For Many Mac Users, It's Much More Than A Machine

It's just after 6 p.m. on a recent Monday, and an audience of close to 50 is trickling into the room to sit down on battered, padded chairs.

But the chatter that opens the Triangle Macintosh Users Group monthly meetings near Raleigh, N.C., is worthy of the talk-show circuit - at least for those who get excited about talk of Airport wireless computing base stations, Apple Computer's OS X operating system and the implications of that car-crash sound Macs make.

"Has anybody else heard the car crash?" Chandler asks, looking around the room. The crowd contains people of all ages, from bespectacled kids in T-shirts to senior citizens in madras.

A guy behind a milk-hued iBook conjures the sound from his files and plays it into Chandler's microphone. "EEEEEEEEEcrash!" The audience laughs.

TMUG (pronounced "tee-mug") members, like other Apple fans worldwide, aren't content with computing like the rest of the world. Whether they just like the hardware and the technology or just plain hate the Microsoft-based alternative, TMUGgers and thousands like them choose to swim against the mainstream PC current.

They share a love of all things Mac, the funky computers made by Apple. For some, the devotion is almost cultlike.

TMUG President T. Smythe Richbourg says the group is having a growth spurt. Last year, monthly gatherings averaged between 25 and 35 people. Now it's more like 50 to 75.

"Every meeting sees a few new members, a few newbies coming into the Mac fold," says Richbourg, who works for Vital Source Technologies, a Raleigh company that makes electronic products for the education market.

"Part of it is the new hardware that has come out," he says, referring to faster iBooks, futuristic-looking iMacs and the digital music players known as iPods. "But also there's a general level of dissatisfaction with Microsoft. Even people who buy Microsoft almost unanimously disparage it."

But Apple devotees rarely talk trash about their machines and the software programs that make them hum. Instead, area TMUG members gather once a month in Research Triangle Park to troubleshoot, gush and collectively congratulate each other for choosing Mac.

Chandler, who runs Raleigh-based MacVantage, one of the few area-based training and services companies that work solely with Apple's products, says that although other tech-users groups attract only the most hard-core zealots, TMUG attracts a full spectrum.

"Some people are really into it, but there a lot of people who aren't power users," Chandler says. "They just enjoy their computer and want to understand how to make it work better."

Charles Haddad, an Atlanta-based journalist who writes a "Byte of the Apple" column for BusinessWeek Online, has been covering Apple for about a decade. When he started in the early '90s, Apple was a largely irrelevant part of the tech scene.

"Now even if you're a PC diehard, you can't say they're irrelevant," Haddad says. "They're the stylish alternative."

Haddad says that the new Windows XP operating system is filled with features that were a part of Apple's OS X (for operating system 10), launched almost a year earlier.

But despite the current "Switch" ad campaign designed to lure Windows-PC computer users, Haddad doesn't think Apple will ever unseat Microsoft-based PCs in any big way.

"They will never overtake Windows," Haddad says. "They are the pirate with the good hairdo and the gold-studded earring. They'll set the trend, they'll be profitable, but they'll never be more than 5 or 10 percent of the world market."

The growth of the computer market has been slowing, and Apple is sharing in the industry's broad slump.

Still, the company's faithful are optimistic. "Apple has a lot of room to grow," Chandler says.

He says the OS X, which is based on the Unix operating system, is very stable, and programmers who are familiar with Unix might be enticed to build some interesting software applications for new Apple machines.

And though Apple got all kinds of attention for the candy-colored iMacs and iBooks launched in the late '90s, the new designs, such as the Titanium G4 PowerBook (known as the TiBook), the swivel-screen iMac and a new flat-screen eMac built for educational use, seem sleeker and more grown-up.

The MacWorld Expo, the premier event for Mac fans, is around the corner: July 17-19 in San Francisco. The Apple movement's spiritual leader, Steve Jobs, will be delivering the keynote speech. He's known for making splashy announcements at MacWorld, and Apple devotees are buzzing with rumors of what might be unveiled at this year's show.

