I don't need or want a new computer, but it looks like Apple isn't going to take "no" for an answer

Plus: There's a lesson somewhere in yesterday's Dilbert

-- from Apple's macOS Sierra Web page (click to enlarge)

by Ken

Dear Apple,

What about those of us who:

• have absolutely no interest in having Siri on our Macs?
• don't want help rediscovering our best photos, whatever that means?
• can already shop online way faster than we can pay for any of the stuff?
• and don't believe that you would actually help us work "more seamlessly between devices" even if we had devices we wanted to work "more seamlessly" between?

Yrs truly --
A longtime loyal Mac user

The question isn't meant to be rhetorical (I really would like to know), but it is, because I'm pretty sure I know Apple's answer: Drop dead.

I don't wanna talk about Matt Lauer, and for that matter I don't wanna talk about the vanished headphone jack (as previously threatened) on the new iPhone. I don't have an iPhone, and for all the trouble I've had learning to use my already-aged android phone, I have no intention of getting an iPhone, in part because of how badly things have deteriorated between Apple and me. For a long time I was a proud and happy Mac user, but that goes back a ways, to before Apple made it clear that it doesn't give the tiniest damn about my computing needs, and merely sees me as a captive patsy for forced software and hardware upgrading.

As it turns out, the "news" to which I'm responding is three months old. But it's news to me, so let the panic proceed.

I survived a scare awhile back when the company decided -- for no necessary technological reason, as far as I could tell -- to stop supporting OS 10.6.8, the perfectly good operating system then in use on both my main computer, an aging iMac, and a refurbished notebook computer I bought mostly for writing purposes. Suddenly, for one thing, my bank set a term limit on the time it would allow access to its website for pre-OS 10.7 Mac users. Not being able to access my account online would be a serious disruption in my life. Then I discovered that, while the notebook computer, which is almost contemporaneous with the iMac, indeed can't be upgraded beyond good old OS 10.6.8 (which I supposed is why it was so cheap), the iMac could be.

After adding some memory, I could not only upgrade the OS but jump it all the way to the current system, OS 10.11, El Capitan -- and I did just that. I know I've read all sorts of terrible things about El Capitan and why users shouldn't upgrade from OS 10.10, Yosemite. However, I haven't had any problems with it. Of course this could be because I don't do any fancy stuff with my computer. Mostly, I write and I go online. Just like I did in contemptibly obsolete old OS 10.6.8. As witness the fact that the notebook computer does these things quite okay, despite having not a whole lot of memory. (Hoping at least to speed it up a little, and heady with success from my successful iMac memory upgrade, I actually tried to jack up the memory, only to discover -- too late to seek relief from the vendor -- that the battery compartment is somehow locked closed! The joke was on me, as it usually is.


ENTER macOS SIERRA

Now I learn, via e-update from the vendor from which I bought my memory upgrades (which, by the way, was very nice about allowing me to return the notebook upgrade I couldn't install), that although Apple didn't mention it at the big announcement of the new iPhone (with the disappeared headphone jack), the company has announced online that on September 20 it's releasing a new Mac OS: macOS Sierra. (That's right, after all this time, no more OS X, or 10. So if you laid down any bets that there would never be an OS XI, or 11, it's time to collect.) As usual, the Apple folks are giddy with excitement about all the wonderful new stuff packed into Sierra -- see above.

Then, among the e-update's appended list of "Related Articles," I fixed on the last one: See If Your Mac, iDevices Are Compatible with Sierra, iOS 10. Do tell, I thought. Okay, here goes (note that the "today" referred to is in fact June 14):

Today’s WWDC keynote saw the unveiling of the next iterations of iOS and the newly named macOS. The announcements of iOS 10 and macOS Sierra will lead many to wonder whether their devices or Macs will support the new operating systems.

The Rocket Yard [the blog of the vendor, OWC, aka MacSales.com -- Ed.] has put together a quick guide of devices compatible with the new operating systems.

