the Floppy Disk Maker program, throwing it up in front of your face every time you turn the computer on, until you break down and actually make the copies. For more information about floppy-disk-making programs, see Chapter 8. Apple IR File Exchange — Lucky, lucky PowerBook owners: the back pan- els of most recent models (such as the 5000, 190, and 1400 series) contain a tiny red plastic transmitter. It’s for wireless infrared networking. You can transfer files, or play games, between two thus-equipped PowerBooks without connecting any cables between them. This software, IR File Exchange, is the program you launch when you want to begin such a transfer. (You can also equip a desktop Mac with wireless networking if you purchase for it a Farallon AirDock.) Remote Access Client — Remote Access, of course, is the Apple software that lets you dial into one Mac from another one anywhere in the world — provided both are equipped with modems. This free software, called Remote Access Client, is what you use to dial in; Apple makes you buy the software for the receiving end. (It’s called Remote Access Personal Server.) PC Card Modem Files — Recent PowerBooks (such as the 500, 5000, 1400, and 190 series) let you install a modem simply by inserting a metal card — a PC card — about the size of your Visa card. This folder contains the extensions you need to install to make your PowerBook recognize such a modem.
Games Fortunately, Apple finally saw the light: it began including some games, pre- installed, on each new Mac’s hard drive. They’ve included Eric’s Solitaire Sampler, Spin Doctor, and Super Maze Wars. We won’t take up precious pages describing them — if you have time for games, you have time to figure these out for yourself — but we are happy that Apple has begun to realize that games sell computers. 198 Part I: System Software Revealed
LaserWriter Utility (Apple Printer Utility) LaserWriter Utility (LU), like its descendant, Apple Printer Utility, is a collec- tion of miscellaneous PostScript laser printer-management features, all stuck together into a single program. We’ve resisted the temptation to go into deli- cious detail here. Instead, you’ll find our potent LaserWriter Utility Secrets in Chapter 25, where they rightfully belong. For now, we’ll just point out that LU is the key to making your laser printer quit spewing the wasteful start-up page every time you switch it on.
Network Software Selector This tiny application may get deposited into your Apple Extras folder if you install Open Transport, the new networking software (described in Chapter 32). As shown in Figure 5-6, it simply lets you switch your Mac between the older networking software — known as AppleTalk — and the newer one, Open Transport. Of course, on any Mac with PCI slots — soon to be all Macs — Open Transport is the only networking software that runs. Something tells us, therefore, that this particular application isn’t likely to be with us for very long. We wanted to mention Network Software Selector, however, because it does something extremely weird and unorthodox — and yet effective. As free Contest Winner book winner Nick Fraser discovered, choosing the Open Transport option actually makes your MacTCP control panel (used for AppleTalk-based Internet connections) invisible! And when you switch back to AppleTalk, it Figure 5-6 makes your TCP/IP control panel (used You’d think this kind of preference-setter would be a control panel,wouldn’t you? But noooooooo. for Open Transport-based Internet con- nections) invisible! Well, that’s one way to prevent you from getting confused — make control panels disappear before your eyes.
Text-to-Speech,English Speech Recognition If you have a four-digit Mac model (a recent Performa, a Power Mac, and so on) or a Quadra AV model, your Mac can respond to spoken commands; the Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 199 software is called English Speech Recognition. And if you have System 7.5, your Mac — any model — can read text back to you; the software is called Text To Speech. Together, the speech technologies are known as PlainTalk. PlainTalk software, however, doesn’t get automatically installed. You have to use this separate Installer to do the deed. See Chapter 23 for more on speech features.
QuickDraw GX This is the installer for QuickDraw GX. For details on this little used print- ing-and-fonts technology, see Chapter 24 and 25.
QuickTime Extras This folder contains the QuickTime Musical Instruments extension, described in the previous chapter. Heaven knows why Apple ships it like this, alone in a separate folder.
Universal Access CloseView and Easy Access are control panels designed to make using the Mac easier for the disabled. They’re described in Chapter 4, and they’re inside this folder.
WorldScript Install As mentioned in Chapter 4, WorldScript is an Apple software kit that lets your Mac word process in non-English alphabet sets, including ones that go vertically or from right to left across the screen. Installing this software will do nothing for you unless you have purchased a language kit from Apple (Japanese, Korean, and so on).
