Geek Gestalt

This Nikon D5000 camera--which also shoots HD video--has been an integral part of Road Trip 2009. It's just one of a large group of gadgets Terdiman has been road-testing on the trip.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

CASPER, Wyo.--Each year, when I plan for my annual Road Trip project, I coordinate both a long list of destinations to visit and a big box full of tech gadgets to test out. Plus a car.

Some of those gadgets get used once or twice, and then get put away again. But others, for better or worse, become integral components of the trip.

Over the next week or so, I'll be posting my (amateur) reviews of all these gadgets, in each case talking about what I thought of them, and how they fit into the trip. In most cases, I'll review more than one product in a story.

Today, for example, I'm going to discuss my experiences with three of the most important tools I've had with me on Road Trip 2009: A Nikon D5000 camera; a brand-new 13-inch MacBook Pro; and a LiveScribe Pulse pen.

Nikon D5000

For a few years, I've owned a Canon Rebel XT. I like it just fine, but I've never bought any additional lenses for it, beyond the kit 18-55mm lens that it came with. And that's why, when I've headed out on Road Trip the last two years, I've been willing to try out cameras from Nikon: because I'm not wedded to Canon yet.

This year, Nikon lent me its new D5000 digital SLR, which, in addition to being a very nice fairly-low-end camera, also shoots high-definition video. As one of the first DSLRs to incorporate HD video, I was very interested in trying it out and seeing how it stacked up against other small video cameras. But more on that comparison in a later story.

Along with the kit 18-55mm lens that the D5000 comes with, Nikon also lent me a 55-200mm zoom lens. There was a third lens, but I haven't used it, so it's not worth mentioning.

So far, I've taken 6,740 photos during the trip, most with the D5000. My conclusion after all those photos: the camera is a really nice piece of prosumer equipment that offers users, even on the automatic setting, really nice pictures.

My big cross to bear as a photographer is that I don't know how to use all the various settings on cameras, so what I can produce is limited by that lack of full knowledge of the tool. Yet, despite that, I'd have to say that the D5000 has turned out some spectacular shots. It does great in good lighting, and even in the case of limited natural light, it can often do really well.

I have been frustrated by the lack of a wide-angle lens, which is what I've mainly used the last two years on Road Trip. This time around, I've basically stuck with the 18-55mm lens, and occasionally pulled out the zoom. Still, with some exceptions, the 18-55mm seems to be up to the task. Any limitations, though, are more environmental and less the lens itself.

The D5000 can take a lot of pictures quickly, and that's nice, especially if you're trying to capture live action. That was helpful in taking some shots of a bison in Yellowstone National Park the other day. Also for trying to get shots of a train going into, and out of, a tunnel in Wyoming.

In rough lighting situations, the camera is sometimes not all that good in automatic. In those cases, I have switched over to manual.

But truly, where the D5000 shines is when there's ample light. In Glacier National Park, for example, I got some spectacular shots of waterfalls, mossy hillsides, and even a baby mountain goat.

It also shines in battery life. I think I recently went more than a week without changing batteries, and that's impressive. That timing would be reduced significantly by shooting more video, since video utilizes the camera's big LCD screen.

To be perfectly honest, I haven't played around all that much with the camera's menu structure, or its more advanced features. I'm sure that if I had, my pictures would have been even better.

One oddity about the camera is that every now and then, it seems to take it upon itself to forget the date and time, and require me to reset those parameters. Not having noticed that the first couple of times means that a few sets of photos appear chronologically, long before they were actually taken. I'm assuming it's a software bug, unless I'm doing something wrong I'm not aware of.

The video camera takes pretty nice HD video. Like I said, I'll talk about that in more length later on. But suffice it to say, I'd be happy counting on the D5000 for simple, short HD video. However, unless I'm missing something, there's no way to get it to shoot video longer than 5 minutes, which is slightly annoying.

At the end of this trip, I'll have to return the D5000 and once again return to my Rebel XT. But as I mentioned, I've not invested in Canon lenses yet, and after two years of shooting with Nikon equipment, I'm going to have to seriously investigate whether that's the way I should go, long-term.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro I'm using on Road Trip 2009. Very similar to the last 13-inch MacBook, this computer has been very useful during this project.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Without a computer, of course, Road Trip 2009 would have been a non-starter. Despite carting around several very expensive gadgets with me for thousands of miles, it's the new 13-inch MacBook Pro Apple lent me that I pretty much take with me everywhere I go for fear of it getting stolen from the car. The rest of the gear? Let the insurance take care of it. If I lose the computer, it's time to go home.

Originally, I had planned on using a 13-inch MacBook on the trip. But just before I left, Apple introduced the new line of MacBook Pros and they offered one of the 13-inch models. A no brainer, of course I said yes.

To be honest, there aren't that many differences between the MacBook I was going to use and the new MacBook Pro. In fact, put them side-by-side and it's almost impossible to tell which is which.

The one sure way, however, is to look for the little SD card slot on the side of the MacBook Pro, a feature no Apple computer had until June. And when I go home and return to the 2007 vintage 15-inch MacBook Pro that is my normal work computer, I think this is the thing I'll miss most on my Road Trip laptop.

That's because, having taken more than 6,000 pictures, it is so nice to be able to simply pull the SD card out of the camera (actually two cameras, as I have a small Canon PowerShot I own with me as well, that also uses SD) and then slide it straight into the computer. I understand that's something that's been available on some PC laptops for awhile, and, well, it's about time Apple added this. It is such an upgrade from having to connect your camera with a USB cable that I'm not sure I'm going to be able to go back.

The other big new feature on the MacBook Pro is its unibody form factor, and its non-replaceable battery. I was a little worried about that, since I usually carry a spare battery with me when I'm in the field, but in truth, this has been fine. Apple says that the new battery has a much longer life than its former models, and I'd have to agree.

My sense, after four weeks of using the computer, is that the battery lasts about three hours, perhaps a little more. Apple advertises it as offering seven hours, but if that's even possible, it's under extremely optimal power circumstances. And that's not me: I'm constantly online, looking at video, editing photos, and the like. So three-plus hours seems reasonable.

However, my experience is that it's been inconsistent, and I don't feel like that's related to what I'm doing. Sometimes the battery life just plummets. Other times it lasts forever. My conclusion is that Apple has some work to do on the long-lasting batteries. Still, I've only had the battery conk out on me once during the entire trip.

