If you'd like to secure your Macintosh in the same manner as the National Security Agency, you can download a PDF explaining how here. [Via the March 2005 issue of Macworld, not yet online.]

So my previous rumination on the G5 in a PowerBook and the Mac Mini bears a little updating. On Monday, Apple announced new PowerBook G4s, showing the G4 processor still has plenty of life left in it as they bumped up the top speed to 1.67 GHz. CNET looks at the expected PowerBook G5:

The computer maker is well aware that Mac fans want a G5 PowerBook, and technically, the company could offer one now. But given the relatively power-hungry nature of the IBM PowerPC 970FX processor--Apple has dubbed the 970FX and its predecessor, the 970, "G5" chips--a G5 PowerBook would require compromises in size, weight and other aesthetics such as noise production. Apple, and likely most of its customers, wouldn't be willing to live with that. So while the G5 works in the iMac form factor, not so much in the PowerBook's. Which means not so much in a Mac Mini, perhaps not even within the possible timetable I outlined earlier. Which is why I'm not in the rumor business.

So the March issue of Macworld arrived today, and I was reading through it over lunch. One of the articles is a round-up of news reader apps, and congratulations are in order to Erik and Company for PulpFiction being awarded four and a half mice. Erik, has, however, beat me to the punch with the news. That's okay, I'm still using NetNewsWire. ;-) Kudos, amigo!

Yeah, I know, there's a shocker of a realization, right? But it's true. Since the Mac Mini was announced, I've had many instant message conversations with current Mac die-hards who see the Mini as a great second, third, or even fourth system in their home or office, for xyz kind of use. The kinds of use that would normally be reserved for a two- or three-generation-old Macintosh. For myself, I was thinking a Mac Mini would be the best way to transition my grandmother to OS X. She's currently running OS 9.2.2 on a Power Mac 8500 I got dirt cheap from a fellow ATPM staffer, and that was when the iMac G4 was brand new. I had been thinking that a blue-and-white G3 would be the next step up for her (she already has a monitor, so an iMac would be overkill), but now I'm thinking why bother with that? All she needs is the $499 Mini and a RAM upgrade, and she's good to go. Everyone knows that Steve could care less that the Mac Mini is going to cannibalize those older Mac sales, especially among the more savvy, long-time Mac users out there who know better than to pay most of the prices one sees on eBay. Apple needs to move units, and for those sort of Mac users, Mac Minis aren't going to cannibalize Power Mac G5, PowerBook, or even iMac sales. Certainly not enough for Apple to not have come out with the Mini. Apple doesn't care about the so-called "gray market" of its products' sales, because those products are already out of Apple's inventory. The Mac Mini is the here and now, and that's what counts.

Christian Science Monitor:

Paul Saffo, a director of the Menlo Park-based Institute for the Future, a technology forecasting firm, says Apple's two new slimmed down products are the newest harvests in what will be an array of hand-held devices catering to the demand for digital entertainment and serious computations. "Apple has been cool all along," he says, praising Jobs's talent for including "little details," in Apple products. "The public wasn't. But now because of Apple, the public has become cool." [Via DF.]

The February issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure. Ellyn notes the need for healthy skepticism on the web, while Wes's Bloggable column looks at the miniature life, courtesy of Apple's new releases. The Wizard of Oz(ab) notes how the Mac Mini may affect musicians, while Ted's About This Particular Outliner column continues with part two on the usage of outliners for task management. Sylvester has a follow-up column about what to do with those old Macs. The ATPM staff is pleased to welcome Scott Chitwood, editor of the Mac GUI customization site ResExcellence. Scott's first column is about customizing your Mac's icons. Yours truly also kicks off a new column for the 'zine, focusing on the iPod. Wes delves in to Mariner Software's ultimate productivity tool, Desktop Poet, while Chris Lawson looks at the FriendlyNET FR1104-G Wireless Firewall Router and Griffin Technology's radioSHARK. Frisky Freeware notes a favorite chat client of some staff members. Cortland and the iTrolls continue their adventures. Lee and I were blown away by Mark Montgomery's nature photos, which he offered as this month's desktop pictures. I've already got a black bug on my desktop. Thanks, Mark!

If you've followed every Macworld Expo keynote QuickTime stream since, well, since Apple's been offering them, and you wonder what it would have been like to be able to watch the introduction of the original Macintosh, now you can. Recorded in January 1984 by Scott Knaster, and digitized by TextLab. Link from Tom.