It appears that for the first time since 2012, older Macs will be dropped from compatibility and will not run macOS Sierra, many of which are 2007-2009 models.

Uh-oh! Now, as I think I've made abundantly clear, I could care less about what iOS which iPhones will or won't support. You can find that here. But I care very much about those "older Macs," from 2007-2009, that are apparently on the Sierra chopping block. Gulp.

Here is a list of Mac models that will be compatible with macOS Sierra, according to Ars Technica:

• MacBook: (Late 2009 and later)
• iMac: (Late 2009 and later)
• MacBook Air: (2010 and later)
• MacBook Pro: (2010 and later)
• Mac mini: (2010 and later)
• Mac Pro: (2010 and later)

I don't want a new computer, and given my computing needs, I don't need a new computer. At least I won't until Apple turns its back on all the pre-Sierra OS-es, and all the Web outlets that hate having to support Macs to begin with follow suit.

It would be one thing if these software and hardware upgrades offered significant upgrades to the way I do the stuff I do. But they don't. Of course, the very fact that I'm not a frequent upgrader probably explains why Apple doesn't care about me, or my patronage, or how badly they piss me off.


BONUS: THERE'S A LESSON LURKING
SOMEWHERE IN YESTERDAY'S DILBERT

DILBERT by Scott Adams

[Click to enlarge.]

#

Urgent! Important! Please read!

DILBERT     by Scott Adams
[Click on any strip to enlarge.]

Wednesday: Biggest Obstacle


Thursday: Dashboard For The Boss


Today: Dashboard Never Changes


by Ken

It's a good thing there's nothing happening in the world, 'cause I'm suddenly in a condition of computer snafuitude, which I'll explain in a moment for the record. Meanwhile, this gives me an opportunity to raise a question I've been meaning to throw out for some time, with regard to stuff like that I've put in the post title as it turns up in e-mail subject lines. And the question is this: Does anyone actually read e-mails that come with such declarations of self-importance? Can it be possible that I'm the only one who, just on principle, more or less automatically deletes them?

"Urgent," eh? "Please read," you say? No, I don't think so!

And confidential to whichever Democratic Party functionaries who are sending out those end-of-the-world-is-nigh fund-raising e-mails with all-caps subject lines about how the sky is falling: Just quit it, huh? I'm certainly not going to read those.


NOW, AS TO MY CURRENT COMPUTER MALAISE --

Last night when I got home from seeing my friend Gil in the Classical Theatre of Harlem's adaptation of Macbeth (absolutely free, great reviews in both Time Out New York and the NYT, though I take the latter's theater writing a lot less seriously) with three performances left -- in the excellent Richard Rodgers Amphitheater of Northern Manhattan's Marcus Garvey Park, tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday at 8pm), I went to the computer and discovered that my keyboard appears to be majorly fucked up, and I don't have time to go keyboard shopping today.

This isn't entirely unusual, since I am known to spill stuff on the keyboard which I know I should never have anywhere near it. Which is why some time ago I instituted a policy of always having a spare keyboard on hand, replacing what had been the spare as soon as it's pressed into service as the new keyboard. The thing is (and this is a funny story; you'll laugh and laugh) I took my last spare into the office so that I would have a working keyboard there, feeling queasy about reporting the situation to the office manager, seeing as how it was my own fault that I didn't have a working keyboard. Ironically, when I had occasion to mention to Christine, the office manager, that I had done this, she didn't see why I hadn't just told her!

And then, that Friday in January, we came into the office and found out that we didn't have an office anymore, and I was afraid that if I took my keyboard home, I would be accused of stealing "their" keyboard. Ha ha ha! Pretty funny, right? (Note to self: I really should try to get in touch with Christine, maybe see if I can find her on Facebook. She's good people, and I haven't had contact since That Day in January. Of course I should also be finding, you know, a job, but that doesn't seem to be happening either.)