THE INSTALLER (“INSTALL MAC OS”PROGRAM) The Installer is the program that gives birth to a System Folder — an extremely important program, in other words. It loads your Mac with all the system software described in the previous chapters. The Installer figures out which pieces of software are required to operate your particular Macintosh model, and places each required file where it belongs. Every Mac — except Performas (see the next section) — come with this Installer. 200 Part I: System Software Revealed
If you’re like most people, you bought your Mac with the system software already installed. Therefore, you may not have had to mess with the Installer. But everyone encounters the Installer at some point. You may use it for one of the following reasons: To eliminate corruptions and inefficiencies in your current System Folder by replacing it with a fresh one To install system software onto a backup cartridge or hard drive To create a floppy disk that can be used as a startup disk (systems before 7.5) To replace your current system software with a newer version To create a leaner System Folder to conserve dwindling hard drive space and memory As a matter of fact, we think that you should run the Installer every few months as a disk-health measure, replacing your older (and possibly cor- rupted) System file with a fresh, clean, untarnished version. Most software companies use a program similar to Apple’s Installer to install regular (non- System) software onto your disk. You’ll find the Installer either on a CD-ROM (if your Mac came with a built-in CD-ROM) or (on older Macs) on a white floppy disk called Install or Install Me First.
How to use the Installer In the olden days, you could install the system just by dragging the files you need from the floppy disks onto your hard drive. But using the Installer is better and safer for the following reasons: The Mac looks for the various pieces of system software in specific loca- tions within the System Folder. The Installer ensures that everything will wind up where it belongs (control panels in the Control Panels folder, and so on). Not every Mac model requires every piece of system software. The Installer copies only the files needed for your machine. You don’t clutter up your hard drive with extensions and control panels you’ll never use. If you’re upgrading from one System version to another, the Installer can intelligently build a new System Folder around your old one, preserving whichever fonts, control panels, sounds, and extensions you added (although we don’t recommend this technique, as we’ll explain later). Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 201
The Installer eliminates the need to drag and copy dozens of files. It prompts you to insert the System disks one at a time and takes care of the copying all by itself. With the Installer, you can customize an installation to create a system per- fectly suited to your needs. If you don’t have a laser printer, for example, you can certainly live without the LaserWriter printer driver taking up 219K of your hard disk. The Installer lets you choose which optional items get placed into your System Folder. The software to be installed has generally been compressed to save disk space. The Installer automatically decompresses whatever you’re installing, sometimes even rejoining pieces that had to be split apart. You can’t do that manually.
Start up without extensions To perform an installation: first, start the Mac with extensions off. Indeed, we strongly believe in turning extensions off before installing any software. Apple and experience both demonstrate clearly that software installers, when affected by the code already in memory (having been loaded by extensions at startup), can introduce corruptions into your system. Therefore: If your System software came on floppies, insert the Install Me First (or, on older systems, Install 1) disk. On recent Macs, just insert your System CD-ROM while the computer is turned off, then start the machine up while pressing Shift. Your System CD will successfully boot the Mac even without the Apple CD-ROM extensions. Figure 5-7 If you have an older Mac that came with System CD, The Installer,as it may appear on the Installer disk. you may have to press the C key during startup to make the Mac boot from the CD. In any case, you should now see an icon called some- thing like System Installer or Install Mac OS. Double-click it (see Figure 5-7). Running the installer If you’re installing System 7.6 or later, you’ll be prompted to check your hard drive before proceeding (see “System-Switching Secrets” later in this chap- ter). Regardless of your system version, you’ll eventually see the Installer’s title screen; click OK. Then you must specify which disk you want to install a 202 Part I: System Software Revealed
System Folder onto. (In Systems before 7.6, there’s a Switch Disk button for this purpose.) Now you’re faced with a decision (see Figure 5-8): You can perform the Easy Install or choose Custom Install to configure your own installation.
Figure 5-8 Click Install to begin Apple’s Easy Install.If you want to install only certain items,choose Custom Install from the upper-left pop-up menu.If you have the older-style Installer,click the Customize button instead.
Clicking the Install button (or simply hitting Return) starts the Easy Install. Our advice: Don’t do it. The Easy Install copies onto your hard drive all the control panels, a full selection of fonts, the entire arsenal of printer drivers (even if you only own one printer), and the software needed to connect your Mac to a network. A System Folder created with the Easy Install command fills up to 85MB of your hard drive, depending on which system version you’re installing. Your cheerful authors recommend, therefore, that you generally opt for the Custom installation. You’re now allowed to choose only the items that do you any good (see Figure 5-9), using the following discussion as your guide. You can save plenty of installation time and clutter on your disk by selecting only what you need.