Ric Ford, the original Macintosh blogger, has a review of the Mac Mini.

So looking around a bit at the Mac web this weekend, it appears the PowerBook G5 rumors are about to start gaining steam. Supposedly the current PowerBook G4 line is about to be EOL'ed. EOL is retail/manufacturing talk for End of Life, as in, we're not making this any more, and when we've sold what's out there, that's all there is. I won't dignify the rumor-mongers with links, but I do have a couple of thoughts. First, if we see a PowerBook G5, I'm not sure we'll see a PowerBook G5 12-inch right away. I would like to be wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a G5 available in only the 17- and 15-inch PowerBooks to start with. It all boils down to how well Apple and IBM have managed to work around the heating issues with the G5 in the smaller spaces. Second, if Apple solves its heat issues and wedges the G5 in to the PowerBook form factors, it's not a stretch to then dump the G5 in to the Mac Mini. Not that this would occur any time in the near future after a PowerBook G5 release, but one could reasonably surmise when it will be coming, because it will eventually happen. If you look at the six product lines of Apple's computers, two are already on the G5: the Power Macintosh towers, and the iMac. Next up for the new processor is the PowerBook line, which would leave the iBook, the eMac, and the just-released Mac Mini. Those same rumors hinted at above also say that the eMac is about to be EOL'ed as well. Should that prove true, then this means Apple is pushing the Mac Mini in to the education market, and schools will have to buy cheap third-party monitors, because they sure as hell aren't buying 20-inch Apple flat-panel displays that cost twice as much as the baseline Mac Mini. Seeing as how these schools never purchased displays from Apple before, Apple's not losing revenue there, though one can theorize their margins on Mac Mini sales will be lower than on eMacs. As John Gruber has observed, Apple looks to make up for reduced margins with volume. So if the eMac is indeed dead in the near future, Apple's computer product line falls from six to five, and after the PowerBook G5 is released, only the iBook and Mac Mini will be on the G4. The G4 is just about tapped out in Apple's product line. The 1.5 GHz processor is the highest speed being offered, but third-party upgrade vendors are offering faster G4 processors. Apple may bump up the G4's speed in its product line one more time, but it all depends on how aggressive they want to be with the G5. I can see Apple bringing out the PowerBook G5 some time in the first half of the year, before or after the release of Tiger. At some point within the following six months, the speeds of the Power Macintosh G5 will be increased. At Macworld Expo next year, you'll see increased speeds for the iMac G5, and by mid-year, faster PowerBook G5s. This would open the door to then add the G5 to the iBook line, and maybe at the same time the Mac Mini line, though Apple is known for only refreshing one line at a time, for the most part. Earliest time for a G5 Mini? I'm betting on Macworld Expo in January 2007. It all hinges on IBM's G5 fabrication, however, so it's not all up to Jobs and the Apple brain trust. And hell, I was way wrong on the flash-based iPod and the iCheap, aka the Mac Mini, so what do I know? This has all been stream-of-consciousness blogging any way.

MacMinute reports that my alma mater has put online a 24-Xserve G5 cluster named Nemeaux. So I guess this proves that Tigers eat Apples...or something.

Michael opines on the increased software value of an iWork-loaded Mac Mini, when compared to purchasing iLife '05, iWork, and an OS upgrade separately. ATPM founder Danny Novo has a similar analysis, including .Mac. The Mac Mini looks better and better when you factor in all four of these software prices. Maybe a Mac Mini will be in the phisch bowl's future, later this year, after Tiger is released and iWork comes loaded. Maybe around the time my own .Mac registration is due for renewal. However, I don't think I'll wait too long to purchase iLife '05, as I've decided to begin using iPhoto for my digital photo management needs, and I'd like to do so starting with the new version.

Michael Crichton:

Q: Describe the perfect writing environment.
A: Small room. Shades down. No daylight. No disturbances. Macintosh with a big screen. Plenty of coffee. Quiet.

I rediscovered a gem by former ATPM staffer Kirk McElhearn from the June 2004 issue of Macworld. In the Working Mac column, Kirk is discussing built-in ways to protect data in Mac OS X. I found the use of the Keychain as a storage place for secret notes intriguing.

To turn Keychain into your security guard, open Keychain Access (Applications: Utilities), and click on Note in the Keychain Access toolbar. Enter a descriptive title in the Name field of the window that appears, and then type or paste the data you want to protect into the Note field. You're not limited to short things, such as a password or a credit card number. I pasted several megabytes of text into one secure note.