The odd thing about my current keyboard predicament (assuming that that's all it is -- the keyboard) is that normally I know all about it when I demolish a keyboard, because I've just watched myself do it. This time, is a puzzlement.

So on the regular computer I can still do anything that can be done by mouse, plus things that can be done using still-working keys. From which I got the idea that I could maybe do some of the heavier post-related lifting on it, then dump that stuff in a blog file, and then edit that file on a MacBook that I bought refurbished some time back, hoping it would help me back when I was still blogging every day (and twice on some days). And after a fashion it has worked! (If you want to see something really funny, you should see me with the two computers running side by side, the MacBook perched precariously alongside the desktop, and me furiously working the mouse from the desktop computer and cursing the MacBook for not responding -- or occasionally vice versa, when the trackpad of the MacBook fails to produce results on the desktop.)

I knew going in that the machine just missed the cutoff for being system-upgradable beyond OS 10.6, a perfectly lovely OS that Apple has chosen to abandon, rendering it. But I thought I could at least upgrade the memory to make it work better and faster.

Only by the time I was ready to actually attempt the feat,  after successfully performing a memory upgrade on the desktopo computer which enabled me to upgrade that also-aging machine all the way to El Capitan, and even ordered the new memory, when I went to open the battery compartment to perform the installation, I discovered that I couldn't open the battery compartment. I figured this was just my incompetence, and eventually I took the computer and the memory upgrade to the crackerjack Mac folks at Tekserve, assuming they would deftly open the thing and then for a reasonable fee install the new memory.

Instead what happened was that they gathered their savviest tech hands to gaze in wonder at something none of them had ever seen: a battery compartment that had somehow gotten internally locked, leaving no option that any of the assembled wizards could think of except to break into the thing, after which they couldn't of course guarantee its continued functioning. Maybe I should have let them give it a shot, but at least as is the thing was working, within its limits.

My bad, obviously, for not having thought to try to open the battery compartment while I might still have gotten redress from the company that sold it to me. And by this time, I discovered, the company existed except in name, a name that had been sold to another company, which informed me with a nice tinge of regret that sorry, there was nothing they could do for me. On the plus side, the company from which I had bought the memory that I successfully installed on the desktop computer and then the memory I was unable to install on the MacBook allowed me to return the latter.

Which today include enabling me to get this post done. And the nice thing is that I can whine to my heart's content, confident that my subject line has triply warded off any potential readers.

#

For Mac users: Have we entered the wonderful world of computer viruses? (For PC users: Do you have to be so damned gleeful?)

by Ken
It would be nice if the reports didn't come bathed in quite so much gloating from PC users long accustomed to virus infestation. Still, for Mac OS X users who, like me, have heretofore smugly thought ourselves immune to virus infection, the message matters more than the unseemly glee of the messengers. As I was reading this NYT report, my heart skipped a beat when I recalled that just recently I did in fact respond to a legit-looking prompt that I was missing a required Flash update, and yes, when prompted, I typed in my password. And as I think back, it puzzled me at the time that this sequence didn't result in the expected software-installation routine, and the clip I'd been trying to play proceeded to play just fine. Hmm! Or should I say uh-oh.

Then again, I don't know what to make of the information that this post was "Last Updated: Sun, Apr 08." Um, huh??? (Sorry, there are no links here because this comes from a third-party site, not nytimes.com.)

Widespread virus proves Macs no longer safe from hackers

By Nicole Perlroth

Last Updated: Sun, Apr 08, 2012 00:12 hrs

For years, Mac users have been told that not only are they cooler than their PC counterparts, they are safer too. Apple has always held that computer viruses and malware only dogged its competitors.

That is no longer the case.

This week, security researchers discovered a new computer virus had infected half a million Mac users -- about half of them in the United States. The malicious program, known as a Trojan horse, is infesting users in the most surreptitious way possible: users need not manually click on any malicious links or manually download any malware to get infected. The program simply downloads itself. Once downloaded, the Trojans' creators gain a back door that gives them unauthorized access to the victim's computer.