What to install (System 7 and 7.1) The scrollable field within the Customize window displays the full range of system software modules. In the System 7 and 7.1 Installer, there are five cate- gories of software: Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 203
A standard set of system software that runs almost any Mac model Printer drivers for specific Apple printers Networking and file-sharing software The standard system software for your specific Mac model A Minimal Software configuration
Figure 5-9 The old Installer’s Customize window is shown at top.In this window,press the Shift key to select only the items you want from the scrolling list.At bottom:the newer Installer,which comes with (for example) System 7.5.It’s superior in several ways:You can resize the window; you can switch back to the Finder without quitting (to make more room on your hard drive,for example);you can click the little i button to get a description of something;you have much more control over what gets installed,even down to the individual control panel,because of the Finder-style triangle buttons;and the check boxes make it clear exactly what will get installed. 204 Part I: System Software Revealed
Click any option to display a brief description of the configuration and see its total size. Select the option you want and then click Install to begin the installa- tion. Usually, however, you’ll want to press the Shift key as you select items in this list. That’s the only way to select more than one item for installation. Software for Any Macintosh Don’t use this option. It copies dozens of unnecessary files onto your disk, taking up time, disk space, and your psychic energy. For example, this option installs Brightness, which only works on a Classic; PowerBook control panels, which are meaningless on a desktop Mac; and so on. We can think of exactly one instance where this option is useful: if you’re installing onto a portable hard drive that you plan to use as a startup disk with a whole bunch of different Mac models. The minimal system Squeezed into the minimal configuration is a bare-bones system — as lean as you can get and still be able to run your Macintosh. For example, the System 7.1 minimal System Folders range from 974K (for a Mac Classic-only instal- lation) to 1,300K (for a tiny system that can run any Mac). You get no control panels, so you won’t be able to change the Desktop pattern or alter views in the Finder. There are no printer drivers, so you won’t be able to print. There’s nothing under the Ú menu except the About this Macintosh command. And you’re left with only the Mac’s three built-in system fonts: Geneva, Monaco, and Chicago. You don’t even get a colored Ú menu logo! This stripped-down system, however, is ideal for PowerBook users who want to start up from a RAM disk (as described in Chapter 14) in exchange for a huge gain in battery life.
What to install (System 7.5 family) The newer-style Installer is much simpler and more flexible than the older one. Its check boxes make it exactly clear which items you will install, and its “folder triangles” (see Figure 5-9) let you control which items come in each category. Here, in fact, are the categories: System Software: Refers to the essential System folder heart — System, Finder, and enabler. Click the triangle to view your options (minimal, any Mac, and so on). Printing: Printer drivers for Apple printers. Definitely click the triangle, and choose only the names of the printers you’ll actually use. (You can always run the Installer again later if you want to connect to an additional printer.) Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 205
Compatibility Software: Macintosh Easy Open and PC Exchange (described in Chapter 4). International Support: Control panels for working in languages other than English. Multimedia Software: QuickTime movie extension and related files. Networking Software: For File Sharing. If your Mac isn’t connected to a network, and you don’t have an ISP Internet account (see Chapter 28), you don’t need all this stuff. Utility Software: This includes nonessential items such as the Apple Guide, AppleScript, and ColorSync. You should install AppleScript; many programs rely on it to automate certain tasks. Apple Guide is dispensable, though, if you don’t think you’ll need online coaching. And you can forego ColorSync if you don’t require monitor-to-printer color matching. Fonts: The basic set of True Type fonts that come with every Mac. If you’re upgrading your system and you’ve purchased and installed your own fonts, you may not want to install these. Apple Menu Items: Installs the full complement of items that appear by default under the Ú menu, but you can pick and choose among the avail- able items. Here’s your chance to eliminate the Jigsaw Puzzle before it gets installed on your Mac. Control Panels: The standard set of System 7.5 control panels. Your System 7.5 disks, as you’ve probably noticed, also offer separate Installers for PowerTalk and QuickDraw GX. See Chapter 32 for more on PowerTalk and Chapter 25 for details on GX. For now, the point is that most people should not install these resource-hungry software features. Even System 7.5 alone, however, takes up more RAM and disk space than 7.1. On a typical Power Mac, the Easy Install of System 7.5.5 gobbles up 33MB of hard drive space — that’s without PowerTalk or QuickDraw GX. Items such as Apple Guide, the QuickTime extensions, and AppleScript-related files bloat the System Folder by at least another 6MB.
