Cellan-Jones not up to his usual standards - though this piece is a little too harsh on him.

undocumented?

Transcript of an article that showed the innovations in the Star workstation, which by then were found everywhere (though they may not have worked as well, and were not yet popular of IBM and Compaq PCs.) The overlapping windows, selection, menus, focus, object-oriented design and of course the mouse itsef were also found in Smalltalk-80. However, the icons, representing documents, folders, printers and so on, were a unique innovation.

Did Apple license the Star technology as well as Smalltalk-80?

Transcript of an article that showed the innovations in the Star workstation, which by then were found everywhere (though they may not have worked as well, and were not yet popular of IBM and Compaq PCs.) The overlapping windows, selection, menus, focus, object-oriented design and of course the mouse itsef were also found in Smalltalk-80. However, the icons, representing documents, folders, printers and so on, were a unique innovation.

This looks like great (it is a mix of Bash and AppleScript) and it works very well for me. However if you are not familiar with simple Unix administration, you might prefer packaged freeware or shareware like StartupSound.prefPane or Psst.

It is always nice to have a rescue disk that can be slotted in to repair a damaged startup disk.

For recent Macs, the install DVD can serve this purpose. You can run Disk Utility, hdiutil and fsck to repair the filesystem and check the SMART status of the disk.

There is even a Terminal with a few basic commands. For example, you can read the system logs, and if the startup disk is healthy, but too full to safely start, you can browse around to empty trash cans and delete other unnecessary files.

However, I foresee that sometimes I might have to edit a text file on the startup disk. Yet when I was using my disk (it is a OS X 10.4 DVD) I could not find emacs, pico, nano or vi. Is there an editor on there?

If not, can you recommend a third party rescue disk that I can download or buy, with a wider range of repair tools?

Customize the default terminal prompt for Mac OS X and many Unix.

take care with file globbing (this one works for me)

This piece of $15 shareware (US dollars?) comes highly recommended, even though I would hope that future versions of OS X will do many of these things for itself. How often do upgrade licenses need to be purchased?

one more to print and keep at hand

Another one I am printing and keeping near our Mac

situations when you might need to defrag - and why you usually don't need to

Alternative to Front Row - I like Front Row but navigating among podcasts can be a nuisance - perhaps this can be hacked to make it easier

I have to admit, I found this article a little confusing : I didn't understand how to use a 'usage profile' to choose a platform for clients or servers.

:)

A new private beta

This 2 minute video is worth several manual pages.