"This is the largest scale attack on Mac OS X to date," said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab, an antivirus software company who has analyzed the malware. "And much more sophisticated."

For now, the Trojan's creators appear to be using infested computers for click fraud, in which they manipulate clicks on a Web advertisement in exchange for kickbacks. But as with all Trojans, its creators can choose to use infected computers however they like.

The malware infects computers in one of two ways. In some cases, users receive a pop-up prompt purporting to be from Adobe Flash asking them to install an update and type in their password - hence the Trojan's name, "Fakeflash" or "Flashback." But in most cases, attackers appear to have exploited a loophole in Java software that automatically downloads the malware onto victims' machines without any prompting.

Apple issued two security patches for the Trojan this week and encouraged Mac users to run their software updates as soon as possible. For the technically astute, F-Secure, a Helsinki-based security firm, published instructions for how to identify Fakeflash and remove the virus manually.

Several security experts have criticized Apple as slow to react, considering Oracle issued a fix to the Java security hole in February. Apple did not issue a fix until more than a month later.

Doctor Web, a security firm based in Russia, discovered the Trojan had exploited the loophole to infect Mac computers this week. Kaspersky Labs reverse engineered the malware and began to intercept its communication on Wednesday. So far, it found 620,000 computers had been infected. Some 301,000, were in the United States. Another 95,000 computers were in Canada, with 47,000 in Great Britain and 42,000 in Australia. Almost all -- 98 per cent -- ran Mac's OS X operating system.

This is hardly the first time Mac users have been hit by a Windows-style computer virus. Last year, security researchers discovered a piece of malware, called Mac Defender, had targeted Apple machines. Intego, a security firm, discovered Mac Defender on May 2, 2011. It took Apple until May 31, 2011, to issue a fix.

Security experts said Fakeflash was far more widespread and sophisticated than Mac Defender. Several cautioned that it may signal a new era in which Mac users become the new target for Windows-style malware attacks. Apple's growing share of the PC market simply makes it too juicy a target.
"Last year's attacks were a turning point - criminals realized they could make money targeting Apple users," said Mr. Schouwenberg."As Apple gains more market share, it will also see more attacks."

Adam J. O'Donnell, a security architect at Sourcefire, a computer security firm, wrote a report in 2008 predicting that digital criminals would start targeting Mac users with Windows-style malware attacks once Apple's share of the PC market reached 16 percent, assuming that Windows anti-virus solutions were at least 80 percent effective.

He was not far off. Apple currently holds 12 percent of the PC market in the United States, according to Gartner, a research company, and anti-virus software has reached 95 percent effectiveness, according to AV Comparatives, a nonprofit that audits anti-virus software.

"The problem is that the security industry has much less visibility into Mac OS X than Windows," said Schouwenberg. "Mac users have been led to believe they're safe and turned off their paranoia filter. There is a lot of easy prey out there."

I recalled that that eternal noodge Software Update was already pestering me about some kind of available update, and sure enough it was from Apple, and I duly installed it. I'm hoping that this protects me at least from future infection by at least the currently known manifestations of this virus, but I wouldn't think it does anything about an existing infection. I did go to the cited F-Secure link for those "published instructions for how to identify Fakeflash and remove the virus manually," but right at the start of the "Disinfection" section there's a warning:

Caution: Manual disinfection is a risky process; it is recommended only for advanced users. Otherwise, please seek professional technical assistance. F-Secure customers may also contact our Support.

And it was under the spell of that caution that I skimmed the "manual removal instructions" and was pretty sure I didn't understand them.

A commenter on the Washington Post article on the subject ("Alarmed about botnet trojan, Apple releases update for Macs") was suggesting that the panic alarm, including the 600K and 550K estimates for already-infected Macs, were coming courtesy of the U.S. anti-virus-software industry, but other commenters said no. (I haven't seen the comments on the NYT site, since I chose not to expend a click on the official version of the NYT account. Usually I don't give a damn about comments.)