What to install (System 7.6 family) The concept of System 7.6’s installation is the same as that of the System 7.5 family — you just have far more individual packages of software to choose from. For example, you can install America Online (see Chapter 28), Open Doc (see Chapter 16), Cyberdog (see Chapter 28), QuickDraw 3D (see Chapter 20), Apple Telecom software (see Chapter 23), and so on. Let the size of your hard drive be your guide. 206 Part I: System Software Revealed
INSTALLER SECRETS
The golden troubleshooting rule: A clean install
Worth Learning Here’s one of the most important Secrets in this whole book: There’s a differ- ence between installing System software and performing a clean install. When you run the Installer under normal circumstances, it actually updates whichever System you already have on your disk. This is a great feature; sup- pose that you’re using System 7.1 and you customize it to the hilt with desk accessories, control panels, and so on. When you upgrade to System 7.5, the Installer thoughtfully preserves all of your customizations: fonts, sounds, DAs, extensions, and so on. (Even if you reinstall the same version of the System, this same process takes place.) A potential problem with this technique lurks, however.If there’s some dor- mant corruption or problem with the existing System file, it’s still there when the file is upgraded to the new version of the System. (That’s why you some- times hear of people who have reinstalled the System for the purpose of elim- inating some mysterious crash they’ve been having — and it doesn’t work. They’re just building one System file onto an existing bad one.) To get around this, you can force the Installer to place a completely new System Folder onto your disk. It won’t just update the existing System; it cre- ates a completely clean, untarnished, factory-fresh one. This process is called “doing a clean reinstall.” System 7.5 family: At the screen containing the Install button, press Ô- Shift-K. You’ll be asked whether you want simply to update your existing System Folder (a normal install) or to install a completely new one (a clean install), archiving your old System Folder. Make your selection and continue using the Installer normally.When the installation is over, your original System Folder will have been named Previous System Folder, and the new System Folder will be in place. System 7.6 family: No need to press the cryptic keystroke, as in System 7.5. Instead, after you’ve clicked the Start button on the Software Installations screen, click the Options button on the regular Installer screen. You’ll be offered the “Create additional System folder” option. (If you click Customize before clicking the Options button, you’ll also get the chance to scan the hard drive for damage before installing.) All previous systems, and Performas: Open your existing System Folder. Drag the Finder into any other folder — put it in the Preferences folder, for example.Now rename the System Folder.(Call it “Old System Folder,”or some- thing.) Then run the Installer (non-Performas),or the Restore System Software pro- gram (if you have a recent Performa CD), or the Apple Restore program (if you Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 207 have an older Performa and your stack of backup floppies). Regardless, your installer will create a completely new System Folder because it can’t find an old one to update.(A System Folder without a Finder isn’t a System Folder at all!) Finishing up: When the Installer is finished — regardless of your System version — open up the old and new System Folders in side-by-side, list-view windows. Carefully compare them. One by one, drag the stuff you’ve added in the course of using your Mac from your old System Folder into your new one — especially fonts,Ú menu items,extensions,control panels,preferences,and software-company folders (Claris, Microsoft, and so on) that aren’t already in your new System Folder. (Troubleshooters’ note: Of course, to be really safe, you should reinstall those customized items from their original disks instead, in case they contain whatever corruption has been plaguing you.) Use your new System Folder for a few days, to make sure that everything works well.Finally,trash the old System Folder. A clean reinstall of System software is almost guaranteed to improve the performance and reliability of your Mac.
The Un-Installer You can use the Installer to remove printing and networking software from your current system if you no longer need it. System 7.5 Installer: Choose Custom Remove from the upper-left pop-up menu. Pre-System 7.5 Installer: First click the Customize button to open the Customize window. Then hold down the Option key; the Install button turns into a Remove button. With the Option key still depressed, scroll through the configuration options. Items that can’t be removed are dimmed. Select what you’d like to remove from among the undimmed items and click the Remove button. The selected items will be deleted from your System.
