YEAR 2000 PROBLEM? NOT IF YOU'RE ON A MAC

You can hardly turn on the TV or walk past a newsstand these days without hearing more gloom and doom about computerdom's Year 2000 problem. You know the routine: When January, 1, 2000, ticks around, the change in centuries will bewilder the internal clocks of creaky, old mainframes and many PCs, causing unpredictable chaos as financial records get scrambled, utility systems shut down, and the IRS goes dark, well maybe. What to do in the face of this potential maelstrom? If you're using a Macintosh, the answer is sit tight.

While Y2K issues for PCs have been pretty well documented (see BW, Mar. 2, 1998, Tech & You, "What About Your Millennium Bug?"), Mac users look like they'll be able to squeak by relatively unscathed. Perhaps it's because of its 1984 introduction, four years after the first IBM PC went on sale. Or maybe it was just plain old common sense. But the Mac OS has always been Year 2000-savvy, even on that first 128k machine (before it was called the Mac OS).

Here's the reason: The original Mac's date and time utilities store the date as one long number, counting up the seconds from January 1, 1904, 'til whatever the current time is. This plan is not foolproof, however, for while it handles 2000 with nary a shudder, it has a 6:28:16 a.m., February 6, 2040, problem. That's because the original scheme alotted only enough space to count the seconds until that moment in time. Current versions of the Mac OS have moved on to a more forward-thinking time-storage system (a 64-bit signed value, if you must know), which should allow it to keep on ticking until the 29,940 -- and count back to 30,081 B.C. (handy for archeologists).

If you want to test out your Mac's Y2K-ability, Apple recommends one of two methods: a shut-down test or a live test. To start, open up the "Date & Time" control panel, and set the date to 12/31/99 and the time to 11:59:00 p.m. For the shut-down test, turn off the machine and wait a full minute before powering it back up. For the live test, just kick back and watch your Mac tick into the next century. Champagne is optional.

While fiddling with the Date & Time control panel, you might notice that it doesn't allow you to enter dates after 2019 (in fact, it reverts to 1920 if you keep clicking). Apple says this is a feature, not a bug, done to ensure backward compatibility with earlier versions of the OS. The Date & Time control panel is slated to be changed to take advantage of the 29,940 date ceiling in a future OS upgrade, before it becomes a pressing issue. You may want to wait to see if the human race survives before rushing out to upgrade, though.

But don't you Mac-o-philes get too puffed up. Just because the OS can see into 29,939, that doesn't necessarily mean every app on your hard drive will handle Y2K with similar aplomb. Apple cautions that some applications use custom date routines instead of operating system services, and they may go awry. In addition, some applications "default" to 20th century dates if only two digits are entered to express the year. To enter the next century, you may either need to type in a four-digit year or adjust the program's preferences to "turn on" 21st century dates. If you have questions about a specific application, you should contact the manufacturer and ask if it's "year 2000 ready." Of course none of this fixes the empty bank accounts, the powerless power plants, or the IRS. If they had only used Macs...

By Patrick Lambert
Staff Reporter, Business Week Online