Mac Expert 1995 Winter/Mac Expert - Winter 95.iso/Les fichiers/Tidbits/Tidbits 201 à 280/TidBITS#210⁄24-Jan-94

Text File | 1994-01-24 | 29.0 KB | 617 lines | [TEXT/ttxt]

TidBITS#210/24-Jan-94
=====================

Happy Birthday, Macintosh! We glance back at Apple's view of its
   past through quotes from annual reports and then look forward
   at some of the intriguing new technologies Apple plans for the
   future. A few small comments, the embedded speech commands
   necessary to make your Mac sing Happy Birthday, and the issue
   rounds out with a review of a most interesting program, Meeting
   Space from World Benders, which creates virtual conference
   centers on any network.

This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* APS Technologies -- 800/443-4199 -- [e-mail]
   Makers of hard drives, tape drives, memory, and accessories.
   For APS price lists, email: [e-mail]

Copyright 1990-1994 Adam & Tonya Engst. Details at end of issue.
   Automated info: <[e-mail]> Comments: <[e-mail]>
   --------------------------------------------------------------

Topics:
    MailBITS/24-Jan-94
    Happy Birthday, Macintosh!
    Singing Macs
    New Apple Technologies
    Meeting Space
    Reviews/24-Jan-94

[Archived as /info-Mac/per/tb/tidbits-210.etx; 30K]


MailBITS/24-Jan-94
------------------
  Several people wrote to correct my inexact terminology in talking
  about URLs pointing at files available on the nets via FTP (and,
  at times in the future, Gopher or the World-Wide Web). URLs are
  not part of the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) as such, although
  they are somewhat related, given their joint usage on the World-
  Wide Web.


**Dataproducts Damage** -- Mark Anbinder <[e-mail]>
  writes: A number of computer industry companies were affected by
  last Monday's earthquake, centered near Northridge, California,
  just north of Los Angeles. Perhaps the most striking example is
  Dataproducts, a manufacturer of popular printers and other
  peripherals. The company's main manufacturing plant apparently
  shifted two feet from its original location during the quake,
  causing serious damage to some of their equipment.


**Auto Power Conflict** -- Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>
  writes: I thought I'd pass along this warning: Auto Power On/Off
  is _violently_ incompatible with my MacTCP-based Network Time
  control panel, which synchronizes the Macintosh clock with a
  network time server on the Internet. The problem is due to a
  severe violation of the Apple specs by the Auto Power On/Off
  control panel. Auto Power On/Off puts in a patch to the system
  "SetDateTime" routine, which Network Time uses. Unfortunately,
  this patch calls the system PPCToolBox routines _synchronously_,
  which basically means that SetDateTime is not safe to be called
  from interrupt, as it is documented to be. Since Network Time
  does almost all of its work at interrupt time, to insure that
  the time being set is exact, the Auto Power On/Off patch will
  always hang the Mac dead. Apple has been notified of this problem
  and is working on a response. In the meantime, don't mix this
  broken piece of software with Network Time.

ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/mactcp/other/network-time-201.hqx


Happy Birthday, Macintosh!
--------------------------
  Today's the day, the day that the Macintosh was in some sense
  born. Apple introduced the Macintosh 128K on January 24th, 1984.
  Apple PR kindly sent me a slew of Apple propaganda about the
  event, including Apple's Annual Reports over the last ten years.
  From those reports, I've pulled a few telling quotes, quotes that
  point at Apple's conception of itself, perhaps accurate, perhaps
  not, and that show milestones in the evolution of the Macintosh
  and of Apple. I'll let you make of them what you will.


1984
  "It's difficult to get people to work so hard for so long. But the
  Macintosh group was inspired with a fervor, not just for the
  machine they were designing, or the brand new markets they would
  open up, but for the thrill of working with great people. This
  fervor even hid the clear fact that no sane person believed the
  design would ever be finished. The best people to do an impossible
  job are those who don't know it's impossible."

  "The new challenge for the Macintosh group is to make the
  Macintosh the second standard in business."


