If you’re the type who buys a another Mac whenever a new model comes out, it probably doesn’t make sense to read any further. Very little of what I say will interest you, and I just hope you have enough money to support your habit. In any case, I have always begun to feel my computers are getting a little long in the tooth after two years or so, but that’s a consequence of the kind of work I do. It won’t apply to many of you, simply because you rarely have reason to feel your Mac is out of date that quickly.

Just the other day, I visited a client, a retiree in his late 70s, who wanted a memory upgrade for his bondi blue iMac, a so-called Rev. B version. It had been in regular use since the fall of 1998, but the client began to feel of late that he’d like to be able to run more applications without running dealing with the performance hit caused by virtual memory. No, he hadn’t switched to Mac OS X, although he asked me about it. Since my visit and the cost of the memory represented about the limit of what he wanted to spend, I urged him to think about the future instead, about a time when he would want to buy a new computer.

His vintage iMac was kept in great condition, other than the usual broken connection panel cover. Despite the typically dusty Arizona environment, the iMac’s chassis was pretty clean, with hardly a trace of dust. It hadn’t been opened since he purchased the unit, at which time the dealer installed some extra memory in the upper slot. That memory was removed to make way for the 256MB module I ordered for him.

In a few minutes, everything was up and running, and I noticed that the software lineup hadn’t changed since it was purchased, except for the addition of Microsoft Office 2001 and the upgrade to Mac OS 9. After spending a few moments with his iMac, the client said he felt the memory upgrade had done the trick, and seemed content. No, he didn’t intend to make any further investments in computers for a while, although I suggested the Mac mini and a low-cost display as an ideal upgrade when he was ready.

To him, his iMac, now over six years old, had plenty of mileage left, and I tended to agree. For Internet access and occasional word processing chores, it was the perfect computer. Now some of us may feel Mac OS 9 was dead and buried, but to him it didn’t matter. He was accustomed to it, and it would probably be a bit of a chore to convert him to Mac OS X, although that time would eventually come.

The longevity of this particular iMac isn’t unusual. In fact, it’s quite normal, and, except for a major hardware failure, I’ve seen Macs purring along for as much as a decade or more. In the PC world, that’s very old, and I rarely see a Windows PC hold up that long before being consigned to the hall closet. The longevity element is missing in most of the reports you read about the state of the Mac’s market share. Yes, it may be less than three percent when you use current sales as a guide. But those figures don’t take into account how long Macs remain productive in homes and offices. Over the years, Mac users like you replace computers far less frequently than your Windows counterparts. You’d almost think that the cheap boxes from Dell and others are designed to become obsolete real fast, perhaps like the $50 VCR.

Go ahead and do the math. Now if a Mac, for example, remained in use twice as long as a Windows PC, and that’s probably a good estimate, a market share in the low single figures isn’t all that bad. I wish it were better, but the Mac user base seems to stick at around 25 million, give or take a few. So it really isn’t getting any worse. Last I heard, the number of Mac OS X users amounted to about 14 million, which is pretty good when you consider that a large number of those older Macs aren’t capable of running the latest and greatest operating system. Or at least, not officially.

Bear in mind that the early generation iMac I worked on could Mac OS X Panther with acceptable performance. For the type of work that client performed, he probably wouldn’t notice any significant change after the operating system upgrade. Now take a six year old Windows box and tell me how well it’ll run Windows XP, assuming the installation was successful, and that isn’t always predictable.

Of course, Apple would rather have my client buy new Macs a lot more frequently, and perhaps hand off that iMac to his grandchildren. These days, however, Apple’s best shot at growing market share is to convince Windows users that they’ve had enough grief with malware infections and that it’s time to wake up and smell the roses.

During one of the interviews on this week’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, I predicted that Apple would sell as much as five million Mac minis during its first year. Most of those sales will not go to existing Mac users, unless you need an extra computer for your home or office. No, it’ll go to Windows users who were exposed to Apple’s technology courtesy of that hot-selling stealth fighter, the iPod.

As far as that bondi blue iMac is concerned, I expect it’ll keep on ticking for years to come. And that is definitely a good thing.