The computer also features a 250 Gigabyte hard drive, and that's been incredibly useful, since, as I've said, I've taken more than 6,700 photos. That adds up to 50 Gigabyes of pictures. If I was on my personal MacBook Pro, that would nearly eat up the entire hard drive. So knowing I've got plenty of space left has been a really good feeling.

The new MacBook Pro features iLife 09, including the latest edition of iPhoto. Apple gave me a briefing on many of the advanced features of iPhoto--facial recognition, adding geographic data and the like--but in all honesty, I haven't really used them. Mainly, I've just edited photos and exported them. And for that, the newest version of the software has been great.

Beyond that, the computer is a Mac, and so much of it will be familiar to anyone who uses OS X.

All told, then, I would say that the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is a lot of computer for not that much money--I think this model, with a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4 Gigabyes of RAM, would run $1,500, plus tax. Would I buy this computer if I was in the market? Absolutely. Would I have complaints about anything? Not really, beyond the inconsistent battery performance.

The LiveScribe Pulse pen, which synchronizes notes to a recording of audio, an incredible thing for a reporter doing many interviews on the road.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Another extremely valuable Road Trip gadget I've had with me this year has been LiveScribe's Pulse pen. CNET has covered this product several times, so I won't bore you with all the details of it. But suffice it to say that as a reporter on the road, talking to lots of different people and trying to keep up with notebook after notebook full of barely legible notes, having a pen that can record what people are saying, and synchronize those notes to the audio has been great.

Essentially, the Pulse pen lets you record audio of, say, an interview, and then, because the notes are written on special proprietary paper with a barely visible grid, it is able to synch the audio to pretty much the exact spot where something was said. So, imagine you're looking back through your notes and realize you didn't get all of what someone was saying. Simply tap on the notes there and the pen plays back the recording, right from that spot.

Several times, when I've pulled the Pulse pen out and explained what it does, my interview subjects have gotten rather excited and seemed about ready to go buy one. My experience would legitimize that feeling.

On the whole, I'd say the Pulse pen is a boon to someone in my field. Being able to count on going back and instantly finding exactly what was said at any point in a conversation is a big, big thing. As someone who usually turns stories around within a day, it's not entirely the paradigm-shifting technology I thought it might be, only because often, I simply don't have time to go back and listen to much of the audio. Still, it's a great advance.

Perhaps it's the individual pen I've got, but recordings on this one pick up the scratching of the pen on paper far too easily. The first couple times I used it, it rendered some of the audio unusable. After consulting with LiveScribe, they suggested I do my interviews with the headphones that come with the pen plugged into it, because they have a built-in microphone. The idea is that that gets the microphone away from the contact of pen on paper.

And that's worked out much better. You can still hear the scribbling, which means I could never use the audio for anything requiring high-quality, but then, that's not really what it's for, anyway.

The other thing that's surprised me is how quickly the ink cartridges in the pen ran out. But that's just a little quibble.

Ultimately, I think the Pulse pen is a very big technological leap forward, and I can't wait to see what LiveScribe--or others working on this technology--come up with next. It would be nice if the pen were thinner, for example, but I'm sure that's coming.

One thing that's interesting to me is that LiveScribe allows PC users--and soon, Mac users, I'm told--to print their own paper. That means that the company won't necessarily be making money off the paper. To me, that's surprising, because that's like Gillette giving away the blades, and not just the razor.

But the Pulse pen is rather pricey--around $150 for a 1 Gigabyte model and $200 for 2 Gigabytes--so perhaps the company feels it can make enough money that way. Also, the company is offering APIs so that developers can write applications for the pen, and perhaps there's some revenue opportunities there, as well.

I didn't really use LiveScribe's community features, the main element of which is that you can upload your notes onto the Internet, making them viewable--and clickable--by anyone. I just haven't had the time.

And in the end, would I recommend the Pulse pen? Yes, definitely, and to anyone who takes a lot of notes. My quibbles are, as I said, small, and in truth, I am amazed at this technology.

For the next week, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Wyoming and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's in-laws peruse the Internet via a Wi-Fi connection at their mountaintop, off-the-grid house.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

NICE, Calif.--Over the last few days, I spent hours with my wife's parents, Tyler and Donna, helping them adapt to the first Internet connection they've ever had. For them, living on top of a mountain at 4,000 feet, in the middle of a national forest, and entirely off the grid--this has been a big step.

For my wife and I, it's also been a big project, at least in terms of teaching them the basics, and helping them get ready to learn on their own. While their Internet proficiency is still low, they are learning fast, and over time, it should be interesting to see how much progress they make, and how they make it.

Three-part series
Getting my in-laws online, at last
Big progress for off-the-grid Net-newbie in-laws
Making an Internet list, and checking it twice

Over the few days that we just spent on the mountain with them, these are many of the things (in no particular order) we talked to them about, showed them on their new MacBook, and explained that they might want to investigate in the future:

• Undo/Control-Z. They wanted to know if there was any way to undo a mistake on their computer, and we explained that Control-Z (Command-Z on a Mac) is the way to do that.

• Pandora. They haven't used it yet, but we explained how this free service makes it easy for anyone to create a totally custom Internet radio station based on their musical interests. They asked how Pandora makes money. I couldn't answer that very good question.

• Rotten Tomatoes. We explained that this service is among the very best for crowd-sourced movie reviews.

• IMDB. They watch a lot of movies, and often want to know more about the actors involved. We explained that IMDB is the only site they needed to go to get fully cross-referenced information on actors and filmmakers.

• Skype. For my in-laws, Skype will be key in helping them save money on their cell phone bill. We showed them voice calling and Skype instant messaging.

• iTunes Store. Tyler was looking for a specific song by an artist, and I showed him how he could use the iTunes Store to listen to short clips of artists' songs.

• Downloading photos from digital camera. We recently gave them a Canon PowerShot G2, and now that they have a new MacBook, we showed them how to easily download photos onto the computer.

• iPhoto. After downloading photos, we showed them how to organize the pictures in the Mac's built-in photo management software.

• Printing wirelessly. Now that they have a Wi-Fi network (running on an old AirPort Extreme) I talked to them about setting up wireless printing to their HP DeskJet printer.

• Connecting the Mac to a TV. I bought them the connectors for linking their MacBook to their TV. At first they didn't see the value of doing this, but they eventually saw that as their vision gets worse, a larger screen will make computing easier.

• NeoOffice versus OpenOffice. They've been using OpenOffice on their Windows computer, and we loaded NeoOffice onto their Mac. I haven't used it, but I explained that my research concluded that NeoOffice is better on Macs than OpenOffice.