Why you’re getting all that extra junk It happens to the best of us: Using the Installer’s Custom Install screen, you carefully select only the System elements you want to install. Yet when you examine the resulting System Folder, you discover tons of useless files you Exclusive didn’t ask for! It’s almost as though the Installer went ahead and did an Easy Install despite your specifications. Actually, that’s sometimes exactly what it does.There’s an Installer bug that gives it a “memory effect” not unlike the one in PowerBook batteries: If you ever installed a previous System onto this same disk, that Installer left behind a little scrap of code indicating what kind of installation you did. Any subse- quent Installer will indeed ignore your directions and obey, instead, that little 208 Part I: System Software Revealed
instruction.If,therefore,you once installed System 7.1 using an Easy Install,the 7.5 Installer will again perform an Easy Install, regardless of the items you select in its Custom Install screen! The workaround is simple: Do a clean reinstall, as described in the first Installer Secret, thus forcing the Installer to dodge the little scrap of previous Installer code.
The floppy-free, hassle-free install As Apple’s system software grows ever more humongous, it will arrive into your life aboard ever larger stacks of floppy disks. Until everybody has a CD- ROM drive and can thus install new system software conveniently from a sin- gle disk, installing new system software will become an ever more painful process. p Here’s a way to eliminate the hassle. All that you need is a disk that’s big enough to hold all of those installation floppies’ contents — a SyQuest car- Speed Ti tridge or Zip disk,say. Copy all of the floppies into a single folder called,say,System Installer.(Each floppy, of course, becomes a folder when it’s dragged to your cartridge.) Open the first installation disk and drag the Installer icon itself, plus the Installer Script, into the System Installer disk, floating loose among the floppy-disk folders.The setup should look something like Figure 5-10. Now, when you double-click the Installer, it works beautifully but won’t request that you insert any floppies. As an added bonus, you can even install System software over a network with this method by copying the disks to a network volume or sharing the installation folder on your drive. This technique generally works for any software with a multiple-disk instal- lation,by the way — not just Apple’s.
Figure 5-10 How to end your floppy-shuffling days forever — and cut your System-installing time by three-quarters. Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 209
SWITCHING BETWEEN SYSTEM VERSIONS TRUE FACT THE SECRET MESSAGE IN Whenever you switch major System versions — from 7.1 THE SYSTEM FILE to 7.6, for example — compatibility is an issue. Older programs (especially games, ATM, fax/modem software, Nobody doubts that Apple’s Suitcase, and After Dark) may not run until you get renowned system-software programmers have a sense of upgraded versions. humor.But here’s how you can You can eat your cake and have it, too. As long as your prove it to yourself. Mac doesn’t require the very latest system, you can install Launch Microsoft Word.While both Systems and switch between them as needed. Here pressing the Shift key,choose are several methods. Open from the File menu. Navigate to your System Folder Two different disks and open the System file itself. If you’re using System 6,there’s a The easiest way to set up a two-System environment is to copyright notice and only one install one system on each of two drives (your hard drive other intelligible sentence: “Help! and a SyQuest or Zip disk, for example). Help! We’re being held prisoner in a To switch from one to the other, do this: system software factory!” 1. Open the Startup Disk control panel. The joke was good enough to live on.If you open the System file for 2. Click the icon for the disk that contains the System System 7.0 through 7.1 in this you want to switch to. manner,the sentence says,“Help! 3. Restart the Mac. Help! We’re still being held prisoner in a system software factory!”And in System 7.5,it Two different disks (occasional method) changed again,to “Help! Help! He’s STILL being held prisoner in a Suppose you almost always use System 7.5.3, but occa- system software factory!” sionally want to run System 7.6 (or vice-versa). If you This story’s happy conclusion lurks have two hard disks, try this. Install System 7.6 on the in System 7.6: “Mercenaries hit hard drive built into your Mac. Install System 7.5.3 on the factory and freed the the external drive. prisoners,”Hurrah! On the day you want to start up with System 7.5.3, Interestingly,if you try this trick in switch on the computer. Press the Ô, Option, Shift, and System 7.5,you can scroll down Delete keys continuously. The Mac will ignore the inter- into the document for an extremely nal hard drive, System 7.6 and all. In fact, the drive’s icon interesting set of additional credits. (We’d give almost anything to won’t even show up on the Desktop. Instead, the Mac know precisely what services were will boot from the first System Folder it finds — in this provided by Domestic Partner Amy, case, System 7.5.3 on the external drive. the Underpaid Process Dude,or The Flake.) 210 Part I: System Software Revealed
D That much we’ve heard before. Here’s our added little spin on this Secret: You don’t have to go without your internal hard drive all day after using this On the C trick. After your Mac has successfully started up from the external drive, launch SCSI Probe, a control panel we included with this book. Click its Mount button. Presto! Your internal drive pops right back onto the screen so that you can access its contents.
