ATPM 12.09 / September 2006 Volume 12, Number 9 About This Particular Macintosh: About the personal computing experience.™ ATPM 12.09 1 Cover Cover Art Copyright © 2006 Lee Bennett1. We need new cover art each month. Write2 to us! The ATPM Staff Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Michael Tsai3 Managing Editor Christopher Turner4 Associate Editor/Reviews Paul Fatula5 Copy Editors Chris Lawson6 Ellyn Ritterskamp7 Brooke Smith8 Vacant Web Editor Lee Bennett9 Webmaster Michael Tsai10 Beta Testers The Staff11 Contributing Editors Eric Blair12 Matthew Glidden13 Ted Goranson14 Andrew Kator15 Robert Paul Leitao16 Wes Meltzer17 Sylvester Roque18 Charles Ross19 Mark Tennent20 Evan Trent21 Vacant Artwork & Design 1http://secondinitial.com 2mailto:[email protected] 3mailto:[email protected] 4mailto:[email protected] 5mailto:[email protected] 6mailto:[email protected] 7mailto:[email protected] 8mailto:[email protected] 9mailto:[email protected] 10mailto:[email protected] 11mailto:[email protected] 12mailto:[email protected] 13mailto:[email protected] 14mailto:[email protected] 15mailto:[email protected] 16mailto:[email protected] 17mailto:[email protected] 18mailto:[email protected] 19mailto:[email protected] 20mailto:[email protected] 21mailto:[email protected] ATPM 12.09 2 Cover Layout and Design Michael Tsai22 Web Design Simon Griffee23 Cartoonist Matt Johnson24 Blue Apple Icon De- Mark Robinson signs Other Art RD Novo Graphics Director Vacant Emeritus author or artist, unless otherwise noted. You may, RD Novo, Robert Madill, Belinda Wagner, Ja- however, print or distribute copies of this issue of mal Ghandour, Edward Goss, Tom Iovino, Daniel atpm as a whole, provided that it is not modified in Chvatik, Grant Osborne, Gregory Tetrault, Raena any way. Authors may be contacted through atpm’s Armitage, Johann Campbell, David Ozab. editorial staff, or at their e-mail addresses, when pro- vided. Contributors Lee Bennett, Matthew Glidden, Ted Goranson, Mi- Legal Stuff raz Jordan, Robert Paul Leitao, Wes Meltzer, Robert About This Particular Macintosh may be uploaded Reis, Ellyn Ritterskamp, Charles Ross, Mark Ten- to any online area or included on a CD-ROM com- nent, Macintosh users like you. pilation, so long as the file remains intact and unal- tered, but all other rights are reserved. All informa- Subscriptions tion contained in this issue is correct to the best of Sign up for free subscriptions using the Web form25. our knowledge. 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Please contact us at [email protected] for more information. 1http://www.atpm.com/about/support.shtml ATPM 12.09 4 Sponsors Welcome by Robert Paul Leitao, [email protected] Welcome to the September issue of About This Par- Dell’s reputation for product quality has been signifi- ticular Macintosh! We end the summer season with cant. Following reports of some Dell laptop batteries a brief look at the state of the Mac. We anticipate turning into great balls of little fire, an agreement based on inventory traffic reports a stellar back-to- was reached between the Round Rock, Texas-based school selling season for Apple and anticipate further company and the US Consumer Product Safety Com- gains in consumer market share for our favorite make mission to recall the millions of batteries. of computer. Few times in the past twenty years Reading the reports of the Dell recall and looking has the future of the Mac looked brighter, and the at the batteries made by Sony for their own laptops, iPod continues to rule the digital music player mar- Apple voluntarily chose to recall up to 1.8 million ket. New products from a variety of technology and laptop batteries. Sony is footing the bill for all of consumer products companies will be unveiled in the the potentially flawed mobile power units recalled by coming weeks as attention turns from the heat of Apple and Dell. In public comments and executive in- summer to the shorter days and cooler nights of fall. terviews, when queried about the battery recall, Dell executives have mentioned Apple more frequently in Irregularity the past few weeks than in all of the past few years. A generation ago, this term was a euphemism for Misery wants company. someone in need of a laxative. Today, the term might describe the lax manner in which many high- Peculiarity tech companies have awarded and recoded their When Steve Jobs returned to the helm at Apple he employee incentive stock options. Apple Computer immediately reshaped the company’s board of direc- and slew of other high-tech companies have reported tors. Not only did he solicit the resignations of al- irregularities in the manner that stock option dates most all of the board’s members, but he also tem- and share prices for option grants were determined. porarily reduced the number of persons serving on Apple Computer has publicly stated the company the board and began appointing members who were will restate earnings for certain option grants made famous, infamous, and often brilliant. Larry Ellison, in the periods of 1997 thru 2001. Apple proactively the co-founder and CEO of Oracle, joined the recon- launched its own internal investigation of option stituted board, and former Vice President Al Gore is grants in response to Securities and Exchange Com- currently a member along with Mickey Drexler, the mission concerns about option abuse particularly in person credited with the Apple retail store design and the high-tech industries. current CEO of J. Crew. Due to Apple’s own investigation, the company In late August, Apple named Dr. Eric Schmidt, has delayed its regulatory 10-Q filing for the period CEO of Google, to the list of luminaries serving the ending July 1, 2006. The delay puts Apple outside of shareholders of Apple as a member of the company’s compliance with the NASDAQ market listing require- board. Some have thought this appointment to be ments. The financial impact of any changes in options a bit of a peculiarity. But it may be peculiar only expense is expected to be minimal. More important to those who don’t see the looming battle between is completion of Apple’s internal investigation and Google and Microsoft in the productivity products the timely filing of required financial statements fol- market. Each of the board members mentioned above lowing the review of the company’s previous options has brought a particular interest or expertise to Ap- practices. ple’s board. Apple has often times been hamstrung by the its reliance on Microsoft for a Mac version of Great Balls of Fire Office. Google’s recent foray into productivity solu- Dell, the world’s leader in PC shipments, recently tions may be a way for Apple to set itself free from announced the recall of 4.1 million Sony laptop bat- reliance on Microsoft for productivity products. teries. To be fair, the battery problem was caused in Sony’s manufacturing process. But the damage to ATPM 12.09 5 Welcome Falling Inventory, Smoking Gun FileMaking: FileMaker 8.5 We like movie titles from the Far East, and we en- Charles Ross takes a look at FileMaker 8.5 and its joy reading far-out Macintosh rumors. Long-time new features, giving you an idea of whether or not to Apple watchers know to look to channel inventory upgrade. reports and manufacturing contract announcements from Apple and component manufacturers for indica- Web Accessibility: RapidWeaver: A Useful tions of new products and changes in manufacturing Tool in Need of Sharpening activity. Of the software I’ve explored so far for making acces- Several Apple products were on delayed shipment sible Web pages, this is the best. It’s a useful tool for schedules during the back-to-school season. Apple an ordinary person wanting to put together a good may have applied as much inventory as possible to Web page, but it has some quirks that make it some- meet the immediate needs of education market buyers what clumsy and rather blunt. as demand from students reached its annual peak. While we anticipate inventory levels on several Apple How To: Running Classic Software on an products soon returning to normal, we also anticipate Intel Mac new product announcements before the end of this Charles Ross shares the steps he took to get classic month.