An (unofficial) Apple Outpost

Left Brain

Bear with me. I plan to get these links better organized. I'm envisioning a section of links suitable for morning browsing, such as Version Tracker, ZDNet's MacWorld online, etc. Places to check for the latest news, and software. 28 Jan 1999

Know your Mac

MacHome's HotTips
EveryMac
MacInstruct: Bite-sized lessons.
PowerMac G4 Central: ...cutting edge ownership.
MacFixIt and MacFixIt Forums, for troubleshooting
InformINIT: Lets you know what System files you should keep and which ones to toss. This is a great aid in keeping the MacOS clean.
Ambrosia Café: References and summary pages for programmers and end-users.
Graphics Resources
MacOSX article: Stay in the know.

Spiff up your Mac

...with free and fundamental software
(I believe it's good to require people to learn their way around the Apple site to find stuff there. This increases awareness of Apple's offerings.)

Mac OS 8.1 or 8.6, or 9.1, or X: Go to Apple and choose "Software" from the links accross the top of the page.
Disk First Aid: I know, you've used it before and it couldn't fix your problem. Well, that may not be the case anymore. Version 8.2 works with HFS+ formatted drives, and isn't picky about working on the startup disk. Don't push this too far though. If your hard drive is seriously ill, it's still better to start from another disk (CD, Zip, Syquest, other HD, for instance). To get it, go to Apple and then on the black navigation bar choose Support, then on the Products pull-down list select "MacOS and Applications." There you'll find a side-bar list including a link to Disk First Aid.
Quicktime 4.0: Go to Apple and then to the Products page where you can find the Quicktime link.
MRJ 2.1.4 - Mac OS Runtime for Java: Go to Apple and select the Products link where you can select MacOS from a Software pull-down menu which takes you to a page where there's an MRJ link.
MRJ can be used with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 which, in my experience, requires less memory than Netscape Communicator 4.04.

Watching and waiting

Opera web browser: MacOS version running, but needs some polish. This promises to be a compact alternative to the big browsers.

Right Brain

AppleScripts

As I come up with them, I'll post applescripts here.

OS 9

Hide MSIE -- intended as an example of how to hide a specific application. This method could be used in a launch-and-hide AppleScript.

My OS X Applescripts

User Groups

: On-liner Links

From "Why Mac?" to "Go Mac!"

Send our Windows using friends to my Windows links

Applelust.com
Mac Fanatic
Apple's Hot News
Made with Macintosh/MacOS
Apple's Products Guide - debunk the "no software" myth
AppleMasters, extraordinary people who use Apple products
Stuck at work with Windows95 environment? You can improve your outlook with the Mactintosh Windoze 95 Plus! Theme
For laughs... See Windows Crash - a quicktime movie of Bill Gates crashing a Windows98 at a press conference 20 April 1998
MacKiDo's links pointing out that Macs cost less to maintain
Fight Back 4 MacOS

Ammunition

Band together, join an Apple User Groups
Apple + Linux = Perfection!
Pentium II vs. G3

Apple history

Stuff for your Mac

For retro-Mac enthusiasts, Apple has made System 7.5.3 avilable for download free of charge. This is for those of us still holding on to pre-Power-PC Macs.
Apple-Donuts, stuff for Mac OS 8.5
Control-Strip Zone
Think different. (Einstein) startup screen. Just unStuffIt and put it in your System Folder.
If you want to choose your own, I've made up a "Think different." slide show page that makes browsing the collection as easy as clicking on a button. I've put instructions for making a startup screen there too.
Mt. Fuji & Wave Startup Screen, converted from an old system patch with the help of ResEdit and GraphicConverter
Think different.
If you want to be able to change what program opens a file, then you need FileTyper, or at least the included AutoTyper program. You may learn something as well.
Fontaholics Anonymous
Jeffery Zeldman's icons and graphics
Control-Click, contextual menu plug-ins
CLIXSOUNDS
CM Central - Contextual Plugin News and Information
Data Detectors from Apple - smart text selection, via contextual menu and apple script, for URLs, currency, and geograhic names
ScriptWeb - all about Macintosh scripting. There's also a mirror site

My personal favorites for the GUI: background (from Desktop Textures volume III) , sound (appearing soon).

Tips, Tricks, and Secrets

Graphing Calculator Secrets

Overview sites

Mac Link Pages

No one can claim to have the best Apple links page, especially me!

Why I like Macs

Here are some of my reasons that I can put into words. This is not a complete list.

File associations: to open a file one can simply double click its icon. Information is stored with files that includes an identifier of the application that created it. Extensions in the file name are not necessary for file recognition.
Application locating: Using file IDs, the OS keeps track of what applications are on your computer. So you can rename or move them to different folders and they can still be found for the purpose of opening a file. If the database that keeps track of the applications becomes corrupt, it can be recreated by the system at startup (or after deleting the database). Try this with the Windows registry.
Spiffy icons: It seems like the MacOS was designed from the start with variation in color capabilities in mind. Files that have icon representations stored in their resource fork have ones for different color depths -- 8 bit, 4 bit, and 1 bit. If your monitor can show 256 colors or more at the same time, then your icons can appear with a varied 256-color palette. This makes it possible to have icons that are thumbnails of picture files.
SCSI port - standard equipment: All the Macs I've ever worked with had an SCSI port at the back of the computer. That means all you need is a cable to attach an SCSI device. This includes at least external fixed disks, scanners, and Zip drives. You don't have to open your computer to attach these devices, and for fixed or Zip disks, there's no software to install to access them. The drivers are on the disks and are loaded at startup. [Macs since the MacPlus, Jan 1986, have had SCSI ports.]

This page layout was adapted from the BBC Education Homepage. The background image is also from that page.