This may help Apple gain a little....

Rendezvous: It's Like a Backstage Pass to the Future

Introduction

The week before Steve Jobs' keynote at MacWorld San Francisco this January, Apple http://www.apple.com/ shifted its hype engine into overdrive and started posting cryptic sayings on its www.apple.com home page such as "To go where no PC has gone before" and "Beyond the Rumor Sites. Way Beyond." As it turned out, the LCD flat panel iMac G4 is pretty darn amazing, and certainly not what any of the rumor sites expected. However, one of Apple's sayings during that week of hype didn't quite make sense to me once the iMac G4 had been unveiled: "It's Like a Backstage Pass to the Future." You see, I just don't understand what is particularly futuristic about the iMac G4. If I could travel ten years into the future, and I found out that the iMac was the best thing the computer industry had to offer, I would be extremely disappointed. Now don't get me wrong — I own an iMac G4, and I think it's the coolest, slickest consumer desktop computer money can buy. But it still doesn't feel futuristic to me.

However, there is a new technology coming soon to a Macintosh near you that I find very futuristic. In fact, the more I think about this technology, the more I think that we can't even imagine where this amazing technology might take us. Without cranking up the hype engine too much myself, I dare to speculate that this technology could create a whole new segment of computing with devices we can only dream about today. What I'm talking about is Rendezvous, Apple's brand name for Zeroconf, http://www.zeroconf.org/ which is a new networking protocol that is being implemented in the next major release of Mac OS X, code-named Jaguar. While Apple has had a hand in developing this technology, it is actually an open standard being developed by ZEROCONF, a Working Group of the IETF. From perusing the e-mail addresses attached to various documents on ZEROCONF's site, it would appear that a number of other companies such as Sun, IBM, and AT&T are also participating in the development of this technology. This is important, because no one is interested in another Apple-invented proprietary networking protocol — not even Apple itself.

Rendezvous in a Nutshell
So what is Rendezvous? Basically, Rendezvous is Zero Configuration IP Networking. What this means is that you can bring two or more computers up on a Local Area Network (LAN), and without any manual configuration whatsoever, these computers can all see each other, discover available network services, and communicate with each other using standard networking protocols. Every computer's IP address is automatically assigned and can change over time without any network disruption. This is called address autoconfiguration. In addition, a human-readable computer name is also automatically assigned to each computer, and IP addresses can be translated to names and visa-versa with ease. This is called name-to-address translation. Finally, Rendezvous features what is known as service discovery. This allows computers on a Rendezvous network to find services available on other computers on the network without the need for any central directory server. So peripherals (such as printers), databases, application services, and other network services can all be discovered and accessed automatically by computers on the network, without any configuration or static IP assignment whatsoever.

Now you may be wondering: what makes this different from DHCP, where computers can be assigned dynamic IP addresses by the DHCP server? The answer is, Rendezvous doesn't need any server. All you need is two computers on a wired or wireless network, and that's it. You can grow that network to hundreds of computers, and the protocols still work in exactly the same manner.

Rendezvous Interoperates With Your Existing Networks

One of the great strengths of Rendezvous is that the Rendezvous protocols can exist side-by-side with older, established IP protocols and not cause any harm to the network. In other words, you can use static IP configuration, dynamic IP assignment using DHCP, and IP autoconfiguration using Rendezvous — all on the same network. It's a little unclear to me whether Rendezvous itself allows for static IP configuration if so desired, so I suggest you read up on the draft documents at the ZEROCONF http://www.zeroconf.org/ Web site if you're curious about this point.

Why You Should Be Interested

All this geek talk is great, if you're a geek. But how does it apply to the real world? I'll start with the same example that Apple used during its technology demo at the World-Wide Developers Conference earlier this year.

