San Francisco MacWorld Expo through glazed eyes... (too long)
Brian Bechtel
Expo. There were far too many things to see, so I'm just giving some
highlights that I found interesting in my own twisted way...
The hot items this time seemed to be hard disks, printers, and encryption
software. I'm overwhelmed. My eyes glaze over.
Please, somebody else post better reviews.
Four portables were widely shown: Apple, Colby, Dynamac, and Outbound.
Colby didn't have a booth, but they were on display at many other booths.
Both Colby and Dynamac are roughly the same size as the Apple Portable,
but contain an SE or SE/30 board. The SE/30 based portables are pretty
nice, but heavy. 415-941-9090, FAX: 415-949-1019.
Dynamac sells both Apple and Dynamac portables along with supporting
hardware and software. Dynamac's machine is not battery operated.
800-234-2349 or 303-296-0606, FAX: 303-296-9540.
Outbound's booth was crowded. Outbound's machine is okay; the screen is a
regular LCD scren, with all the advantages and disadvantages thereof, they
have their own pointing device, and battery life is claimed to be 2 hours.
Someone needs to do a more extensive review than I could do with 5
minutes of playing on it. 800-444-4607.
Wayzata Technology is shipping "The Best of MacTutor" CD-ROM; source code
for volumes 1-5 of MacTutor, cross-indexed with a program called TextWare.
800-735-7321 or 612-460-8438. They are shipping lots of other CD-ROMs as
well.
Lotus & Novell have announced they plan to merge. Novell has announced
that they are licensing FastPath to Shiva Corporation; Shiva FastPath is
the new name, and Shiva takes over everything. Lotus was showing
MicroDialects Announced version 3.0 of (mu)ASM, their family of cross
macro assemblers for the Mac. M...@applelink.apple.com for more
information.
Attention Jasmine Customers: Premier Computer Corp. fixes Jasmine and 130
other brands of hard disks. One year warranty with repair. 800-326-DISK
or 612-835-2586.
QLTech had three CD-ROMs for sale: Mega-ROM, 350 Mbytes of things (what I
viciously call "virusware") for $49. The Right Stuffed for $99; an entire
CD-ROM in StuffIt format, designed so that a BBS can have everything
online by mounting this CD-ROM. CD7, 700 Mbytes of things for $99. Show
special prices were a lot cheaper. They also released a press release
praising their pressing facility (Nimbus Info Systems of Arlington, VA)
and slamming Apple for dust-related hardware problems and finder desktop
limitations. 305-446-2477 FAX 305-447-0745.
iDS Systems, Inc. were showing some *tiny* hard disks; some were smaller
than the Apple 800K external floppy drive. Several pull power directly
from the Mac, so all you need is a SCSI cable. Capacities from 20-200 Mb.
800-733-0078 or 408-441-0500, FAX 408-441-0533.
NCL America showed a handheld color scanner, plus 200 dpi and 400 dpi
handheld scanners. 408-734-1006.
MacTech Quarterly magazine handed out fans with a dogcow saying "Boo Woo."
Nice try, folks. Dogcows do *not* say "Boo woo." 206-232-2480.
Peter Norton Computing was demonstrating the Norton Utilties for the
Macintosh. Spiffy user interface, and it seemed clean. Available April
22nd, they say. 213-319-2000, FAX 213-458-2048.
Another disk repair product was MacTools Deluxe from Central Point
Software. Better than PC Tools for the Mac. 503-690-8090.
Everyone and their brother is shipping a hard disk. I don't envy the
marketing intelligence people who have to keep up with the hard disk
market.
HP, Toshiba, and several smaller companies announced various printers for
the Macintosh. HP has 5 new printers, including a localtalk-equipped
color inkjet. Toshiba has a high quality dot matrix printer, the 321SL.
GDT Softworks of Burnaby, Canada has a bunch of printer drivers for
various other printers. GDT is at 604-291-9121, FAX 604-291-9689, or
GDT...@applelink.apple.com.
Hayden Books has a new book titled "Macintosh Repair & Upgrade Secrets" by
Larry Pina. It's designed for the 1-piece Macs.
Dan Allen's new book, "On Macintosh Programming: Advanced Techniques" was
almost sold out on the first half of the first day (Addison-Wesley is the
publisher).
Micron and DayStar Digital have cache cards for the Mac IIci. DayStar's
is $995, Micron's is $795. DayStar: 800-962-2077 or 404-967-2077, FAX
404-967-3018. Micron: 800-642-7661 or 208-368-3800, FAX: 208-368-4431.
Practical Solutions has an infared mouse plus something called a "Power
Strip" which attaches in-line with your ADB keyboard and lets you use the
power-on button to turn on your Mac and all its peripherals. Press twice
and everything shuts off. 602-322-6100, FAX 602-322-9271.
Bureau of Electronic Publishing sells more CD-ROM stuff than you can shake
a stick at. They seem to have the widest selection of drives, titles, and
software for both Mac and MS-DOS CD-ROMs 800-828-4766 or 201-808-2700, FAX
201-808-2676.
DDRI has a nice little booklet called the CD-ROM Shopper's Guide. They
also publish a free (controlled-circulation) magazine called CD-ROM End
User. 800-688-DDRI or 703-237-0682.
Disclaimers: All trademarks are owned by their respective owners. Apple
Computer, Inc. thinks all of these products are wonderful, and you should
go out and buy them all. Any other opinions expressed are mine, not
Apple's.
--Brian Bechtel bl...@apple.com "My opinion, not Apple's"
Richard Mossman
it is obvious that no one can effectively cover all of both Moscone and
Brooks Hall in one day and probably not in two).