• Second Life. My wife and I are both longtime Second Life users, and we talked to them about whether they'd want to use the virtual world. However, their download limits (200 megabytes per day) would likely make it difficult for them to use such services.

• PayPal. They hope not to buy very many things over the Internet, but they do understand that having a PayPal account will make it easier for them to do transactions on services like eBay.

• Amazon.com. We walked in on them looking at prices for tarps on Amazon.com. My reaction was "hide the credit card."

• Facebook. While social networking is likely something they won't deal with for some time, we talked about how many people have used Facebook to connect with friends from past lives.

• Twitter. They have heard a lot about Twitter, and we showed them how the microblogging service is a great way to see what people around the world are thinking about things in near-real-time.

• YouTube. Among other things, I showed Tyler how he could use YouTube to find obscure songs he might be looking for.

• Netflix. We've managed a Netflix account for them (they would pick up the DVDs at their P.O. box) for some time, since they didn't have an Internet connection. Now that they do, they've taken over management of the account. I had high hopes they would be able to watch Netflix streaming movies, but their download limits may prevent them from doing that.

• Google Earth. We showed them Google Earth and used the service to locate their house, a process that took even them some time, given the remote location in which they live.

• Gmail. They are using Gmail for e-mail, and we set them up to be able to send and receive their Gmail messages using the Mac's Mail application.

• Control on PCs/Command on Macs. We explained that anything that uses the control key on a PC (Control-C to copy, or Control-Z to undo) would utilize the command key instead on a Mac.

• Windows Security patches. I uploaded Service Pack 3 and six Windows security patches on their PC.

• WhiteHouse.gov. They were excited to be able to send messages to the president and to be able to watch his weekly video addresses. They also were happy to be able to easily e-mail many other government officials.

• Instant messaging. We explained that instant messaging is a terrific way to carry on informal conversations, and we discussed some of the etiquette of IM.

• Commenting on Web sites/blogs. We talked at length with them about how comments are implemented on various Web sites and blogs, and how people use them for different purposes.

• Wi-Fi. We set them up with an Apple AirPort Extreme and made it so their new MacBook could be connected to the Internet throughout their house. They were more excited by this than by anything else.

• USB hubs. Tyler wanted to know how to print wirelessly and I explained that he would need to get a USB hub to split the cable coming from his printer.

• Bookmarks. We provided them with a long bookmarked list of Web sites, and showed them how to add new bookmarks so they don't have to type in entire URLs for sites they hope to visit a lot.

• Delicious. We want to see what kinds of sites they are interested in and encouraged them to use Delicious.com to share their discoveries with us.

• Safari versus Firefox. I explained that Firefox is generally considered the best Web browser for the Mac, but told them how to use Safari is they were so inclined.

• Never using Internet Explorer again. I said that because of its many security holes I would never let them use Explorer on their PC again.

• Registering for Web sites. They were interested in why people would provide their e-mail address and/or other information to register for Web sites, and we explained the many reasons people are willing to do it, and why sites want it.

• Adding an AirPort Express to extend the Wi-Fi network's range. We told them that by adding an AirPort Express to their wireless network set up, they could extend the range of their Wi-Fi connectivity to a metal shed near their house. It also happens that that is where my wife and I sleep when we visit during cold months.

• Google News. I showed them Google's clearinghouse for news stories. They didn't seem particularly interested in it, but I'm guessing that will change as they realize the site's utility.

• Using wireless keyboards and mice. If they do decide to connect their Mac to their TV, we explained, they would likely want to add a wireless keyboard and mouse so they could have more freedom of movement in their living room.

• eBay. We explained that this service would be a fantastic way for them to find the kinds of supplies that their local merchants often don't have, or charge too much for.

• iPhone (for the future). We touted our beloved iPhones, and tried to get them excited about the devices as well. This is clearly something for another time.

• Blogrolls. They asked what blogrolls were, and we showed them how many blogs offer lists of other sites they endorse and suggest readers look at.

• Using the trackpad on the Mac instead of a mouse. Having only previously used their desktop PC, they weren't familiar with laptop trackpads. So we spent some time explaining how they work, including how to use two fingers on the MacBook to scroll up and down pages.

• Wikipedia. I had already been touting Wikipedia, but now I explained how anyone can edit any page, and how it is possible to see the entire history of changes for a page.

On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

While it may seem normal to have several Net-connected Macs among a small group of people, this is the first time such a scene happened at the off-the-grid, mountaintop home of CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's in-laws.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

NICE, Calif.--As a San Francisco-based Internet junkie, I can't count the number of times I've been in groups with almost as many wirelessly connected Mac laptops as people.

So the scene in front of me shouldn't be new: four people, three connected Mac laptops.

But there's something completely novel going on: I'm visiting my in-laws at their off-the-grid, mountaintop house in Northern California, about four hours northeast of San Francisco. And I can say with absolute certainty that this is the first time such a scene has played out here.

How do I know? Because it's been less than two weeks since my in-laws, Tyler and Donna, had Internet installed on their property for the first time--in their case, the only available option was satellite--and it's been just hours since I personally set up their wireless network. In other words, Wi-Fi is a newly arrived house guest, and judging by the concentration on their faces, the occasional smiles, and the superlatives coming from their lips, it's a very welcome one.

For years, my wife and I had been trying to get her parents to cotton to the idea that their lives, at 4,000 feet, surrounded by national forest and steeped in the necessities of growing most of their own food, could be improved by getting online. But they'd gotten by just fine, thank you, for more than 30 years, without even a television.

Now, suddenly, there is a Wi-Fi network set up in their house, and I could see my in-laws' lives changing before my eyes.

For example, Tyler said excitedly to me one morning during my visit that he'd figured out how to use e-mail and the Web to do many of the things that used to require him to stop at the post office and get stamps.

"That's the end of snail mail for me," Tyler told me. And, he added, no more catalogs would be cramming their P.O. box.

Yesssss!

Working so much better now
My wife and I had conveniently--and coincidentally--managed to time our last visit to the mountain with the HughesNet satellite installation. But as I wrote previously, those first baby steps didn't go so well.

Thanks to glacially slow initial download speeds, the unexpected realities of a 200MB daily download limit, and the necessity of loading countless Windows updates onto their 2-year-old, Internet-chaste PC, we had retreated the mountain almost embarrassed by how badly it had gone.

This is the screen HughesNet customers can use to get up-to-date information about their Internet connection.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

So, I set out to make it all better by bringing them a refurbished MacBook, pre-configured at home with everything they'd need for a happy Internet life. I even unhooked my home Wi-Fi network and donated it to the cause.