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Every good thing comes to an end, and Wednesday’s release of the 10.3.8 update for both the client and server versions of Panther ought to be the end. That is, except for possible security updates. Or at least that’s how it seems. After all, isn’t it time to fast track towards the release of Tiger?

Of course, Apple hasn’t said precisely when Tiger will appear, except some time in the first half of the year. In any case, if you are collecting bug lists, here’s the short one for 10.3.8. Well, not short, really, because it is the entire list, one far smaller than in previous updates.

• Addresses an issue with Mac OS X 10.3.7 in which iChat, Mail, or other network-based applications could take a long time to open.
• Addresses an issue in which a computer wouldn’t always restart automatically after a power failure, even when the Energy Saver preference option “Restart automatically after a power failure” was selected.
• Improves the performance of Blizzard World of Warcraft’s “Full Screen Glow” video feature.
• Improves DVD Player compatibility when playing a movie (using certain ATI Radeon cards) to an external widescreen TV with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
• Resolves an issue in which a “flicker” could be seen when navigating DVD menus in DVD Player on certain PowerBook G4 computers.
• Addresses an issue in which a PowerBook G4 computer would, on rare occasion, wake from sleep with a black screen and not respond to any keyboard, mouse, or trackpad input.
• Addresses “jumping cursor” issues that might occur when using your portable computer’s trackpad with your thumb, side of thumb, or a “flat” finger.
• Resolves an issue on certain Power Mac G5 computers where a fan cycles erratically at unexpected times, such as when Seti@home software is running.
• Speeds up Address Book and Mail LDAP lookups that are performed by a Cisco DistributedDirector DNS server.
• Addresses an issue that could prevent clients using the Active Directory plugin from binding to their Active Directory server.

One hopes that the list is short because Apple is running out of things it has to fix. Of these, the only one I’ve seen from this list is the longstanding black screen bug on a PowerBook G4. I’ve observed that on several versions of these PowerBooks in recent years, and it’s nice to see that it has finally been addressed, or at least successfully addressed. But if anyone still has the problem, let us know.

As usual, 10.3.8 comes in both delta and combo updaters. The first weighs in at 27.7 MB, but the version that appears in Software Update may be smaller in some models, such as the Mac mini. While Apple may have good intentions here, in the hopes of reducing file size for some people, the net result is that you can’t deploy the smaller update on other Macs at your home or office. If you’re not already running 10.3.7, the combo updater measures a whopping 103MB, but it packs a lot of stuff into that file.

Bill Fox, at Macs Only, ran some benchmarks to check for possible improvements in graphics performance. He found modest increases on a 1.5GHz 17-inch PowerBook and dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5. A run on the newest PowerBook revealed only a barely detectable change, perhaps because that model may already have the faster graphics drivers.

While it’s hard to gauge reaction after just a few hours, most early reports on 10.3.8 seem favorable, but there may be a trouble spot here and there. MacFixIt is tracking the scuttlebutt, and it is already receiving complaints about higher fan activity on a Power Mac G5, and an irritating audio issue on the MDD version of the Power Mac G4. The latter results in a sudden boost of volume level after a restart.

So far, I haven’t seen any problems, or any noticeable change for that matter, though, as I said, I’m hopeful about the PowerBook G4’s black screen bug. In any case, you should be skeptical of reports of trouble unless a number of people experience the very same problem. Then you can see a trend. Don’t forget that, with so many possible installation scenarios out there, a unique bug report might merely indicate a problem with a very few specific systems.

If you’ve moved from 10.3.7 to 10.3.8 and it’s not doing it for you, first open Disk Utility and run the Repair Disk Permissions tool. If that fails, go for broke, and download and install the 10.3.8 combo updater. Yes, I know it’ll be a chore on a dial-up connection, and it may be nearly impossible to sustain a connection for that long, but it’s worth a try. Or perhaps you have a friend who might have broadband and would be generous enough to download the file for you and copy it onto a CD. If you have an Apple Store or a friendly independent dealer at hand, you might be able to get the update from them. It’s common, for example, for folks to bring their iBooks and PowerBooks to Apple’s own retail stores to download system updates.

Regardless of which update you take, fixing disk permissions is always a good idea after the update is applied and you’ve restarted.

