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This article first appeared in the January 1998 issue of the
Louisville Computer News.
It was written by Lee
Larson.
There's a big to-do in the computer press about the "year 2000" problem, called Y2K by those who are not acronym impaired. Info World and PC Week seem to lump global warming, the Middle East and Y2K together as the major challenges we will face in the new millennium.
But, what is Y2K, and how does it affect Macintoshes?
To understand the problem we have to look way back to the late '70's and early '80's when personal computers were just starting to catch on. Back then, 64K of RAM was a luxury and nobody had hard drives. Bytes were scarce, and programmers saved every one with almost religious zeal. Why store all four digits of 1984 when only the last two are important? The year 2000 is a lifetime away.
In the late '90's we see the problem with this penny-wise and pound-foolish approach: How do you tell 1900 from 2000 when you've only got the last two digits? Since this problem affects the built-in clocks on nearly all Wintel standard machines, much of the press is in an uproar. It's never been a problem with Macintoshes or the Macintosh operating system.
To see why, let me get technical for a paragraph or four.
From the beginning, the Macintosh operating system has used a date format requiring at least four full digits for the year. This means the built-in routines within the oldest Macs can handle any date from 0 to 9999 A.D. Beginning with System 6.04, the year format was extended to handle dates ranging from 30,000 B.C. to 29,940 A.D. Both archaeologists and science fiction writers can feel confidant when using a Macintosh.
Since time keeps passing whether the computer is off or on, all computers contain a clock chip that keeps track of the time when the computer is off. When your Mac is restarted, the operating system reads the current time off the clock chip and keeps track of the time by itself until the machine is turned off. You can think of this as though the operating system uses the clock chip once to set its watch. After its watch is set, the operating system just reads the watch instead of using the clock chip.
The weakest link in this setup is the clock chip. It uses an arcane method of telling time by counting the number of seconds since midnight, January 1, 1904. This is why most Macs think it's 1904 when their clock batteries go dead.
It also turns out that the clock chip can't count higher than 4,294,967,296 (= 2^32), so this number of seconds past midnight, January 1, 1904 is the latest date the clocks in Macs can register. For the MacTrivia obsessed, the ultimate Mac date turns out to be 6:28:16 A.M. on February 6, 2040.
Therefore Macs don't have a Y2K problem. They have a Y2040 problem instead.
Does this mean we Mac users can sleep easily on New Year's Eve 1999? Well, not necessarily. We're still at the mercy of programmers.
The Macintosh hardware and operating system can handle dates far past the turn of the century, but individual programs might be less robust. Even though the Mac has always had the right stuff to avoid Y2K problems, there are plenty of old programs and lazy programmers out there who don't take full advantage of the Y2K safe routines built into Macs.
For example, Apple's own programmers don't use their own routines all the time. The Date & Time control panel included with current Macintosh operating systems only handles dates from January 1, 1920 through December 31, 2019. The programmer's excuse is they're trying to keep things compatible with the old General Controls control panel. After all, they do have over 20 years to fix Date & Time. By the time Mac OS 19 is released, they should have all the wrinkles ironed out.
It's usually pretty easy to test whether a program has Y2K problems. Set your Mac's clock to some time in 2000 using the Date & Time control panel, and enter a date from the year 2000 into the program. If the program thinks it's in 1900 or has some other problem after doing either of these tests, then feel lucky you've still got two years to update or replace the program.
There are a couple of things you can look out for.
Be suspicious of any program which forces you to enter dates in the MM/DD/YY format. Many older database and accounting programs fall into this camp. Most newer programs have been fixed to be Y2K aware.
Carefully examine any program which was ported over from DOS or Windows 3.x. Many of these programs fail to use the date and time facilities built into the Mac because they already contain their own routines, sometimes written by lazy programmers.
Software Updates
A few weeks ago Apple released a significant update when LaserWriter 8.5.1 appeared. This is the first version of the LaserWriter driver to support IP printing. What this means is that you can print to a PostScript printer or Unix style queue out on an ethernet network without using AppleTalk. IP printing also allows Macs to use those somewhat less expensive network laser printers which do not have AppleTalk built in. The new software also adds custom page sizing, better support for PostScript 3 printers, improved support for ColorSync and support for the Adobe Acrobat Save as File Format.
But, you might not want to rush right out and start using the upgrade because there are a few drawbacks.
IP printing does not have the rich error support available with AppleTalk printing. Some PostScript and printer problems will not be reported back to the Mac, making it harder to debug pesky printing problems.
LaserWriter 8.5.1 is incompatible with desktop printing in Mac OS 8.0. In order to use desktop printing, you'll have to drop back to Mac OS 7.6.1 or upgrade to Mac OS 8.1, which may be out by the time this appears in print.
LaserWriter 8.5.1 is available as a free, but hefty, 6 megabyte download from Apple's Internet servers at http://swupdates.info.apple.com.
Louisville Computer Society
The Louisville Computer Society is the local Macintosh user group. The January meeting will include a presentation on desktop publishing with PageMaker. The LCS will meet at 7:00 P.M. on Monday, January 26 in the East Government Center on Juneau Drive in Middletown. More information about the LCS can be obtained from their web site at http://www.aye.net/~lcs/.
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