After a less-than-stellar first attempt to get his in-laws online for the first time from the off-the-grid, 4,000-feet elevation house they've lived in for more than 30 years, CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman and his wife are returning to the mountain this week with a new Mac to help make the process better. And what could be better than a great view to go with your Internet?

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

Could a Mac be what it takes to get my in-laws to love the Internet?

Last week, I had the very rare opportunity to help get my in-laws, who live off-the-grid at 4,000 feet in the middle of a national forest, online for the first time and, my wife and I hoped, to instantly end more than 30 years of their being cut off from media innovations.

As I wrote afterward though, their initial experience was quite a bit less than stellar, mainly due to the vagaries of navigating what seem like fairly restrictive download threshold policies implemented by their satellite Internet vendor, HughesNet: After hitting the download limit of 200 megabytes in one day--which I'm certain we actually didn't hit--the connection slowed to less than 2Kbps.

But there were other problems, too, that had to do with what it takes to make a 2-year-old Windows machine that's never been online safe for play dates with the Internet. And for my in-laws, who had no experience whatsoever with downloading security updates, and XP Service Packs, and virus protection, I can only imagine how daunting it must have seemed. Even for me, a longtime computer user--albeit a Mac loyalist--it was confusing.

While my wife and I were on hand the day Hughes came to install the satellite, we had only that one day up on the mountain to help get things set up properly. But given that we ended up wasting hours trying, and failing, to download those security patches and virus protection packages, we weren't able to get much done before we had to leave. We couldn't even get their new Gmail account working.

But we have a plan. And it involves a computer that simply doesn't require security download after service pack download to be safe online.

Monday, a new (well, refurbished) MacBook arrived at my house, and over the next couple of days, my wife and I are going to load that computer up with as much necessary and fun software (starting with OpenOffice) as we can find, and then cart it back up to her parents' with us later this week. In addition, we're going to bring them an Airport Extreme so that they can use that new computer wirelessly all around their mountaintop property.

After all, while they may not understand the sense of freedom that a wireless Internet connection provides, we hope they will soon realize that sitting on their deck, looking down over the treetops at their stellar view, is a much better place to be online than stuffed into the tiny windowless office where they have their PC.

As for Hughes, after I contacted them last week to comment for the story I was writing, I was told by someone in their public relations department that the company would do what it can to help my in-laws. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but sure enough, the in-laws did get a phone call from someone in tech support, offering to work through any residual issues.

Originally, that call was supposed to happen Monday, but I suggested that they postpone it until Thursday when my wife and I will be back up on the mountain, so that we can help diagnose the problem and describe it to the technician.

That's important since, as I wrote previously, my in-laws don't have anything to compare their online experience to, and therefore would likely have trouble describing exactly what the problem is. But I can: Even before being booted to under-2Kbps speeds for supposedly going over the 200MB download threshold their account allows, the top speed they were getting on their 1.0 Mbps account was about 13 Kbps. Hardly high speed. So, we'll have to see if Hughes can do something about that.

Still, on Sunday, as my wife and I were hanging out, spending a little time online, an e-mail popped into her in-box. It was from the in-laws. And for us, having spent the last nine years working hard to get them to embrace the Internet as a way to stay in touch with us--and the rest of her family--it was a rather big moment.

If you have suggestions of important software that we should put on their new Mac--especially if it's free--please send them to me by Tuesday evening.

On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's in-laws live at the top of a mountain, are off the grid, and have missed the last 30-plus years of innovations in media. On Monday, they got satellite Internet installed. This is the view of their new dish from the deck of their mountain-side house.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

NICE, Calif.--This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Imagine getting to introduce to the Internet a couple of otherwise-normal 60-somethings who, having lived off the grid at 4,000 feet in the middle of national forest, have missed more than 30 years of media innovations.

That's what I did earlier this week, with my in-laws, Tyler and Donna. They're perfectly nice people. They just have never used the Internet before, haven't watched TV, really, and even their cell phone is turned off most of the time to conserve their limited solar power.

I've been coming to visit them for nine years, and there were countless conversations with them during which my wife and I, both Internet junkies, rhapsodized about its virtues. We gushed about Google. We raved about Second Life. We couldn't stop beating Wikipedia's drums.

We'd get weary nods and, "It sounds great, but we don't really have any use for the Internet."

For my wife and me, that was nothing but further motivation to get them online.

A couple of years ago, we replaced the ancient desktop computer on which they did their accounting with a new PC that we joked was the planet's healthiest Windows machine, having never been anywhere it could meet a virus.

We also began bringing them DVDs, and they fell hard for "The West Wing" and "The Wire." But it was my wife's masterstroke--getting them a Netflix subscription--that probably won them over.

They had no way to manage their Netflix account, so we did it for them. They'd get the movies at their P.O. box, 45 minutes away, watch them, return them on their next supply run, and repeat.

Two installers from HughesNet putting the finishing touches on the satellite dish.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Setting up their queue was beyond surreal. They'd seen nothing. Not "Goodfellas," not "Pulp Fiction," not "Gladiator," "The English Patient," "Traffic," or "Chariots of Fire." Hardly anything. Do you know anyone like that?

The last time we visited, Tyler asked me to find out how much power a satellite dish, a modem, and a wireless router used. He wasn't sure that their power system was up to the task.

It was, though, and last week, as we were getting ready for a visit, my wife said, "By the way, they're getting satellite Internet installed on Monday."

Our incredible toy
I'm a geek, so I don't mind telling you how eager I was to show off our incredible toy. Despite being avid readers, radio listeners, and now movie fans, my in-laws still had no idea that the world was coming to their door. On Monday.

Some friends visited the mountain with us, and they also got excited about introducing my in-laws to the Internet. Over the weekend, we made a list of Web sites everyone agreed they had to visit: Snopes.com, NYTimes.com, NPR.org, BBC.co.uk, Huffingtonpost.com, Google News, PostSecret, Craigslist, Flickr, BurningMan.com, Epicurious.com, TED.com, and others.

But on Saturday night, we asked them what they wanted to explore first. In my mind, it would be something fanciful. Maybe a site about science or history or politics.

"Oh, something about fava beans, I imagine," Tyler said.

On Monday, HughesNet sent two installers, and then, after nine years, it was game on.

In the in-laws' little office, where their PC lives, I sat down to work on getting the machine secured.