I hate to be spreading Chicken Little-type noises with such limited knowledge. I would be happy to be update by any readers who know more. (Just be sure to indicate how you know what you know!) Meanwhile, I thought any Mac users I might reach who haven't heard should at least hear -- and at the very least take care to install that latest Apple OS X update!


GIVEN THE ALARMIST NATURE OF THIS POST, I
THOUGHT I MIGHT TOSS IN SOME LIGHTER FACTS

Courtesy of factshub.net, we have one practical fact (remember, always be sure to carry duct tape if you think you may encounter crocodiles) and one rather more image-evoking one.

[Yes, you can click to enlarge.]

#

As Steve Jobs steps down, I'm still left wondering whether I should shell out the $30 for Lion

Will Lion do anything for me except light my wallet by $30 and force me to relearn yet another new Mac OS?

by Ken

News of Steve Jobs stepping down as CEO of Apple presumably has dire implications for the state of his health, and I feel bad for him on a human level. About his stewardship of Apple, though, as a longtime Mac user I have pretty mixed feelings. The Mac itself seems to me to have lost most of its specialness (is there really now any particular reason to be using one rather than a PC?), and as for the earth-shattering innovations for which he's canonized in all the pre-obituaries -- the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad -- I'm not so keen. (I will refrain from using a phrase like "markers of the end of civilization.")

Rumors have been flying all year that Apple's then-COO Tim Cook (left) would succeed Steve Jobs (right) as CEO. Now it's happened.

Which brings me to a question I've been wrestling with, with regard to which readers can possibly offer some experience. I was actually a latecomer to OS X, having heard such bad things about it, and held out to what sure seemed the bitter end, when it became almost impossible to get software or hardware to work with OS 9. But since I made the trepidatious leap into Panther, and have since dutifully slogged along into Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard, and I suppose I've benefited from things progressively built into the OS as employed by hardware and software makers, but I don't do anything fancy on my computer (most of the "features" I read about in each OS upgrade sound like things I will never in my lifetime use). I can't say I've been thrilled by the wrenching changes, which have mostly forced me to learn uselessly different way of interfacing with the system, without experiencing much conspicuous gain.

I used to follow these things a lot more closely, and only realized just how far out of touch I've gotten when I heard about the magic day of the Lion launch and realized I didn't know a darned thing about "the world's most advanced desktop operating system." Even with Snow Leopard, I actually paid my first visit to an Apple Store on release day credit card in hand, and. (And goodness gracious, did I have the feeling that I'd stepped into some alternate universe.) Now I just don't know.

(At work we were just recently all upgraded -- from Tiger to Leopard! No, not even Snow Leopard. Hey, don't ask me.)

My friend Richard, who's a much more recent Mac user than I am, has upgraded and is thrilled. He said something about being able to resize stuff on-screen with flicks of his fingers on the trackpad he bought, but I don't have a trackpad and I don't want a trackpad. I had a trackpad once on a laptop I owned, and I hated it. Okay, these fancy newer trackpads are probably worlds better, but I've spent a lot of years developing mouse skills. Doesn't that count for anything?

Richard, who I learn has also taken to hanging out at the Apple Store, picking the children's brains, also tells me he's learned that Apple is in the process of eliminating disks, both CDs and DVDs, from Macs, on the ground that nobody uses them anymore, that "everything is downloaded." (Like OS X Lion, for example.) Everything is downloaded? Are we living on the same planet?

But I digress. I suppose that in the end, it being only $30, I'll do it. Meanwhile, however, my question is: Among people out there who've done the Lion thing, do you have any insight to share?

#

From the brave new world of Snow Leopard, you can look forward to smart new technologically up-to-date blogposts

This is the kind of dynamic new blogpost you can expect now that I've upgraded to Mac operating system OS 10.6, fun-named "Snow Leopard." Hey, what else can you get for 29 bucks these days?

