The news that Macs may not, after all, be safe from Y2K problems has caused some ripples in the Macintosh world, but the stories appear to be based on a misunderstanding.
Over the weekend, myriad online Mac news sites claimed that, contrary to announcements from Apple, Macs are not safe from the Y2K bug. The stories were apparently triggered by a press release issued by a Toronto software company, which has released a new utility to test the Y2K compliance of Mac software.
Pedagoguery Software's Year 2000 Software Audit analyzes the files on a Mac hard drive, determining whether the files are Y2K compliant and pointing to appropriate updaters and patches.
Matthew Rothenberg, director of content at MacWeek.com, said the story had been blown out of proportion.
"Anyone who puts Y2K and Macs in the same sentence is bound to get a lot of attention," Rothenberg said. "It's a highly emotional topic that's stirring up a lot of interest. I mean, Apple's made no bones about the Mac's immunity to Y2K issues, particularly at the Super Bowl. It's bound to create a lot of interest, but I think there's very little to it."
Apple aired an expensive TV ad during the Super Bowl. According to Apple's Year 2000 Web page, "The Mac OS and most Mac applications can handle internally generated dates correctly all the way to the year 29,940."
Nothing has changed, according to Apple spokesman Russell Brady. "We think it's a bit of headline grabbing by Pedagoguery. We stand by our claim that Macintosh computers can handle the transition between December 31, 1999, and the year 2000."
Pedagoguery claims that applications that bypass the Mac OS' built-in date-handling routines or use externally generated dates, such as programs that read forms, are indeed susceptible to Y2K problems.
"It's not a problem with the Mac itself," said Jeff Tupper, Pedagoguery's head of development. "It's a problem with some older documentation. If programmers use older documentation, they may introduce Y2K errors into their Mac software."
According to Tupper, Apple's older guidelines to programmers do not explain that dates coded only in two digits, such as "99" for "1999," will be handled incorrectly by the Mac OS' built-in routines. Consequently, programmers may have introduced problems in their software.
Ted Landau, webmaster of MacFixIt, said since 1991 Apple has urged developers to code dates in four digits. Additionally, Landau said the Mac OS has a whole host of routines for handling most of the likely problems caused by dates coded in two digits.
"In general, there isn't a serious Y2K problem on the Mac," Landau said. "Most applications should be just fine."