We're buying them a Mac, but for now, my eyes were on the prize: the latest Windows security updates. But the connection speed they were getting was painfully slow, around 13Kbps. Windows Service Pack 3 is more than 300 megabytes--more than eight hours of download time away. We had to leave long before that.

I decided to forgo SP3 and instead install AVG, a free antivirus package. But the connection was so slow that the download failed. Twice.

The screen on the computer of one of the HughesNet installers as the satellite Internet connection was being set up for the first time.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

I was embarrassed and frustrated. To diffuse the situation, we decided to turn the focus to picking a Gmail address. They suggested a series of what to any veteran Internet user were obviously unavailable names: Tyleranddonna, Donnaandtyler, Beautifulmountain. Using my MacBook Pro and an EV-DO card, we finally found something.

I also decided to download AVG on my Mac. That, too, was painfully slow--we were at 4,000 feet, far from town--but it worked, and I copied the AVG file to their PC via a thumb drive.

But AVG needed its own updates, and so it went looking for them. I noticed that the download speeds had slowed even further, now to less than 2Kbps.

Slowly but surely?
This was ridiculous. They had signed up for a 1.0Mbps connection, which, I read, promised downloads of more than 500Kbps. They were getting 1Kbps.

I called HughesNet, and a technician told me that the account had surpassed its "Fair Access" limit. It turns out that satellite Internet users get only so much bandwidth per day--in my in-laws' case, 200 megabytes. Go over the limit, you get dial-up speeds for 24 long hours.

The technician told me that there was nothing he could do about it, despite my insisting that there was no way they'd passed 200 megabytes. A supervisor confirmed that he had "no mechanism" to lift the limit for the day, even when I explained that I had to leave soon and that I absolutely needed to finish downloading the security patches before I drove off the mountain.

In the HughesNet pamphlet that had finally lured Tyler and Donna, a footnote I now discovered really concerned me: "Based on analysis of customer usage data, Hughes has established a download threshold for each of the HughesNet service plans that is well above the typical usage rates."

CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's father-in-law sits at his computer, looking at his Internet connection for the very first time.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

This was alarming, as one of the things my wife and I were most excited about was the idea of her parents being able to . This vision now looked endangered.

"In order to arrive at our Fair Access Policy, Hughes conducted an analysis of HughesNet customer usage and then established a download threshold for each plan that was above average usage rates," Hughes wrote me in an e-mail Thursday. "Certain activities are more likely than others to exceed the daily download threshold, such as continuous downloading or viewing streaming-media content such as audio or video programming."

Users do get unlimited high-speed downloads from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. EST. Long after the in-laws would be watching streaming movies.

This was not good. What worried me more was that even watching YouTube videos might quickly put them over the top. The Hughes e-mail, though, seemed to dismiss that worry: "Activities such as viewing Web sites, checking e-mail, watching short streaming-media presentations, i.e. YouTube, and automatic software and antivirus updates are not likely to exceed the download threshold."

Back on the mountain, I decided that, slow speeds be damned, I was getting them online before my wife and I departed.

So I pulled Tyler over to the PC and sat him down.

This would not be so simple. After all, he had no experience with a browser. He didn't know where to click, or how to enter a URL, or how to tab between fields. There's a huge learning curve here for my wife's folks. They need Internet for Dummies--and now.

We booted up Firefox--I had downloaded it for him, as I would never let Internet Explorer set foot in their house again--to head to Google (see the video below, which evolves slowly).

Starting with the basics
I showed him where to type, and a little while after he typed in "Google.com," he got his first look at the search engine's wonderful, spare home page.

It was a moment of truth: What would be the first thing he would look up? Would it be FDR? The Vietnam War? Barack Obama?

Nope. It was fava beans. He hadn't been kidding earlier.

Before we knew it, Tyler was on EveryNutrient.com, a good site, it seems, to learn about the nutritional value of fava beans.

After a little more browser 101--explaining that words in blue are usually hyperlinks, and how to use the back and reload buttons--we hopped over to Wikipedia. More fava beans.

But things went downhill when we tried Gmail so that Tyler could send his first-ever e-mail--can you remember when you did that? The site wouldn't load. The connection was simply too slow.

My wife and I had built this moment up so much in our minds over the years that we were clearly more excited than her parents. Yet Tyler was frustrated. And that was crushing.

Looking for a graceful way out, we adjourned from Gmail and moved into their living room to talk.

We asked them what they were looking forward to using the Internet for. And again, practicality won. Donna said she wanted to be able to get better fire information than she could on the radio, which makes sense, since they live in the middle of a forest.

I said there were always real-time maps online during fires.

"That's exactly what we want to know," she said.

Tyler added, "That'll be tremendously helpful."

They also said they were excited about investigating the various weather sites, since they are deeply subject to the whims of their environment. And, yes, they expect to spend a lot of time reading up on nutrition.

For my wife and me, it was time to leave. But I felt sheepish.

I had had such high hopes for this experience, and instead, it had been deeply disappointing. I couldn't even bring myself to ask what they had thought about their initial experiences on the Internet.

But it will get better. We'll go back soon to make sure.

PostSecret founder Frank Warren spoke in Walnut Creek, Calif., as part of a tour of an exhibition of many of the most interesting secrets he's received in the four years of the project.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

WALNUT CREEK, Calif.--There probably aren't very many people in the world who could inspire someone to stand up in front of a crowd of 800 strangers and admit to a World of Warcraft addiction.

It might sound like a joke, but in the case of Frank Warren, the founder and curator of the ongoing PostSecret project, people are always baring their souls to him, either via the privacy of an anonymous postcard or letter, or in the case of his many public speaking engagements, in front of hundreds, or even thousands, of people they've never met before.

For four years, Warren has been collecting the secrets people send him--about a thousand a week, he says--and putting the most interesting of them up on the PostSecret blog, as well as publishing them in a series of best-selling books. A major theme of the project--which has millions of fans around the world--is helping people unmask their personal pain through the simple step of letting the secrets they've held inside out for the first time.

Many of the people in the the sold-out crowd at the Lesher Center here Wednesday night cheered wildly when a 39-year-old woman stood up to admit to her WoW addiction, apparently thinking she was joking. But really, it should have come as no surprise that she was deadly serious.

"My secret really is that online gaming really is an addiction," the woman said, "and it can destroy (families), and I think people should know that."

Over the four years of the PostSecret project, Warren has become what some have called "the most trusted stranger" in the world. And over those years, despite the fact that his project has an extremely altruistic nature--there's no advertising on the blog, even though its 220 million-plus page views would certainly earn a fortune, and the sales of the four best-selling books supports the National Suicide Prevention Hotline--many corporate entities have come to him asking if they could work together.