Mac OS X Snow Leopard enhances your entire Mac experience. Faster, more reliable, and easier to use., it's the Mac you know and love made even better.

-- from the outside of the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade package

by Ken

We're celebrating Snow Leopard Day here at DWT.

So I snuck out of work this afternoon and, braving the rain, hied to one of the Manhattan Apple Stores (can you believe, I had never been inside an Apple Store before?) to pony up my $29 -- or rather throw down my credit card -- for the just-out-today new version of the Mac operating system, OS 10.6, with the fun name "Snow Leopard." This is the first upgrade to the Mac OS since, um, the last one. [Note to DWT research assistant: Please check and insert date.]

Sleek new Snow Leopard is not, of course, to be confused with that pathetic old relic of an operating system, OS 10.5, fun-named just plain "Leopard," or its even more antique forebears OS 10.4 ("Tiger") and OS 10.3 ("Panther"). I actually am a Tiger user at work, where I was only recently updated from that prehistoric fossil OS 9 to the promised land of OS X. Yes, it is officially "OS X," as if it were a Super Bowl. But the decimal iterations that have represented OS upgrades since the advent of OS X have used the arabic-numeral form "10." This is just one of the mysteries of the OS X universe. Personally, I've never liked any version of the system I've used, but then, I have no idea what's going on inside the computer, and I'm prepared to concede that OS X has made possible things that I actually benefit from.

But it's been a long times since I was a first-day software upgrader. Back in the day, of course, upgrades were offered dirt-cheap to the software user base, as a way the developers kept the faith with and of their faithful users. That's before it occurred to some marketing genius that your faithful users aren't loyalists to be cosseted but captives to be exploited. Software upgrades became more frequent and more expensive, not to mention more bloated and cumbersome. And now those existing users were the prime target market. I believe the technical term is "pigeons."

So it may be the mere fact that the Snow Leopard upgrade is being offered for only $29 is what hooked me after all. (Note that this upgrade is only for current Leopard users, and at that Leopard users whose computers use Mac's now-standard Intel processor chips. Heaven forbid should be a Mac-ophile from the hoary days of the Power PC chip. However, if you bought your Mac on or after June 8, under Apple's "up-to-date" program you can get the upgrade for $9.95.) But even I noticed that, while few new features are promised in the upgrade, there is one startling development: Instead of occupying still more of your hard-drive real estate, it actually takes less space. That's right, the installation promises to return usable drive space!

I see on apple.com that NYT computer columnist David Pogue, a guy I pretty much trust (from the days before he wrote for the NYT), has enthused over “the radical concept of a software update that’s smaller, faster and better -- instead of bigger, slower and more bloated," PC Magazine contributor Edward Mendelson, another really smart guy (and I do mean smart; "computer maven" is just a hobby for him -- he's a fairly brilliant scholar and literary critic, a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia), has written on pcmag.com that Snow Leopard is “Apple’s fastest, most functional, and feature-rich operating system yet.”

Well, we shall see. No, I haven't installed it yet. On the way home, it occurred to me: What happens if something goes wrong? I'm committed to producing this 6pm (PT) post. That's not going to be so easy if my damned computer locks up and just blinks 12:00 at me. Oh wait, that's the VCR. Well, probably the computer would just stare defiantly at me. (Howie and I were talking about this just the other day. With advancing age I've lost my former eagerness, even cockiness with regard to hardward and software installations. I used to rip the package open on the way home, then race to the computer to put the new toy to work. Now I'm often filled with dread, having lost most of my confidence to make the thing work.)

So once I get this post posted, I'm going to rip the Snow Leopard package (a tiny little thing that fits in the palm of your hand) open and go for broke. And you, dear reader, will see the benefit. Starting tomorrow you're going to be seeing sleek new blogposts that will put those galulmphing old ones to shame. Or if not, you're welcome to use some of that extra space I'm going to be getting back after the installation.

UPDATE: INSTALLATION SUCCESSFUL

So far I can't tell any difference, but just give it some time and I'll bet I'll be blogging up a storm.

