Author: Derek K Miller

The Price of Fame: Mac Support is Sometimes Half-Baked

It’s been a busy summer. Since my last GearHead column in June, Steve “Surprises Every 90 Days” Jobs has shown us the iBook, Mac OS 9, and the new Power Mac G4s. They all look pretty cool — but of course, as I write this, no mere mortals actually have any of them in their hands, so we’ll have to take Steve’s word that they actually are cool, for now.

Mike Wallinga of “Wall Writings” fame here at My Mac sent an email out to the entire staff shortly after Macworld NY, asking what

I recently found a 1996 picture of me with my Mac. It’s just me, at my 1986-era IKEA desk. The Mac is the trusty Centris 660AV (circa 1993), with a cheapo 15″ monitor and a very old external 1x NEC CD-ROM drive. That’s it. I look much the same as I do today.

For a certain variety of Mac geek, of which I am one, there’s great satisfaction in formatting a hard drive. I don’t mean just choosing Erase Disk from the Special menu either–that’s lightweight stuff, reserved for floppy disks that have been sitting in a drawer for four years with unfinished SimCity scenarioson them.