In almost every case, Warren has said no, regardless of the financial carrots offered him.

Most recently, HBO asked if it could use some of the secrets sent to Warren as part of a marketing campaign for its "Big Love" show about a polygamous family in Utah. But he said no, and since then, HBO has been operating its own site, called "Web of Secrets," where people can anonymously post secrets, which are then sent out via a Twitter feed.

I've been watching that feed for a couple of weeks now, and though many of the secrets that come through every 30 seconds or so express the same kind of pain and anguish and longing and loneliness as the postcards that Warren puts up every Sunday on his blog, and which appear in the books, those that are part of "Web of Secrets" are missing something. They seem kind of fake, and it's hard to believe they're real, even though most of them probably are.

"Have the confidence to be vulnerable"
Warren said he wasn't surprised when I told him that Wednesday night.

"You can't replicate the trust I've been able to engender" over the last four years, Warren said. "As long as I don't screw that up, I don't worry about" other secrets projects.

It probably has something to do with the fact that Warren himself is someone who comes across as trustworthy, and as someone who seems to share the same kinds of pain that most of us feel. And there's no way that entering text into a field on a Web site can replicate the personal expression of writing an emotional secret on a postcard and sending it to a Maryland address where an actual human being--Warren--will get it like he has so many thousands of others.

Photos: PostSecret hits the road

And that's especially true when it comes to helping people feel safe opening up their hearts in front of sold-out auditoriums.

"My mantra is, 'Have the confidence to be vulnerable,'" Warren said. "If I can do that, it gives people in the audience the confidence to be vulnerable."

On stage, Warren comes across as extremely vulnerable, even though he's been giving more or less the same version of his PostSecret talk for quite some time. He's a gentle man, and during his talks, he tells several secrets of his own. He is funny, open, and yes, vulnerable.

A big part of his standard talk is to go through a series of his favorites of the secrets he's received over the years, projecting them on a big screen from his computer. But backstage before getting up in front of the audience, Warren always spends time flipping through a tin full of postcards that he brings with him just in case.

"They're special, and I always carry them with me," Warren said. "They're backups in case something goes wrong" with his Mac during the presentation.

But despite his preparation for Mac meltdown, Warren professed to being an Apple loyalist, and said he had, in fact, just bought two new Macs.

"One of the things I like about Apple," he said in his backstage dressing room before his talk, "is (its products') minimalism."

Listening to the secrets of others
Due to a bit of a snafu, I ended up ticketless for Warren's Wednesday night talk here, and so, after talking to a few people, I wound up sitting in a dark room backstage where I was able to watch him speak on a monitor and listen to him through large speakers set up in the room.

It was strangely disassociative, listening to his words, and then the words of the many people who came up to microphones in the auditorium to share their own secrets. I've seen Warren speak before, and watched as a couple of dozen people stood up, like the woman admitting her WoW addiction, and open up their hearts. Seeing them do it brings context about them.

But only being able to hear their voices, and not see them, was odd. It was like their secrets were on postcards and I was hearing them narrate those hidden words.

Warren said that he usually speaks in front of audiences measured in the hundreds, most of whom are women. Indeed, Wednesday night's event here was just that.

But he said his biggest-ever audience was at last March's South by Southwest Interactive festival, where about 2,000 people crowded in to hear him speak at the Austin (Tex.) Convention Center. And that talk, he said, due to the nature of SXSW, which is a technology conference, had the gender mix turned on its head.

I was in the room for that talk, and the emotions bared that day have stayed with me ever since.

One of the most beautiful things about it was that the first audience member who spoke surprised us all by publicly proposing marriage to his girlfriend. It was an awesome moment, and the woman accepted. Warren said there's even a video of that moment on YouTube.

And then, witha big smile on his face, he told me Wednesday night that he got an e-mail from the man a couple of weeks ago, inviting him to the wedding.

The MacBook Air seems a long way off from the original Macintosh. But according to some, there remains some hereditary DNA from its 1984-era ancestor.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

What is a Macintosh?

After 25 years on the market, it's a good question, since someone with no knowledge of computers looking at, say, today's MacBook Pro, would not necessarily know that it evolved from 1984's original 128K Mac.

But evolve it did, and on the 25th anniversary of the release of that original machine (which is this Saturday), one might indeed wonder what hereditary DNA, if any, today's Macs retain from their much more humble ancestors.

The answer is some, but not that much, at least not when it comes to specific identifiable hardware features, according to two experts interviewed for this article.

One half of an ad for the original 128K Macintosh from 1984.

(Credit: Courtesy of the Digibarn Computer Museum)

"Very little, in terms of the hardware, remains," said Bruce Damer, co-founder of the Digibarn Computer Museum, "except for the fine-quality industrial design of the cases."

But there must be something linking the earliest Macs with today's models besides the name and company that produces them. Otherwise, the famous Macintosh community known by names like the "cult of Mac" or "MacHeads" wouldn't be such a powerful force.

"At its essence, you look at it where it (is) relative to what it was before," said Raines Cohen, the founder of the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, and "there's a sense that it's still a machine that you turn on and you do things (easily) with it. It's an interface that stays out of your way."

Basically, Cohen said, the Mac is all about ease of use and simplicity--as well as the continuity of a low-maintenance user experience.

"Recently, I had a chance to go back and use the old Mac," Cohen said. "The essential consistency was still the same. You could take a Mac user who has been on ice for the last quarter century and put them on a modern Mac, and they'd be up and using it within a matter of moments."

Perhaps that's because of a few software elements that today's Macs have that first appeared in the first versions of the computer.

"On the software side, the primary elements left from the original Mac OS come through in the user interface," said Damer. "The single menu stripe--File, Special, etc.--is a vestige of the original limited screen real estate of the 128K Mac."

The original Mac was a simple machine that changed the way everyday people saw computers. The machine helped open up desktop publishing to a mainstream audience.

(Credit: Courtesy of the Digibarn Computer Museum)

Damer said there are a few other recognizable holdovers as well. For one, the arrow-cursor remains almost identical today to its origins, and window-handling also has stayed the same. In other words, he said, today, as in 1984, you can only resize a window from the lower right corner.

Today's Mac OS X got its beginnings at NeXT, the company Steve Jobs built during his years in exile from Apple. When Apple bought NeXT and brought Jobs back, first to consult and then run the company, the NeXT OS came along with him and formed the basis for the future generations of Macs.