One disk Conventional wisdom has it that you should never put two System Folders onto a single hard disk, or you’re certain to get crashes. Actually, that’s passé; starting with System 7, you have nothing to fear. Go ahead and keep two System Folders on one disk. Only one of them — the one you most recently opened and closed — will display the telltale Macintosh icon on its folder (and all the special folder icons inside). The other System Folder will be officially disabled. The one functional System Folder is, in programmer parlance, the blessed folder — the one that will be in charge the next time you start up the Mac.
SYSTEM-SWITCHING SECRETS
System-disk switching on the fly If you do much switching between start-up disks — one with System 7.1 and one with System 7.6, for example — then the routine of opening the Control Panels folder,double-clicking Startup Disk,closing Startup Disk,and restarting the Mac gets tired fast. p Consider investing in Conflict Catcher or Now Utilities (special versions are included with this book). Each offers a quick and convenient way to switch Speed Ti start-up disks at start-up time. Just hold down the spacebar; when the Conflict Catcher (or Now Startup Manager) window appears, choose a disk from the Startup Disk pop-up menu. Your Mac will automatically restart with the new start-up disk you specified. (If your Conflict Catcher screen doesn’t show the start-up-disk menu, click the Prefs button and then turn on Show Startup Disk Menu.)
Three steps to trouble-free System folder upgrading When you migrate from one system version to another, take 15 minutes to perform the following three safety steps. (Indeed, System 7.6’s Installer makes Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 211 you take these steps; see Figure 5-11.) Those 15 minutes may save hours of headaches down the line — ask anyone who tried to install System 7.5 Update 2.0 (in other words,System 7.5.3) without taking these steps first.
Figure 5-11 System 7.6’s Install Mac OS program makes sure you follow Apple’s guidelines to a safe System upgrade.It walks you through the process of (1) reading the Read Me files,(2) updating your hard-disk drivers,(3) checking your hard drive for damage with Disk First Aid, and finally (4) pro- ceeding to the familiar Installer.As you complete each step,a green check mark appears — and if you skip steps,you’ll be sternly warned that you’re not truly ready to proceed with the installation.
Whenever you upgrade to a new system,first check out your hard drive using Disk First Aid (on your Disk Tools disk or System CD) or a commercial hard-drive doctor program like MacTools or Norton Utilities.This step takes care of any lurking corruptions or problems that may get magnified under the new system. A hard-disk driver is an invisible set of software that tells your Mac how to control your particular brand and model of hard drive.It’s some of the most important software on your Mac. A driver that worked fine under System 7 won’t necessarily work fine under System 7.5 or 7.6,however.This is one of the most under-publicized aspects of migrating to a new System:You must update the hard-disk driver! Updating the driver,fortunately,doesn’t mean that you have to erase the entire disk.Just run whichever drive-preparation program came with your new system software — Drive Setup,Apple HD SC Setup,or whatever.(Or, if 212 Part I: System Software Revealed
DIALOGUE you have a commercial hard-disk formatting program, Compatibility Checker such as Drive7 or Hard Disk ToolKit,use the latest ver- JS: David, we should describe the sion of that instead.) But do it. If you don’t,you risk Compatibility Checker. erratic and unpleasant system crashes and hangs DP: No, we shouldn’t. once you’re running the new system.See Chapter 8 for details. JS: But it’s free from Apple.We should at least mention it. Finally,do a clean install of your new system version, DP: No, we shouldn’t. as described earlier in the Installer Secrets. JS: What is your problem? The Compatibility Checker is a clever and helpful program that comes with your System 7 or 7.5 Upgrade THE GREAT INVISIBLE FILES OF SYSTEM 7 Kit. It actually goes through the stuff The Mac, in its efforts to be user-friendly, hides all kinds on your hard drive like some kind of personal assistant and automatically of technical goings-on from you. If you use a program reports back to you on what stuff like ResEdit, however, you can peek at all the files the isn’t compatible with the new Mac chooses to make invisible. You’ll also spy these fold- System software you’re about to ers if you examine your own hard drive via network, install. while seated at another Mac. (Actually, you can also DP: Did you run it? sneak a peek at these files using the Find File program — while pressing Option, choose Visibility from the search- JS: What? criteria pop-up menu and set the second pop-up