To access your secure notes later, open Keychain Access, find the note in the list of protected items, and click on its name. Select the Show Password option and enter your password; you'll then see the note's contents. To enter the contents in another program, click on Copy Note To Clipboard, enter your password again, and paste into any text field or document.

Michael has released BBAutoComplete 1.4. BBAutoComplete gives you word auto-completion in scriptable applications like BBEdit, Mailsmith, Tex-Edit, and with the new version, Smile. If I weren't already using a combination of AutoPairs and TypeIt4Me, I would probably be using BBAutoComplete. The latter is "smarter" than TypeIt4Me in that TypeIt4me has to be "taught" the abbreviations and expansions to use in place of those abbreviations. BBAutoComplete guesses what you're wanting to type by checking out expansions in your app's open docs. For most of my typing needs, though, especially in the apps BBAutoComplete supports, I simply have no need for it. Programmers, however, will find it a boon. BBAutoComplete is freeware, and be sure to check out Michael's excellent commercial software, SpamSieve and DropDMG, while you're at it. Both are Retrophisch™ Recommends selections, and you can support a developer who gives back to the user community.

Michael's analysis of OmniWeb's shortcomings, and Gruber's comment to the post, leave me wondering why I continue to download and install the thing, since I hardly ever use it.

The January issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure. Ellyn resolves not to make resolutions, while Wes digs in to the ugly world of Apple rumors. Ted takes a break from the frenetic world of Mac outliners, but still manages an update column. Eric has a brilliant piece on the upcoming iTunes-compatible Motorola phone and what that means to the mobile music and mobile phone marketplaces. Sylvester explores the world of tech recycling, a public service for those who were lucky enough to receive new Macs for Ramahanakwanzmas. Just in time for New Year's, Lee has submitted Fourth of July photos for use as desktop pictures. Go ahead and use them, no one will know that they weren't taken New Year's Eve and immediately uploaded. Well, no one who doesn't read about it here, that is. Cortland and iTrolls continue, and this month Frisky Freeware explores OSXplanet. Lee runs down the latest darling of the Mac software world, Delicious Library, while Wes reviews the blogging tool, MarsEdit. Paul's look at PhotoReviewer and Michael's review of Kensington's StudioBoard will likely have me spending some money shortly. Eric explores PreFab's UI Actions, of interest to you script junkies out there. Happy New Year from all of us at ATPM!

Taking a cue from Michael, I'd thought I'd look at the 2004 Macworld Editors Choice Awards to see how they fit in my hardware and software toolbelt: + GarageBand 1.1 - I used it once. It needs more oomph than my 1 GHz PowerBook can provide. + BBEdit 8.0 - as with Michael, I use it every day + Toast - has saved the bacon more than once, and again, as Michael says, nothing else can touch it + Snapz Pro X 2.0 - still using the last 1.x version, and I rarely take screen shots That's about it as far as the items I have actual experience with. That said, a few comments on others that made the list: + Photoshop Elements 3 - I could maybe get excited about Elements if (a) I didn't already have Photoshop, and (b) it offered photo organization and competed against iPhoto (which I do not use for photo organization) + FileMaker Pro 7 - I want to like it, really I do, but I feel 4D still outmatches it; granted, I haven't played with either in three years, so I'm just going off what I read and hear from people I trust + Halo: Combat Evolved - like many Mac users, I was looking forward to Halo, until Bungie was bought by Microsoft and the entire project was lost for three years while the Evil Empire ripped off Sony and Nintendo created the Xbox; I'm not sure my PowerBook's 32MB of video RAM would do it justice, and the Cube's processor won't even touch it. Plus, it's still fifty bucks. + QuarkXPress 6.5 - not that they will ever tell us, but I'm curious to know how much market share Quark has lost to InDesign. Not only because Quark's customer service feeds on the bottom of the scum pond, but also because it took them a couple of years to come out with a native OS X version. I personally know of more than one shop that has made the conversion to InDesign, and plans to never return. + OmniWeb 5.0.1 - I want to like OmniWeb, really I do; I download every beta and play around with it, but always return to Safari and Camino. I'm addicted to tabs and Safari's bookmark implementation.

Ric Ford found some surprising results in a mid-range Macintosh face-off with today's Performance Comparison: eMac G4, iBook G4 and iMac G5.