In the past, iTunes (Apple's jukebox software for the Mac) let you access music stored in your local music library, play audio CDs, listen to Internet radio stations, and transfer files to portable MP3 players. But if you wanted to access music stored in an iTunes library on another computer on your network, well, you couldn't (unless you used some wacky, convoluted workaround). With Rendezvous, that all will change. The version of iTunes featured in Jaguar will be able to access the iTunes library of any other computer system (running Jaguar) on the network. The other computers' libraries simply show up in the iTunes Source list just like radio stations, CDs, and the like. You can even be running iTunes, fire up another computer, and iTunes will automatically recognize the other computer's library when it becomes available. All this with ZERO configuration needed.

Sounds cool, doesn't it? Unfortunately, that's the only real world example Apple has provided so far. So please allow me to speculate on what other types of scenarios Rendezvous might enable.

First, the other "iApps". Besides iTunes, there's iMovie, iDVD, and iPhoto. Each and every one of those applications could make use of Rendezvous. Say you're teaching a digital video class, and you want everyone in the class to work with certain video clips that you've already prepared. Instead of having to have those clips be preloaded on every computer in the class, or instead of having to have the students copy a bunch of files off of a server, iMovie could simply show all of the clips available on the network from within the application. Drag a clip to the timeline, and the video is streamed over Gigabit Ethernet (because this wouldn't really work with the far slower AirPort) directly to the students' computers. You, the instructor, could even apply effects to a movie clip during the class, save it to your computer's hard disk, and the students' computers would automatically show the new movie clip as being available for use.

iPhoto is an extremely likely candidate for being "Rendezvous-ized" as it uses a similar library interface to iTunes. In fact, if iPhoto could catalog and display pictures on computers all over a network, it could be used in some cases as a digital image organizer for graphics design studios. Fire up iPhoto, perform a keyword or description-based search for the images you need to use, and then just drag 'em into your graphics app.

Have you ever wished you could create a CD-ROM image on your computer, and then burn it using the super-fast CD burner that you have attached to another computer in your house or office? With Rendezvous, that just might be possible. Computers on the network can broadcast the availability of their attached devices, and then other computers can access them quickly and seamlessly. This makes using networked devices nearly as easy as using USB or FireWire devices. The possibilities are endless.

A New Era of Computing?

Imagine instant access to all the printers in your office, instant access to shared folders, and instant access to services on Web servers. Rendezvous allows both individuals and organizations of nearly any size to create extremely powerful and diverse networks with an amazingly small amount of effort. And because you can make use of all these features while at the same time using regular networking protocols, there's no worry of having to choose one set of protocols over another or having to settle with the incompatibilities of a proprietary protocol. And imagine how easy your job as IT guru would be if the fifty new computers that just came in yesterday could be set up and automatically configured to be on the network in a snap — and be able to access a wealth of rich network services at that.

There's only one real concern over this technology at present, and that is security. With all this talk of computers being able to join networks and access services with the greatest of ease, you must consider the fact that it could make it easier for a hacker to break into the network. However, with the right encryption methods, secure passwords, and properly-maintained firewalls, Rendezvous is probably no less secure than current networking protocols. And ZEROCONF seems to be taking security seriously, although they haven't developed any specific security methods above and beyond the existing methods in use today.

No matter how you slice it, Rendezvous is important for Apple, Macintosh users, and the rest of the computer industry. With Apple and many other computer companies touting the benefits of the "Digital Hub" and trying to make computers the "Center of Your Digital Lifestyle", any technology that comes along that can help further easy communication between computers and other devices is a Good Thing. And since Rendezvous/Zeroconf is an open standard, any computer company can choose to implement it — even Microsoft. The question is, will it still be considered an "Apple only" technology by the masses, or will computer users of all platforms be clamoring to get their hands on it? That remains to be seen. But one thing's for sure: proprietary networking protocols are doomed. ZEROCONF has created a protocol that can take IP-based networking into the future. And the sooner we can all start making use of this marvelous technology, the better.
Jared White

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