What I noticed was all the video stuff. Almost every booth had a Canon
Xapshot hooked up to a frame grabber. MacroMind announced version 2.0 of
Director yesterday. NuVista was showing off their video enhancement/control
systems. There were so many flashy full motion video demos going on it was
pathetic. I guess what was most pathetic was that I can't afford most of
them (read that as nearly ALL of them).
It renewed my faith in the Mac as a system for the people (as long as the
people can afford it).
ARE YOU LISTENING OUT THERE, APPLE?
--
Richard K. Mossman {bellcore,sun,ames,pyramid}!pacbell!rkm
Work: 415/823-0974 Home: 415/754-6032
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The worst day skiing ... is always made better by discount lift tickets.
Richard Bretscheider
I don't know Brian. Don't you think it was all so much more exciting
when we weren't sure it would be around the next year? The little
glimmers of brilliance I saw at the first three MacWorlds were so much
more elegant than the blazing searchlights of industry blinding me
this week.
I miss the t-shirts too, the ones that were worn rather than stuffed
into MacWeak bags.
Ah well.
(You can't tell, but my tounge is in my cheek right now ;-)
--
Richard A. Bretschneider These are my words. My employer's
Ric Bret words are often spoken in haste, and
RAB rarely resemble my compassionate prose.
Paul Campbell
>I miss the t-shirts too, the ones that were worn rather than stuffed
>into MacWeak bags.
Yes!! too many suits!! (what you say, I was wearing a suit .... don't
be silly engineers don't wear suits .... well maybe just to please
marketting, still too many people walked up staring 'my god you're
wearing shoes!').
Seriously though I've seen this happen in two parts of the industry
now, I can remember when engineers didn't wear suits to Usenix, even
when they were doing booth duty. For a while there after they made us
wear suits no one would take us (technically) seriously.
As an industry 'matures' everyone starts to look the same and the shows
get less interesting, fewer and fewer really wonderfully new and
striking products (I think it's because all the relatively obvious stuff
gets done). Everyone ends up playing 'feature creep' with their competitors.
I too really enjoyed the first MacWorld.
Paul
PS: best party of the show was Tod Rundgren's! no suits!
--
Paul Campbell UUCP: ..!mtxinu!taniwha!paul AppleLink: CAMPBELL.P
"The current plan is to replace the flag with one with alternating vertical
black and white stripes of varying widths - this is thought to better represent
the country's system of government ..."
Avi Rappoport
domain software and freeware. We tried to take out all copyrighted pictures
and contact all pd software authors for permission.
The Winter/Spring Newsletter is also out (members will be sent their copies
in the next few weeks). Hundreds of pages of information and commentary.
(Actually, we did quite well at the show, I just wanted to spread the word)
Avi
(claimer: Board of Directors member and Newsletter Editor)
--
-- Help me justify my online bills: ask me EndNote questions, please! --
Avi Rappoport 2000 Hearst, Berkeley, CA 94709
nile...@well.sf.ca.us, 415-655-6666
Niles.Assoc on AppleLink fax: 415-649-8179
Alex Pournelle
price/performance. You're supposed to take out your SE or Plus's ROMs
and stick 'em into the thing, then you can only use the "base" computer
when the Wallaby is plugged in. (The chief of Tech Support herself told
me she "didn't know if it was legal to plug another set of ROMs in.")
Well, there are two possible ways to interpret this.
1) She didn't know that there are 10-17,000 sets of 100% legal 128K
ROMs floating the streets, waiting for a Mac to fall into.
Unlikely, as they are 30 miles from Dave's Gadgets By Small, and Mr.
Small has been to visit multiply.
2) She is running scared from Apple's Great Hairy Legal Foot.
Unfortunately, I think rather the lather is on the latter.
I personally couldn't use the "ISOPOINT" device on the Wallaby, but i
find myself rather used to mice of late.
The computer itself, frankly, doesn't compare favorably to an Atari
STacy with Spectre GCR for someone willing to support him/her/it/yxself.
(Note carefully what I said, there.) A 4Mbyte/40Mbyte HD STacy with GCR
can be had for about $3200, about the same as the floppyless Outbound.
And has a SCSI port, a trackball and a builtin HD for less than the base
model Outbound.
A very very nift-o booth was the DataDesk "build-a-keyboard" demo (not
its official name!). You decide what modules you need (main kbd, 10-key
pad, trackball, 3270 extended function keys, calculator display) and
where they go (left-handed computerists will love it!). And the
keyboard will plug into any PC, PS/2, AT, old Mac, or ADB system.
(there is talk about adding Amiga, since the Z8 processor has much code
room.) Highly interesting!
Alex
Woo. I have to be up in 5 hours!
Chris Silverberg
>The main problem with the Wallaby/Outbound Mac portable is the
>price/performance. You're supposed to take out your SE or Plus's ROMs
>and stick 'em into the thing, then you can only use the "base" computer
>when the Wallaby is plugged in. (The chief of Tech Support herself told
>me she "didn't know if it was legal to plug another set of ROMs in.")
But if you have a Plus or SE, and there aren't multiple users using this Mac,
(ie it is your own computer), then you really wouldn't WANT to buy extra ROMS.
The advantage is, while you have the Wallaby chained to the Plus, you double
your cpu time (16mhz), and you can use the Wallaby screen as a second screen.
A similar configuration to a Radius screen or something.
If you go ahead and buy ROM's floating around, then you'll lose this new
functionality of the Plus. (although you will be able to get multiple users).
And to your other comment, yes, Wallaby IS going to ignore all suggestions
that you'll simply go purchase extra ROMS. This is precisely to avoid
Apple Copywrite violations. That's why the Wallaby is marketed as a
"perperial device" as opposed to a computer. But WE know the real truth ;-)
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