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This article appeared in the October 2001 issue of the Louisville Computer News. It was written by Lee Larson.
The main consequence of standing on this pulpit every month is a disk full of e-mail. A few of the correspondents are trolling for an argument; e.g., "Macs suck--Windows rulez!" Those are best handled with a simple tap on the delete key. Most are trying to find answers to questions that have them stumped.
After almost four years on the pulpit, it has become obvious that certain types of questions come in a definite cycle. Twice per year, in October and January, there's a flood of easy questions from new Mac owners. It's pretty clear this is because Apple has big sales promotions for the back-to-school crowd and the Christmas season.
Many of these questions could be answered quickly, if Apple gave better documentation with the systems. Not all that long ago, Apple was well-known for the quality of documentation included with each computer. My last G4 came with a skimpy fifty-four page manual written for the simple-minded, a CD containing Mac OS 9, a software restore CD, and a lot of advertising for AppleCare and various pieces of third-party software. After looking through it, I could see why new users can be a bit perplexed. The iMacs are even worse; there's not much more than a poster showing where to plug in the keyboard, power and phone line. On an iMac, new users with DSL or cable are apparently supposed to know where on the CDs the Ethernet docs are hidden.
Of course, Apple isn't alone with this problem. A quick look at the computer section of any good bookstore makes that clear. Low self-esteem must be a huge problem, otherwise who are all the people buying the bright yellow books advertising that they're for dummies? There's even one called AppleWorks: The Missing Manual.
There are at least two reasons for the terrible documentation that comes with computers these days. The first is that it costs money to produce good manuals, and hardware profits are running very thin since computers have become a commodity rather than a luxury. The second is that personal computers still have the reputation of being really complicated, and a thick stack of manuals might scare off customers who are already skittish about paying a thousand dollars for something they don't know how to use. Maybe the yellow books do have a point: Who but a dummy would buy a complicated piece of equipment without a manual?
At any rate, a month or so after buying her shiny new iMac, she finds there's something that seems as though it should be pretty easy, but it's nowhere in the manuals. It might be something as easy as finding out what type of hard drive is installed, or the hardware identification number of her built-in Ethernet card.
Where does she go for help?
The first resort is usually the store from which the computer was purchased. There are some computer stores that provide very good support. But, all too often it's a big discount store, and the salesman who seemed so knowledgable in September is off selling shoes from the store across the street. (In August, he was selling used cars.)
Here are a few suggestions where to look for help.
Most cities of reasonable size have Macintosh user groups. These are collections of people who usually meet at least monthly to share expertise, information, ideas and complaints about their Macs. Apple maintains an extensive list of user groups at www.apple.com/usergroups.
In Louisville, the Mac user group is called the Louisville Computer Society. It's more than twenty years old--one of the oldest anywhere--having started in the early days of the Apple II. Back then, it was called the Louisville Apple User Group.
The current group meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month except December at 7:00 P.M. in Pitt Academy at 3707 Poplar Level Road. The meetings are open to anyone, and usually include a presentation from an expert on some aspect of Macintosh computing. There is always time at the meetings to ask questions, and many attendees are extremely knowledgable about Macintosh computers, and computing in general.
The October 23 meeting will feature Byron Songer, an Apple Systems Engineer, who will talk about the latest offerings from Apple. Since Mac OS X 10.1 will be out by then, there should be a lot of news on that front. He'll also demonstrate parallel computing on the Mac and give an update on the status of Macs in Kentucky public schools.
The LCS offers other ways to help its users. There is a monthly newsletter, a Web site (www.aye.net/~lcs) and an e-mail list to which anyone can subscribe.
The e-mail list, in particular, is an excellent way to get quick answers to questions. Subscribers can post questions to the list by e-mail, and among more than a hundred local readers, it's almost sure that someone will be able to help.
Subscribing to the list is easy. Just sent e-mail containing the single phrase "subscribe macgroup" to majordomo@erdos.math.louisville.edu.
There are dozens of excellent Web sites devoted to solving Macintosh problems. One, in particular, stands out: MacFixit (www.macfixit.com). It documents an amazing variety of Macintosh lore. Every day, it tracks problems with the latest software, and is the best placeto look for solutions to unusual problems. In addition to its daily updates, years of past tips, tricks, bugs and solutions are saved in a quickly searchable database. There's no better place to start when confronted with a vexing problem.
Apple, of course, has extensive help available on the Web. The starting point for Apple's help is their support page (www.apple.com/support), where you'll find links to product manuals, downloadable software updates and a "Knowledge Base" of frequently asked questions and answers.
The most useful part of the support page for more advanced users is Apple's Tech Info Library (TIL). The TIL contains the thousands of technical notes released by Apple over the last few decades. These technical notes are a gold mine of often essential and sometimes trivial information about every Apple product. They are the best place to turn for information about both current and discontinued products. The TIL is not meant for new users, because the articles are often, not unexpectedly, quite technical.
If you're looking for information about anything related to the Mac, chances are somebody has created a Web site devoted to it. The general search engines, like Google (google.com) are a place to start looking for the perfect site, but they'll often hide the one perfect site you're looking for among five hundred others that are only mildly relevant.
Another approach is to search one of the Macintosh-specific site lists. Two that stand out are The Ultimate Macintosh (www.ultimatemac.com) and Cult of Macintosh (cult-of-mac.utu.fi). Both contain links to hundreds of Macintosh-related Web sites, categorized by content.
Before the Web, the two main uses of the Internet were e-mail and Usenet. These days, it seems that most Internet users don't even know about Usenet. It's a collection of tens of thousands of discussion groups centered around topics from the most general to some as obscure as Buddhist cooking techniques. There are even advocacy groups with the sole purpose of continuing the never-ending argument between Mac and Windows users about whose computer is better.
Reading Usenet can become the greatest time-sink ever devised because there's so much going on. The signal to noise ratio is almost zero in some groups. But, there are an amazing number of useful discussions buried in the din. Dozens of Macintosh discussions are going on all the time.
If you want to jump into the morass of Usenet directly, you need a news reader. Netscape Communicator contains an adequate news reader, but MT-Newswatcher is much better (www.smfr.org/mtnw). Most Internet service providers maintain at least one news server. Very few serve more than a fraction of the groups available, and messages are constantly removed at the bottom as new ones arrive at the top.
There is a complete constantly updated searchable archive of Usenet in the DejaNews archive (www.deja.com). The entire archive of over half a billion messages, dating back to 1995, was recently acquired by Google, Inc., and is searchable on the Web. There's little that's not been discussed on Usenet, and a search of Macintosh related topics can be fruitful. But, there's so much in the archive that searching is uaually frustrating, because of the signal to noise problem mentioned above.
Also, remember that everything you read should be taken with a grain of salt. There's at least as much misinformation as information on Usenet.
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