eMac Monitor weirdness

Factual Questions
1

Got a new eMac. Not the NEW ones, but a new one from the Apple store that is the CRT all-in-one machine. Love it. However, it does something disturbing. I notice it when I load a photograph up, be it in email or iPhoto.

Here’s what I see. This happens regardless of the megapixels of the image, but of course is most apparent with a very sharp clear image. I double click it, the photo loads up and I can see it…however- JUST in the split-second as the image appears, it is razor sharp. Then it literally “settles in” slightly and goes imperceptibly soft.

It’s driving me insane. It happens in a split-second, but happens with every single photo I open. Thoughts?

It’s Mac OS-X Panther. ( with freshly downloaded upgrades for OS and iPhoto )

Cartooniverse

2

Here’s a W.A.G.–

I see the same thing happening, and I have an iBook. It’s one of the first dual-USB iceBooks, but I don’t think that makes a difference. I didn’t start noticing this until 10.3 (I think).

Now, the first time this happened, I was viewing a large photo that had been scaled to a smaller size in Preview. When the photo first came up, it was sharp to the point of having some “jaggies,” where diagonal lines are distorted by the square pixels. After a second, the image smoothed out. What I think you’re seeing is some sort of anti-aliasing/dithering routine kick in.

Again, just a w.a.g.

R.

3

RobuSensei’s WAG is correct: what you’re noticing is the system’s anti-aliasing kicking in; it’s nothing peculiar to your machine. It does this for any image viewed at below native resolution; I guess they figure that the slight softening of AA is better than the fugly artifacts you tend to get when you scale shots down to odd sizes.

4

Interesting. I am to believe that the photos, if sent to others, or printed out, will not be slightly soft?

Thanks !

Oh, so, secondary query, how do I get around sending photos from my Apple emial to AOL users? It attaches as a . MIME file and no AOL folks can open them.

Ideas?

5

That’s right.

I’ve heard of this problem. AOL’s mail client can’t handle multiple attachments, and when you send a file from a Mac running OS X, you’re actually sending two files: the file itself and a small data file that contains info about the file’s place in the file system. So AOL does what it does with multiple attachments, which is to ball them up into a MIME file.

There’s an option in Mail to “Send Windows-ready attachments” or something like that; I would try that first. If that doesn’t work, try dropping the image inline into the body of your message; I hear that works too.

6

You are correct, my little crumpet.

It did not exist as an option until Panther came along. Now, I can do that with attachments. With my Titanium Powerbook (Jaguar) I cannot. I suspect I cannot use my eMac software to “upgrade” the Jaguar on the TiBook. Gotta bite the bullet and buy upgrade disks.

7

Glad you like your eMac! I just got a Mac Mini and am enjoying it very much.

I upgraded to Panther using Universal Install Disks like these. They installed on my old G4 PowerMac just fine. If you don’t have a DVD player in your Powerbook (but I assume you do), they sell the CD versions at the same place (Otherworld Computing).

When I performed this upgrade on the G4, I wanted the best possible outcome (no risk of problems) so I reformatted and did a clean install. It couldn’t have gone smoother. And my old G4 runs faster now too! I love Panther.

Of course, if you wait a few months, you can get Tiger (10.4), which should be very cool. I’m going to hold off upgrading my Mini and the old G4 to Tiger until I hear how the upgrades are doing for other people. But I sure am looking forward to it!

8

I hear its gonna be the cat’s pajamas. :wink: Having said that, I did have a deeply horrid experience when buying my first Mac. ( Yosemite, you were very helpful back then too !!! ). It used Mac OS-X 10.0, and was heavily buggy. I have been told be seriously well-respected insider pro types to never buy a 1.0 release. NEVER buy a new OS, on any platform. Beta-testers are brave souls.

All of this by way of saying I will not buy Tiger. For my needs, Panther seems to be cleaner and faster and makes using an external HD quicker, than Jaguar. I will use that platform for a very long time. I crave reliability over the new list of goodies offered by upgrades in OS’s. I ran Win98SE until last week on my desktop PC. It was a twitchy machine, but the truth is that I rarely did fresh installs of the OS on it. Had I been more diligent, I feel it would have been a bit more stable. For Windows, that is… :slight_smile: If Panther is indeed as stable and fast as it seems, I will remain with it probably for quite a few years.

So, I may well do a clean install of Panther on my TiBook- am I scrubbing the HD? Do I lose everything? Or do I do a clean install of Panther without losing media and data? Hmmmm.

The Mini was a very serious consideration. If I knew I would be given access to a monitor no matter where I went, I would have bought it. But, I already own the TiBook. Didn’t have the scratch for a CineMonitor, sadly. The image on this CRT is just dandy. ( I still haven’t found the Mac equivalent of the Display controls for brightness and contrast, and so my eyeballs are weeping after a few hours. I tend to go for dimmer stuff to protect the retinas. :smiley: ).

I have an external 40 gig FireLite firewire HD, so I could easily back up all media and files from the TiBook,and do as you did. A clean scrub and fresh install using my eMac disks. Perhaps a very fine thought indeed. I am aware, moving back and forth from Jaguar to Panther that Panther is faster. Easy to compare, since this eMac is not the new snappy flat panel ones. I bought a Refreshed CRT eMac, it was the store managers machine. Not a mark, flaw or issue mechanically. The eMac is a 1.25 Ghz, the TiBook is a 667 Mgz but both are G4 chips.

9

System Preferences > Displays has a brightness slider. For more advanced adjustments, click the Color tab to access the monitor calibration assistant.