New Stuff at Boston
Frederick A. Huxham
Someone asked for a summary of what was at the Boston MacWorld Expo, so here
goes.
I arrived at the expo Thursday morning after a wonderful week in New York.
The show was very large, with all the major vendors there. I don't have
names and addresses of all the stuff I'm going to talk about but maybe others
can fill in the parts I leave out.
Apple announced the APDA, (Apple Programmers and Developers Association),
which, as was mentioned in an earlier posting, will handle the sales and
distribution of all programmer type stuff. This includes Tech Notes,
Software Supplements, MPW, MDS, Third party compilers, books (they didn't
have mine available yet...argghhh), just about anything that could be remotely
related to software development. The membership is $20, which at the show
included a copy of Scott Knaster's book "How to write Macintosh Software",
(which by the way is an awsome book), a poster, a catalog, and a newsletter.
You can order the beta version of MPW from APDA, $100 for the shell and
assembler, $75 for the C Compiler, $75 for the Pascal Compiler, and $50
for MacApp. There is NO upgrade path to the finished version however.
There's also a new version of Smalltalk, version 0.3, for the MacPlus...$50.
The address for APDA is:
Apple Programmer's & Developer's Association
290 SW 43rd Street
Renton, WA 98055
(206) 251-6548
There was dBase for the Mac by Ashton Tate. I know nothing about IBM dBase
so I can't say if it is similar or not. It did however, have a nice normal
Mac Interface. Big bucks..$495.
LightSpeed Pascal was there, list $125, ComputerWare had it for $89. It
almost makes me want to go back to Pascal. Tremendous debugging facilities.
The little hand tracing through your code, a la MacPascal, as well as a low
level debugger like TMON. The object code is not compatable with LS C. The
next version of the C compiler will be available sometime in September.
There were two companies at the show selling large external screens.
MegaScreen from Micrographics Images lists for $2995, E Screen from
E Machines Inc lists for $1995. I liked the E screen better, it didn't
have the flicker the MegaScreen had. There was also a third company
showing a monitor to a few people at their hotel room, it is perhaps the best
of all the monitors and will be announced at the Seybold Desktop Publishing
Conference in early September.
The U.S. company that was writing MacAuthor, which got purchased by Next Inc.,
was showing their word processor, (now called WriteNow I think), at the
T/Maker booth. It won't be available until October, but it looks like,
(from what I've seen), the best of the new word processors. Better than
Multi-Write, MacAuthor (UK), HabaWord, WordHandler, etc...
Andy Hertzfeld gave a talk and demonstrated "Servant", a program that will
replace the finder, switcher, resource editor, font/da mover, and who knows
what else. This program has so many features (in only 40K of code), it's
disgusting. I won't even try and describe it here, you just have the see
it. At the show he sort of gave out version .79 by putting it on one of
the hard disks in the hands-on area. I don't know if its ok to post it or
not....I'll look into it. One funny thing about the .79 version is that at
midnight on Halloween, the program will self destruct and turn into a
pumpkin. Honest. His reason for doing so is that by that time, there will
be a new improved version available, and he wants people to use the latest
version.
Consulair had version 5.0 available. It allows you to declard Pascal
functions, and supposedly compiles twice as fast.
Aztec was showing their source level debugger, which will be available
sometime later this year.
Zillions of SCSI hard disks and tape backups. Hyperdrive had an external
SCSI - $1195. It supports disk tags. SuperMac's dataframe also supposedly
supports disk tags as well. The only two hard disks beside Apple's.
Farallon computing had wired up a bunch of the booths with Phone-Net before
the show began. During the show, Centram had Tops running over the Phone-Net
between Macs, PC's, and Unix machines. It was pretty impressive.
BMUG and MacroMind threw big parties every night, throughout the suite were
a bunch of Macs, all phone-netted together so that people could play
MacroMind's new game: "Maze Wars Plus". It was a lot of fun.
InfoSphere was showing "LaserServe", a print spooler for Mac and LaserWriter.
There was a company showing a flat-screen Mac called "DynaMac". The
company apparently puts a 512K mother board in a new case with a built in
drive, modem, 2 or 4 megs, and an electro luminescent orange screen. Some
of my friend thought it was neat, I thought it was horrible. Decide for
yourself.
I can't think of anything more right now, the products I mentioned above
were the "neat" new things. I'd be happy to try and answer any questions
people might have about the show.
Fred A. Huxham
Emil Rainero
>Mac Interface. Big bucks..$495.
>
>LightSpeed Pascal was there, list $125, ComputerWare had it for $89. It
>almost makes me want to go back to Pascal. Tremendous debugging facilities.
>The little hand tracing through your code, a la MacPascal, as well as a low
>level debugger like TMON. The object code is not compatable with LS C. The
>next version of the C compiler will be available sometime in September.
>
Does anyone have a phone number or address of ComputerWare? I finally have
given up with Consulair C and all the other big name mail order houses
(macConnect, Programs Plus, Northwest SW) aren't stocking Lightspeed C yet.
Think has it for $175, but I was hoping to get it for less. Any help
would be appreciated.
David Phillip Oster
You can get their precise number from the phone company.
I've got a Dataframe 20, and I am happy with it except it occasionaly
makes a high pitched whining sound. One of my friends, bothered by this
problem on HIS Dataframe 20 called the company and was told that there is
a small, copper, anti-static brush near the hub of the disk spindle that
occasionally touches the spindle and makes that unpleasant noise. It
turns out the drive doesn't need it, it sheds static just fine without it,
and Dataframe 20s no longer include it. The company described the
procedure for removing it.
You can test a drive for noise in the store, but that only tells you about
that particular drive, and many drives get noiser as they age. I'm glad
to hear that the noise of an aging Dataframe 20 can be fixed, and I'll
make the mnod as soon as the company tells me personally that it is okay,
and how to do it.
Marc Hannah
was made so here is the info:
Computer Ware Ordering No: 800-323-1133 CA only
109 California Ave. 800-235-1155 USA
Palo Alto, Ca. 94306 415-323-7557 info only
I don't mail order from them but I do go into the store and they are
very nice, interested in pleasing the customer and they know quite
a bit about the Mac (unlike most dealers!). Their flyer indicates a
$30 minimum for mail orders.
David Gelphman BITNET address: DAVEG@SLACVM
Bin #88 SLAC ARPANET address: DA...@SLACVM.BITNET
Stanford, Calif. 94305 UUCP address:...psuvax1!daveg%slacvm.bitnet
415-854-3300 x2538
usual disclaimer #432 applies: my employer apologies for the fact
that I have access to this net.
Jason Haines
Could you PLEASE post Servant0.79 ??
Thanks in advance,
Jason