Alright, class, settle down…I said, settle down! Young man, now, give me that knife…Thank you! Today, we are going to discuss a very important issue that I want to loudly proclaim to all that will hear me.
Please take notes because there may or may not be a quiz afterwards. You need to take the information about to be distributed and declare it from house to house, village to village, hamlet to hamlet, etc., etc. Pray tell, what could this crucial information possibly be? It’s not life-threatening, is it? It’s not going to cause premature hair loss or anything like that… is it? It’s not going to cause all domesticated pets in our society to start revolting in the streets… is it? No, no, no, nothing like that. It’s just a simple thing: All Macs are Y2K compliant! Period.
This past week a man called me and was all in a dither. Actually, he is one of many that have called me, you know, da Mac man, and asked me the fateful question, “Do I have to do anything to my Mac to make it work with that Year 2000 thing?” Calmly I asked him, “What kind of Mac do you have?” “An SE,” he replied with a quiver in his voice. I told him that he has nothing to fear at all. Y2K compliance is not even a remote issue with ANY Macs. Apple in its near-infinite wisdom, whether by means of serendipity or otherwise, built a particular date scheme into the ROMs of all Macs. The ill-fated year for Macs is 2019. Yes, I’m talking about 21 years from now. Let’s see, 21 years, that’ll make me, hmmm, an old geezer, but that’s okay. Know why? Because by then I would hope to not be writing articles for my column on a Centris 650 as I am at the present (My Mac will be celebrating its 25th year). No, I’ll probably be cruising on a non-stop flight to Moon base ALPHA-BETA-GAMMA with my
“old” G25, complaining that it runs too slow. Why should I have to wait for a 5GHz machine anyway? I’m only trying to formulate nuclear fusion!
To prove my point, class, let us turn to the Date & Time Control Panel in our Macs, shall we? I see that some of you are not taking notes…tsk, tsk. The Mac that we are using for this lecture is the professor’s own Centris 650 running System 7.6.1. Alrighty then, let’s dissect this little sucker and see what we can find. Upon opening the Control Panel, you will see the current date listed in the upper left hand of the window. Directly below that is a button called… Date
Formats… right. As we click on this button, go ahead and do this now… I’ll wait… you will see several different buttons. Notice that on the right side there is a button called “Show century.” For this exercise I want you to click in the little box beside it. Then click OK and you then return to the Date & Time Control Panel. Here’s where I can prove my point. Now, click on the year “1998.” Instantly, 2 small arrows appear to adjust the year (I know that you know this, just humor me).
Start clicking the year’s up arrow… go ahead. You will see that you can adjust the year to 2019 and then it jumps back to 1920. Now, what does this show us? Simply put, Macs are indeed Y2K compliant. Period.
With this little trick you can astound your friends and get little digs into the PC wieners that you come in daily contact with. Now, won’t that be fun? :^)
Test Time! You thought I was kidding?
Question #1: What kind of kitchen utensil did I take from Johnny at the beginning of our class today?
Question #2 What kind of Macintosh computer did we use for our experiment?
Question #3 True or False: All Macintosh computers are Year 2000 compliant.
I’m so glad that we were able to discuss this heart-rending issue today… ya know what I mean?
I am, as always, da Mac man. :^D
Catcha L8r
Ed Tobey
edtobey@hotmail.com
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