#

Are ballads and epic poems written to celebrate renegades who stand defiantly outside the reach of a mandatory software upgrade?

No, this isn't my office computer -- and it won't
be after I'm mandatorily upgraded either.

by Anonymous
[see? they can't prove nuttin'!]

I thought you folks might enjoy this tale of life in My Company. It even comes with a surprise twist at the end!

Since our office move last fall into the belly of the New York Stock Exchange security-zone beast, we peons who don't have offices are just about completely exposed to everyone's view -- when you walk down the aisle between cubicle row, it's almost impossible not to look in everyone's cubicle as you pass. As a result, I have established that, unless I've missed somebody somewhere, I am the only person in the office still using a CRT monitor, as opposed to a flat panel screen. From which I conclude(rather proudly, I must say) that I have the privilege of having the oldest and crappiest computer still in use on the premises.

OK, "crappiest" is perhaps a bit judgmental. The fact is, it's perfectly adequate to my job needs, and I've learned to live with the limitation that I can't make any changes of any kind to the software on it, all of which would require a password known only to IT. And so, while the rest of the Mac world has marched on through the operating-system world of Tiger (OS 10.4) and on into the paradise of Leopard (OS 10.5), I'm still firmly grounded in yesteryear's Panther (the final version of it, OS 10.3.9). Which also means that I can't use most any current-release software, which increasingly requires OS 10.4 or later -- even if I could install such software, which I can't.

(True, I could ask for luxuries like a more recent version of Flash, to enable me to open Web pages that my old version won't. Yes, I could ask. Maybe the answer would be yes, maybe it would be no, but either way my permanent record would indicate that I was the troublemaker who asked. One of our highest-ranking officers is a gentleman whose principal, er, gift is remembering such things.)

Now, to the story. We began hearing awhile back that we were all going to be upgraded to Microsoft Office 2008. This is actually not much of a deal for me, since I hardly ever use any of the components of whatever version of MS Office I've got. When the HR director circulates attached documents, they're usually in MS Word format -- that's about the extent of my excursions into Office.

Nevertheless, we soon began to hear about commencement of the "mandatory upgrade" to Office 2008 -- are there other companies where a software upgrade can be made to sound like a punishment? The memo drumbeat indicated that the upgrade was closing in on us. From our IT guy in, apparently, San Francisco (we have a SF office?) comes word of arrangements made with Microsoft for free online training courses!

Then came the memo from the IT guy in our Las Vegas office (now, I knew we had one of them!) who is apparently in charge of Mandatory Upgrades, asking us in the New York office please to leave our computers on when we left the next few nights, since it will be easier for him to perform the upgrades while we're out of the office. The procedure should take 20 minutes, Mr. Las Vegas says.

Of course, since the memo wasn't sent till 5:53pm our time, and as the clock ticks down to 6 I don't usually keep checking for e-mail, I didn't see the memo till the next morning. (It's true that I would know I had an e-mail waiting if I kept my "dock" permanently displayed, but unlike all my coworkers with their bigger monitors, I can't afford to give up that chunk of screen real estate, since I'm trying to display magazine pages in readable form.) But I figured I wasn't likely to be in the "chosen" group of First NY Upgradees.

And then it occurred to me: Can my computer even run the "mandatory upgrade" software? I figure there's no way it will run in poor old OS 10.3.9, and sure enough, Office 2008 is a member of the OS 10.4 or Later Club. (OS 10.3 is the now-antique Panther; OS 10.4, the already-aging Tiger; and OS 10.5, the still-current Leopard. Here comes Snow Leopard! And no, I'm not making that up.) And while my mind has detoured into wondering if my computer has enough RAM to handle an OS upgrade (the leaps in memory requirement for successive iterations of the Mac OS have been so enormous that I believe Apple is now measuring it in gazillionbytes), my eye, continuing to rummage through the system requirements for Office 2008, notices that if your computer processor happens to be of the heirloom G4 species, it has to be at least 500 MHz. I have no idea what mine is, but I check and discover that it is -- ta-da! -- a 450 MHz G4!