As for me, I hope for a clear path to Tiger now, but I’m not going to guess when 10.4 will appear, although I suspect a May or June timeframe. I just don’t see it happening any sooner than that, but do not, under any circumstances, take that prediction to the bank.

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If you have a decent collection of CDs or perhaps even some vintage vinyl and cassettes at hand, you understand the joys of owning your own music. Unless stolen or damaged, nobody is going to take them away from you, not even the iPod. You just have to rip your tunes on your Mac (or PC) and download them to your favorite music player.

But some of those other music download services have decreed that you don’t really want to own your music. You’d rather rent it, just like you rent a video. Now I understand the revenue model with videos. While some of you have accumulated hundreds and hundreds of DVDs and videotapes, most of you prefer to watch a movie just once, or a couple of times with an especially entertaining flick. No sense to buy what you’re not going to see on a fairly regular basis, so you rent. In response to the challenge of Netflix, Blockbuster and other stores let you pay a monthly fee and rent as many as you want, two or three at any one time. And no more late fees!

So what has this to do with music? Well, if you’re like me, you may listen to one album dozens of times and individual songs hundreds or thousands of times. Then again if I hear “Bohemian Rhapsody” one more time on the radio, I’m going to scream. In any case, can you imagine not owning your own music collection?

The iTunes Music Store changes the ownership paradigm, making it similar to what applies to computer software. You are actually getting a license of use the music on a given number of computers. The practical effect means you own the music with a few restrictions. Whether you want any further encroachment on your rights is a question a bit beyond the focus of today’s commentary. In any case, welcome to the world of Digital Rights Management.

Of course, if you have a big music collection, the investment can be positively huge. Thousands of tracks, hundreds of albums. I recall Steve Jobs mentioning that someone had actually purchased 25,000 tracks from iTunes and I’m willing to bet some customers have gone beyond that figure by now.

But Apple’s competitors want you to believe that it’s better to pay a fixed amount of each month, giving you the right to listen to all the songs you want from the hundreds of thousands available. Some of these services even let you copy your tunes to your MP3 player; the iPod is not supported except, perhaps, by the RealNetworks “Harmony” hack. Regardless, if you want to copy those tracks to a CD, the pricing plan is similar to Apple’s. You pay a fee per track or per album. I should mention that none of the other major music download services are Mac compatible, to their detriment I’m sure.

If the Mac platform continues to grow, of course, I expect one or more of those services will come to this side of the tracks. The question is whether you would really want their product. On the surface, subscribing to music may seem really cheap, even if you’re locked into using a music player to take it on the road. But even if you’re willing to live with that limitation, you are buying that subscription as an act of faith that the company will stay in business for as long as you want the music. If the company goes out of business or you cancel your subscription, the music goes away. Even on the music player, since it apparently has to link up with the PC to be authenticated every so often.

Now even if you assume the company will be around way beyond your lifetime, which is a big leap of faith for most of you, what happens if a payment goes astray? Say you change credit cards, or it hits the credit limit, can you imagine the consequences? You take your music player with you for a long vacation. You assume the financial details will take care of themselves, but one day, the music dies, as it were. You have to call the bank to find out what happened to your credit card, or maybe the music service made a mistake and failed to store an update to your payment plan. Imagine yourself on that world cruise, on a sail boat or cruise ship. Suddenly you have to figure out a way to contact the music service and set things right. This may be an extreme situation, but the entire subscription model is fraught with pitfalls.

Now if you really believe Napster and RealNetworks will be around far longer than you need their services, take a look at some of the older recordings in your collection. Are the music labels still around? At best, they’ve consolidated with a number of other companies; at worst, they are lost in the cobwebs of history. But you still have those old albums around, they will play so long as you have the proper equipment around. They outlive the artists and the labels.

Perhaps I’m wrong about all this. Maybe a lot of folks will embrace music by subscription. I haven’t seen it happen yet, if the success of the iTunes Music Store is an example. Then again, since it’s the only service that is guaranteed to work with the iPod, the real reason may be that you have no choice.

As for me, I do not want to rent my music. I want to own it, outright if possible, and even the world of DRM and its lax restrictions leaves a sour taste in my mouth. And I think most of you will agree with me except, of course, the music services that stake their existence on a totally different business model.

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