... it means we're back!! Sorry for the downtime. No excuses for this one - it was completely my fault. Suffice it to say that if one doesn't renew one's domain name, bad things happen (sigh).

And for our U.S. readers, have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! Be thankful for all you have and give a moment of thought to those who are no longer with us this year. After I catch up with this morning's queue, I'll be spending the day with family and friends, but the site will be back to normal operations tomorrow.

-rob.

I took some time last night and greatly improved (I hope!) the links page. It's still a large page, but it's now much easier to read. The next step will be to move all the individual links to a sub-page by category, but that's down the road a bit.

If you haven't visited the links page lately, there are now nearly 100 links to OS-X related information. It takes a bit of time to load (hence my desire to split it a bit more), but it's now hopefully easier to use than it was previously.

That small image to the left is the official MacOSXHints birthday card - click here for the full size (caution - 200kb!) version. For those of you that don't want to download a large image, here's what the card says:

November 4th, 2001: The MacOSXHints Birthday Card!

[The hint pictured is the first post on the site, which was published on November 4th, 2000 at 8:26pm]

Thank you to everyone who has shared their knowledge with the MacOSXHints readership - 804 hints and 2,918 comments were published this year. Wow!

And a special THANK YOU! to those who have donated to support the site financially and help keep it ad-free. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

It's been a complicated transition year for Mac users, and I appreciate everything I've learned about the Mac, UNIX, and OS X from everyone during the year. I often times think I learn more from this site than anyone else ;-).

Read the rest for a bit more about the future of the site and some interesting stats from the first year.

I've posted a hint and a few help requests which came in over the weekend, and you may have noticed that the stock quote has been replaced with donation information for the Red Cross. This is the only lasting change you'll notice on the site regarding the events of last week, but I will be leaving it up for the forseeable future as a reminder of what has happened and the continuing need for assistance.

As for the comments regarding the picture I posted earlier...first, the photographer (Thomas E. Franklin) is on staff of The Record, and they have a larger image available, although it is still low-res. For higher resolution versions, you'd probably have to contact the paper directly.

As for the comment that political statements of any sort do not belong on this site, and that the image of the American flag being raised in the debris was, in fact, a staged political image ... the image is not staged. Read Thomas Franklin's first-person account of the image capture for yourself, but it was not a 'set shot' of any kind. Second, I am an American citizen, and that particular image grabbed at my heart strings and captured the essence of the American spirit. Yes, I'm aware of the relative importance of thinking globally and non-regionally, but there's no denying my heritage nor my feelings about the events of September 11th. I'm sorry if anyone found the image to be political, but I do not regret deciding to publish it.

Finally, this is not a political site, nor do I have any desire for it to become one, which is why I'm getting back to the business of posting hints and tips on using Mac OS X, while keeping the victims and their relatives in my thoughts. 10.1 is due out shortly, and with it, a whole slate of new and interesting things to work with ... watch this space for new hints and how-to's once 10.1 hits the streets!

-rob.

It only seems fitting with the 500th posting to the site to mark the passing of the six-month anniversary (as of today!) of macosxhints. In that time, the response has been tremendous - we now have nearly 2,000 registered users, roughly 100,000 page views per month, and somewhere around 20gb of monthly data transfer! Wow.

A big thank-you to everyone who has contributed their tips and comments to the system, and a very heartfelt THANKS! to all those who have donated to the ongoing costs of the site.

I'm still looking for a new hosting provider, and have one or two potentials with whom I'm trying to finalize the arrangements. Once the move is done, I'm going to add a true tech support forum board to the site - that's the number one project on my to-do list.

Again, thanks to everyone for reading and contributing their knowledge over the last six months. I've learned more about OS X, UNIX, and Macs than I ever would have guessed possible in that short time frame, thanks to the macosxhints community. I can't wait to see what the next six months brings!

-rob griffiths

I have updated the benchmark results for the G4/733 running 10.0.2. I think my system needs a bit of prebinding tweaking, as my application launch times were mostly slower than 10.0.1, which doesn't seem right -- I'll experiment this weekend and see if I can't improve things a bit. Classic, however, is notably faster in task execution and (not benchmarked, but obvious) in application launching. And iTunes ripping speeds have increased from 4-5x on average to 6-7x on average, plus (of course) the burning ability. Overall, I'm quite happy with the update.

I've also added a permanent link to my introductory OS X Guide in the right-hand box, including a version number (currently 1.0). When a new version is uploaded, I'll update the version number in the box; this should make keeping track of updates easier. With any luck, version 1.1 should be out this weekend. I've added quite a bit, and thanks to all who contributed their suggestions!

The macosxhints.com site has taken off, far faster and bigger than I ever would have imagined. As of today, there are nearly 1,100 registered users, pulling nearly 700mb of data per day from the site. This led me to post a message late last night concerning the future direction of the site (you can read the original post in the remainder of this article). Since I have no revenue streams, the costs of maintaining this growing site were looking a bit daunting.

I asked for help and suggestions, and featured a poll offering some alternatives for the future direction of the site. I was amazed to wake up this morning to a number of emails with positive feedback and great suggestions, and over 35 responses to the poll in about five hours' of night time. Thanks to you, the macosxhints readers, I now have several good leads for new providers with substantially lower costs and unmetered bandwidth, which will alleviate my number one issue. A number of you have also donated to help cover the costs of running the site, which I greatly appreciate.

Based on all the input I've received, the future looks good for macosxhints.com. Read the rest of this article if you'd like to see what's going to happen here in the near future (summary - nothing bad!), as well as the story I posted last night.

--->

There'll be something a bit more interesting there by Monday, I promise!

I have now posted my official review of Mac OS X version 10.0, which includes an extensive page of benchmark test results. You can either read the review, or jump straight to the Benchmark Results page. The review runs four pages, and includes information on installation, performance, bugs, and general observations. Let me know if you find it useful, or if you have any questions about anything I wrote.

On Friday night, we visited PowerMacPac, a local Apple-only dealer. They opened at 11:00pm, providing free cookies and soda, and gave an overview of OS X to about 75 or 80 "Macaholics" for an hour. At 12:01am, they began selling OS X. The first 50 customers received a nice t-shirt with a blue X on the front, and the slogan you see here on the back. The fact that you see a t-shirt picture here means that yes, I now own two copies of OS X (I bought the 40th copy at around 12:15am). The second copy will be going to my father-in-law sometime in the near future, but I'm keeping the t-shirt! They also had Titanium PowerBooks and the 22" Cinema Display in stock, so I guess I got out cheap! :-)

Welcome to the Mac OS X Hints site. Please see the About page for a bit of background on the site and its purpose.

Please post relevant tips only. There are other sites that do a much better job on other aspects of OS X, such as troubleshooting, discussion forums, and the latest applications (visit the "OS X Web Sites" link in the top bar section for a list). The only non-tips that will be published are "Help Me" requests, and those will be the exception to the norm.

I've posted a few of the more useful tips I've garnered during my use of the beta. Please feel free to add yours to the list, and help the community grow!

You can post hints without registering (registering gives you customization and editing options; see the About page if you're concerned about privacy), but you will have to register to post comments.

NOTE: Submitted articles go into a pending queue, which I will review and publish as often as possible during the day. As the site grows, additional volunteers will be sought to help speed the review and publish process.