So now I know: My company has "mandated" a software upgrade that, as best I can tell, won't run on the computer it has mandated me, even if it's possible to run a more nearly current OS on it. I add this newly discovered info to the memo I have begun writing to Mr. Las Vegas pointing out that my computer is still running in OS 10.3.9, and I really can't afford to have it further slowed down by an OS upgrade if I'm to get any work done. I finish the memo by promising to leave my computer on as requested, apologizing for having shut it off the night before and explaining about not having seen the 5:53pm memo.

I don't know how many more nights I'm supposed to leave my computer on, but heck, I'm not the one paying the electric bill. I haven't heard anything more from anybody in IT, in Las Vegas or San Francisco or even New York. (Yes, yes, it has occurred to me that perhaps I should have brought this whole thing to the attention of our IT guy here, who's a good guy. But if he's not already in the loop on this, I'm afraid that dragging him into it may just result in my being ratted out to the Chief Punishment Officer in the head office in Florida.

I can't help wondering if the "mandatory upgrade" is turning out to be perhaps not absolutely, unmitigatedly mandatory.

NOW FOR THE SURPRISE TWIST!

The above was in fact written on Monday of this week -- that is to say, the 16th. I held off posting, or even thinking seriously about whether I really wanted to go ahead and post it, because later that day I got word from our NY IT guy -- who's both a good guy and utterly competent -- that the next day I and a colleague who does basically the same job (putting us pretty near the bottom of our food chain, it seems) would be upgraded to G5 computers. I have to guess that our great IT minds had collectively spotted this chink in the MS Office "mandatory upgrade" project.

There was some e-discussion of when our schedules would make it easiest for the NY IT guy to get at our computers. I explained that I don't really go out at any set time, but could almost surely work around his schedule, provided I knew when it was going to happen. A couple of hours' notice is what I was offered, and I responded that that should work.

So with developments developing on Monday, and theoretically scheduled to finish the process on Tuesday, I shelved the whole question of this post. After all, if and when the promised computer upgrade was to happen, there was still the question of what kind of equipment I would actually wind up with.

For one thing, I already knew that the equipment wasn't going to be new, and around here when we get a recycled computer, there's always the risk that it came from someone, like from the Art Dept., who had been upgraded because he/she had beaten the living daylights out of the old beast by performing the computer equivalent of mechanical-bull-riding.

I was once "upgraded" to one of these poor victim machines, which it turned out our IT folks at that time already suspected of being a victim of such abuse. Apparently it was easier to recycle and hope for the best than to actually check it out. That poor thing was swapped out for a hardier survivor, and presumably set aside for reassignment to some even sappier sucker. (Of course, at the moment the likeliest source of recycled equipment hereabouts would be stuff left behind by the fallen comrades from our January round of layoffs.)

Perhaps more important, while the software would undoubtedly be more up-to-date, there seemed no reason to assume that I would be equipped with stuff that enhances my actual computer use, at least not without asking, and having "troublemaker" notations added to my permanent record etc. etc.

These were all issues it seemed most prudent to deal with after I got my "new" computer. And who's to say that after being so gifted I might not feel churlish airing such unkind sentiments?

That was Monday, you'll recall. By my count this is Saturday. Monday's "tomorrow" has long since gone the way of the emu, leaving me still waiting for that famous couple of hours' notice. I guess I can suspend the wait for today and tomorrow. But starting Monday (again), it could happen at any time, with just those couple of hours' notice.

Meanwhile, I retain my "rogue" status in the face of the "mandatory upgrade" crusade. A rebel, or just a troublemaker?

POSTSCRIPT

Rode down in the elevator with the IT guy. He says Monday, only he can't tell exactly when. Says he'll give me an hour's notice. The old "couple of hours" window seems to have shrunk.

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