But Apple knew that its fans had an idea of what the Mac OS was supposed to look like, Damer suggested, and as a result, it found a way to maintain some of the consistency to which Cohen referred.

"In some sense, to try to keep some of the original look and feel of the old Mac OS, the Apple team 'dumbed down' the NeXT GUI," Damer said, "which was in some ways more powerful and flexible."

But all along, Cohen said, the Mac operating system has kept the basic elements of menu navigation and windowing more or less the same.

And that, aside from the much more abstract notion that a computer built by what is seen by many to be a company obsessed with design and a somewhat pirate-like mentality, may be what really makes a Mac a Mac.

"Apple's UI guidelines have been there all along," Cohen said, "so that programs have to be consistent and have that (high) level of consistency in order to be successful on the platform."

See the rest of our Mac anniversary coverage here.

See our special anniversary
coverage here.

January 24 marks the the 25th anniversary of the release of the original Macintosh, a computer that--with its whimsical design, innovative graphical user interface and all-in-one form factor--permanently changed personal computing.

Any student of the history of PCs should know that the Mac project was first championed by the late Jef Raskin and then brought to fruition by Steve Jobs. But the team that built the first Mac was, of course, much larger than those two. In fact, the team had a wide range of personalities and skill sets and seems universally to have been regarded as a singular experience in the professional lives of most who were there.

As part of our commemoration of the Mac's silver anniversary, CNET News asked a number of the team's earliest members to share some of their recollections of helping to change the world. Those memories--which are personal and may have evolved and blossomed over time--paint a revealing picture of what it took to make the Mac a reality, and who some of the people behind the project really were.

Joanna Hoffman was an early member of the Macintosh team. She recalls positioning the computer for the higher-education market in its earliest days.

(Credit: Courtesy of Joanna Hoffman)

Joanna Hoffman
"I was taking a leave of absence from the University of Chicago, and I happened to be listening to a couple lectures at Xerox PARC when I ran across Jef Raskin, who was at the time starting the Mac project. We got into a heated discussion after the lecture about what computers should look like and how they should improve people's lives, and he asked me to come interview at Apple."

"I worked on the business plan, and on defining some of the early markets, including the higher-ed market, which was the market which carried the Mac....When we first shipped it, it wasn't really suitable for the business market, which was obviously the most lucrative. But it wasn't ideally suited for that. So while it was going through its various gyrations and modifications, the higher-ed market was very kind to it. They really liked the product and lots of students bought them, so it really helped Mac into its transition before it discovered its niche in desktop publication and other applications which required graphics."

"I think this one hasn't been really told: When we were working on the Macintosh, all of a sudden, everybody was coming up with PCs. DEC had one, so did IBM and Osborne, and I remember we were sitting with our team and Steve Jobs and (marketing consultant) Regis McKenna in Regis' office, and he was trying to get us to articulate what our competition was. Steve was looking at our team, trying to get us to come up with answers. So of course, we piped up with DEC and IBM and everyone entering the field. And Regis walked up to the whiteboard and crossed everybody out and said, 'You have only one competitor, and that is IBM'...Of course it (ended up being) us against Microsoft, but in those days, it was IBM."

These days, Hoffman is married to fellow Macintosh team member Alain Rossmann, and is spending her time consulting with a series of nonprofits, helping them to run and focus their operations more effectively.

Ed Riddle, an early Mac team member, recalls his interview with Steve Jobs: sitting on a furniture-less floor, staring into each others' eyes--the two men shared a Zen master--followed by Jobs bowing and saying it had gone well.

(Credit: Courtesy of Ed Riddle)

Ed Riddle
"I was working just before (joining the Mac team) at a laser company called Coherent Radiation, as an engineer. I knew Rod Holt, and when he moved to Apple, when the Macintosh project started, he called me up and said I should come in. (The role) was not really specific. Originally, it was just that Rod thought I was a good guy, and that I could fit in somehow. (The team) had a really open atmosphere that way.

"We talked about things that I might do, and I thought I might work on the keyboard, because it was something nobody had gotten their hands on. So basically, I designed the keyboard, and the protocol that goes to the Mac, the little coil cord."

The team always allowed "people to express any creativity they might have. I always felt that was a quality of that group. It was really fun that way....I think it was unique. I worked at Atari for a while, and I felt that that there was some of that atmosphere there as well, that, 'Just think of something neat'...I just assumed that it was an Apple thing at the time. I thought it was a Steve Jobs kind of thing. It was a young, energetic, starlit kind of place. Everybody who worked there had a creative urgency. (And) the kind of thing Steve Jobs was trying to articulate (was) that he wanted something to be really neat."

"When I first arrived...the furniture hadn't arrived yet, except for a few benches and desks. It was pretty empty. I don't think there was even 10 or 15 involved.

"It was time for my job interview, and Steve (Jobs) wanted to be the first person to interview me. So we went into this office, and there was no furniture, so we sat on the floor. I said, we have an acquaintance, and I said that I knew his Zen master, Kobun Chino. We sat down cross-legged and made eye contact, and rather than talking, we just looked at each other for the longest time, and I don't think we actually said much of anything during the whole job interview. Mostly it was just making eye contact, and then at a certain point, he smiled, and he bowed, like a Japanese thing, and that was the end of the interview. We seemed to just connect. (Then he added), Well, you still have to run the gauntlet of the technical engineers."

Today, Riddle lives in Oregon, where he's retired and actively involved in local politics, as well as playing in a band.

Daniel Kottke was the first employee Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak hired at Apple. Later, he joined the Macintosh team as an engineer, the first full-time engineering job in his career.

(Credit: Courtesy of the Digibarn Computer Museum)

Daniel Kottke, Apple employee number one
"I was a technician on the Apple III, and I had been asking my management for years, how do I become an engineer? Can I be an engineer now? So I was just happy that Steve (Jobs) agreed to hire me as an engineer."

"As soon as Steve funded (the Mac project) what they did was movie it out of Mark LeBrun's cubicle, and he hired Suite B3, over at Stevens Creek Blvd. (in Cupertino, Calif.), the exact same suite that Apple had started in (after Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak moved the fledgling company out of Jobs' garage) and the same suite as the Lisa project started in. This is like this nondescript office complex, with a bunch of Realtors.

"And there was this sign on the door: 'Danger: Contagious Algorithm Research Area.' Nowadays, you couldn't even do that. People would call the police. I am absolutely sure that Burrell (Smith, a very early Mac team member) did it, because that was his sense of humor.