menu DP: Have you actually tried it? to “invisible.”) JS: Well, I . . . No, I mean — well, I Shutdown Check: You’ve undoubtedly seen the “Your didn’t have to. My Mac came with Macintosh was shut down improperly” message when System 7.5 already installed. So for you restart after a crash. (Then again, if you take our me, it wasn’t a matter of choosing advice and turn off the “warn me” checkbox in the whether or not to upgrade from System 7. General Controls control panel, you’ll never see that message again.) Anyway, when the shutdown doesn’t DP: Well, it’s terrible.The go as planned — that is, when the computer crashes Compatibility Checker winds up — the Mac doesn’t get a chance to delete this little reporting that nearly everything on your hard drive is incompatible! invisible file as it usually does during a proper shut- down. The next time you start up, the presence of the JS: Really?! Shutdown Check file triggers the “shut down improperly” dialog box on the next startup. VM Swap File: Virtual memory, as you’ll read in Chapter 9, works by setting aside a large chunk of hard drive space to use as temporary memory. The chunk of space is actually a file — called a swap file. This is it. It goes away if you turn off virtual memory. Chapter 5: Enablers, Installers, and Apple Extras 213
Desktop DB: The Desktop BNDL file. It’s where the DP: Any time there’s a product or Mac stores the bundles — the relationship between a program whose status Apple didn’t certain program or document and its icon. See know for sure, the Checker reports Chapter 1 for details. that it needs looking into. And it suggests that you contact the Desktop DF: Stands for Desktop Files. This is the data- manufacturer. I actually know base that records what files you’ve got and what the people who didn’t upgrade to icons look like. System 7.5 because the Compatibility Checker scared them Move&Rename: You’ll only see this mysterious invisi- so much, listing almost every piece ble folder if your Mac has ever been networked (con- of software they owned as being a nected to other Macs). It’s used by System 7’s File trouble spot. Sharing feature when somebody at a remote Mac is JS: So, what are you supposed to trying to move or rename a file on your disk. do? Throw it away? Icon: If you change the icon of a disk or folder, as DP: I would. described in Chapter 1, the Mac must store your pasted-in icon graphic somewhere. (When you paste a JS: Oh, great. Now you’re telling new icon into a file, the graphic is stored in the people to throw away perfectly good software. Desktop file. But if you replace the icon of a disk or folder, the Mac creates the Icon file.) If you trash this DP: Besides, it’s been a long time invisible file, your disk or folder’s icon will be in an since System 7.5 came out. It’s not iconic no-man’s land, having neither its original nor its as though software companies haven’t had time to make their stuff replacement icon . . . so it’s best to leave this, and all compatible. I think it’s fair to say invisible icons, alone. that 99 percent of the programs Trash: The Trash in System 7 and later doesn’t just act being sold today are like a folder — it is one. That’s why you can drop 7.5-compatible. things onto it, double-click it to view it as a window, JS: Being sold, sure. But what and so on. about all the great software people already have? That they’ve already Desktop: The Desktop folder holds any icons that, paid for? What about all the great under System 7 and later, have been placed out on the old games that aren’t compatible Desktop outside of any window. Keep this in mind with System 7.5? when you try to access your Mac over a network — the DP: Well, for their benefit, I guess very icons you put out on the Desktop so they’d be it’s a good thing we wrote a section easy to find are, when viewed over the network, hidden on switching back and forth away in the Desktop folder. between two System versions, eh? Temporary Items: The Temporary Items folder is a JS: Darned right. locked, invisible folder that lives permanently at the root level of your hard drive. Applications are allowed to use this hidden folder for any purpose; generally, programmers instruct applications to use the Temporary Items folder to store scratch files or other 214 Part I: System Software Revealed
CASE HISTORY temporary data. QuarkXPress, for example, drops TEMPORARY ITEMS AND THE CASE an XPress Temp file in this folder whenever you OF THE VANISHING FILE have a Quark document open. Microsoft Word also uses this folder as a temporary dumping If you’re using System 7.0 or 7.1,the ground. In the days of Word 5, these files were Temporary Items folder is easy to find— called WordTemp-1, WordTemp-2, and so on; too easy,in fact; it shows up in most Open and Save dialog boxes,just like any other Word 6, tags them with bizarre names such as folder.And this can get you into serious <