"I joined in January, 1981, just about the same week as Andy Hertzfeld. I think Andy was a day or two ahead of me in officially joining the team full-time. The very first meetings I went to, Jef (Raskin) would pull all these Nerf balls out of a box, just to get in shape for serious thinking. The very early meetings, we were kind of sitting around in beanbag chairs."

"The flavor of the early Mac group, the combination of the personalities of Jef, Burrell and Joanna, and Randy Wigginton, it definitely got the flavor of the rebel alliance....It was a happy time in all of our lives. It was exciting to work on that project. It's fairly rare, we all had the sense that we knew it was going to be successful--which wasn't as arrogant as it sounds. We had such a great collection of talent, and we were funded. And we knew we had a visionary leader in Steve."

Nowadays, Kottke is working on a start-up called Blinkenlabs, as well as developing co-housing in Palo Alto, Calif.

The signatures of the original Macintosh team members, circa February 1982, nearly two years before the computer was released to the public.

(Credit: Courtesy of the Digibarn Computer Museum)

See also: Special coverage: The Mac at 25

'MacHeads,' a new movie about the Apple and Macintosh culture, will premiere Wednesday at MacWorld.

(Credit: MacHeads)

It's a long-established truism in technology journalism: That stories about Apple are pretty much guaranteed to do better than just about any other subject.

And why? It's certainly not because of the total size of the user base of Apple products. Rather, as has been very well chronicled in newspapers, magazines, online and in books, the passion felt by the community of Apple users far outstrips its size.

Now, with the release of MacHeads, you can add movies to the roster of media documenting the full fervor of the Mac faithful and their particular brand of do-it-yourself brand evangelism.

MacHeads, a 54-minute film by the Israeli director and producer team of Kobi and Ron Shely, has its world-premiere Wednesday with a screening at Macworld, a suitable place for a film about 25 years (or more) of Mac fanaticism, especially because much of it was filmed at Macworld 2007.

It's also a bit of an ironic location to launch a cinematic discussion of hard-core Mac fandom, given the recent announcement that Apple will end its participation in Macworld after this year, a development that could well spell the end for the last large-scale physical gathering of the very people the movie is about.

In a way, however, the end of Macworld as we've known it plays right into the hands of the Shely brothers, as one of the chief arguments their film makes is that the newest generation of Mac users depends much more on the Internet for community than Macworld itself or the users-group meetings that have taken place in any number of cities around the world for so many years.

Either way, though, one thing is made abundantly clear in MacHeads: As long as there are Mac users, new or old, on working computers or museum pieces, the so-called cult of Mac will stay alive and well.

As a movie, I found MacHeads to be rather uneven. It struck me as haphazardly edited, and it struck me that the filmmakers were never completely clear with themselves whether their movie was about Mac users, their passion, Apple, the computers themselves or the transformation of a small, yet unbelievably vocal community.

Probably, that's because it's about all of the above. But where MacHeads succeeds in amply demonstrating the extent of the feeling the faithful have for their beloved Macs, it suffers from an obvious lack of clarity.

Still, it's kind of fun listening to the so-called MacHeads opening up to the world about their obsession. It's also not at all unfamiliar. I myself am writing this on a Mac, and between my wife and I, we have five Macs, two iPods and two iPhones. And she would probably recount proudly that she nearly dumped me early in our relationship when I told her that I was considering buying a PC for my next computer.

In the film, this distaste for all things Windows takes many forms, some funny and others even more funny.

Early in the movie, for example, the well-known sex author and blogger Violet Blue, says, with only the slightest hint of irony, "I've never knowingly slept with a Windows user. Ever. Ever. That would never, ever happen."

Later, DigiBarn computer museum co-founder Bruce Damer talks about Apple taking on IBM and PCs as "the force fighting against the beige banality."

While the Mac--in its many iterations--is the technological focus of the devotion of the MacHeads, Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is clearly the human form.

And together, Jobs and the products his company makes comprise a church of sorts, with thousands, if not millions, of followers.

"If you go online and look up the definition of a cult," Shawn King, the executive producer and host of Your Mac Life, says in the film, "Mac users are a cult. You know, complete fealty to one leader."

Fealty and devotion often have a physical component, and for some Mac fans, that's a tattoo. MacHeads, then, features at least two cases of users with Apple logos emblazoned on their legs.

But some Mac users clearly think of their computers as an extension of themselves--a sentiment that some might laugh at, but which others will understand fully.

"Only Mac people really put stickers all over their laptops," digital media strategist Deborah Schultz says in the movie, "and I think it's indicative that this is kind of something that is close to me like my clothing and it's an identification."

These days, with Apple flying high on the strength of the massive success of the iPhone, the iPod and the Mac line, it's easy to forget that in the mid-90s, the company was on the verge of failure. And for the 25 million or so Mac users at the time, events at the time like Macworld were a place to come and share their hopes and fears about their future computing.

"You have to be an optimist to be a Mac user," said former MacAddict columnist Joseph Holmes in the film, "because there were those tough times when we thought, you know, maybe I'll have to use a Windows system. Maybe there won't be a Mac in a couple of years. It was kind of tough."

Or, as fellow Mac fan Debroah Shadovitz put it, "We would have entered the dark ages if Apple went away. We couldn't let that happen."

As is the basis for endless business school case studies today, of course, Jobs returned from the Siberian exile of forced life away from Apple, and brought the company back to glory, first with the iMac and then with the company's next--and maybe biggest--game changer, the iPod.

Oddly, MacHeads hardly covers the iPod, and its importance in making Apple what it is today. I think that's because the whole point of the film is to focus on the passion of a niche group of tech users, and the iPod has been such a mainstream hit that it is the dominant portable music player today, hardly the kind of device that establishes the us against them mentality that many of the Mac fans in the film evince.

Yet, the movie feels like it has a hole without a discussion of the iPod, and I think that's evidence of the lack of clarity I talked about earlier--the indecisiveness as to what the film is really about.

Because this is well-covered ground, there is little in MacHeads that would surprise anyone who is familiar with the cult of Mac. Yet, because that community is so visible and outspoken, the movie is bound to have an audience--at least of the already converted. Whether it will appeal to those outside the fold is less likely, to me, at least.

No matter, though. Apple's fan base alone is large enough to give the Shely brothers a sizable potential audience, even if many of those people really just want to see how their kind is portrayed on film.

After all, in the end, what makes the cult of Mac powerful, and interesting, is the people.

"It's the community that you want to talk about," says Shawn King in the film. "Don't love Apple, love the community."