1985
  "By any measure, Macintosh is one of the most successful new
  computers of this decade, with an installed base of more than
  500,000 systems in just 20 months after its introduction."

  "We believe desktop publishing will be important in companies all
  sizes, large and small."


1986
  "The Macintosh Plus computer and the LaserWriter Plus printer
  opened the door for Apple in business. In the early spring, we
  introduced the Macintosh 512K Enhanced, a more affordable version
  of the Macintosh Plus."

  "Each of these products remains true to Apple's design philosophy:
  No matter how powerful the system, keep it simple to set up and
  operate."


1987
  "1987 was a year of good news for Apple Computer. The best news of
  all for Apple and our shareholders is simply this: the idea works.
  The fundamental Apple idea that the individual, not the mainframe,
  belongs at the center of the computing universe."

  "In August, at the Macworld trade show in Boston, we introduced
  two new system software products that are as important to the
  evolution of Macintosh technology as the hardware of the Macintosh
  SE and Macintosh II [introduced on 02-Mar-87]. Those products are
  MultiFinder and HyperCard."

  "Early in 1987, we sold our one-millionth Macintosh -
  demonstrating that we'd succeeded in establishing Macintosh as a
  viable second standard in business, while maintaining our
  leadership in education."


1988
  "In 1988, what changed Apple's world was the Macintosh II. Its
  global acceptance positioned Apple as a mainstream business
  computer company, and continued to strengthen our leadership
  position in education."

  "Meanwhile, Apple desktop publishing moved into its third
  generation in 1988. The Macintosh II, with its ability to drive
  multiple big-screen monitors, supports up to 16 megabytes of RAM
  and runs professional publishing software from developers such as
  Quark and Aldus, bringing a new depth and power to desktop
  publishing."

  "In March, we introduced the AppleCD SC, a compact disc, read-only
  memory (CD-ROM) drive that can be used with either Macintosh or
  Apple II computers. CD-ROM is the next step in the information
  revolution."


1989
  "With a 30 percent increase in net sales, Apple grew large by more
  than $1 billion. We owe this dramatic growth to an array of
  successful new products. Early in the year, the Macintosh SE/30,
  the first compact Macintosh with Motorola's advanced 68030
  microprocessor, renewed users' excitement with the classic
  Macintosh design."

  "Shortly thereafter, we introduced the Macintosh IIcx, a powerful
  modular Macintosh with a smaller footprint, and it quickly won
  global acceptance. In the fourth quarter, we introduced the
  Macintosh IIci, an even higher-speed version of the IIcx. And we
  introduced a product the world had been weighting for [Oops,
  sorry! That's "waiting for" -Adam]: the innovative Macintosh
  Portable."

  "Our vision of personal computer has been validated by some of the
  best in our industry as they attempt to create 'Mac-like'
  computers and software."


1990
  "We recognized early in the year that to meet the needs of our
  customers, we had to expand our product line to include more
  affordable computers. The result, after months of tremendous
  effort, was the reaffirmation of Apple's original vision of
  Macintosh as 'the computer for the rest of us.'"

  "1990 also saw increasing globalization in the computer industry.
  Worldwide product launches became commonplace, and the tailoring
  of system software to many languages, once rare, became a
  competitive necessity. Apple international sales grew to account
  for 42 percent of net revenues."


1991
  "We introduced the Macintosh PowerBook 100, 140, and 170. These
  small, lightweight, and powerful notebook computers make 'anytime,
  anywhere' computing a reality."

  "In addition to expanding its line of Macintosh hardware in 1991,
  Apple extended its lead in system software, directly taking on the
  competition from graphics-based operating software such as
  Microsoft Windows 3.0. On May 13, at Apple's worldwide developers'
  conference, we introduced System 7, our next-generation system
  software for the Macintosh."

  "On October 2, 1991, Apple forged a long-term alliance with the
  International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) - a move that
  took many in the industry by surprise."


1992
  "Two words summarize Apple's personal computing business in 1992:
  strong momentum. Unit shipments of Apple Macintosh personal
  computers grew by 20 percent, outpacing the industry. In 1992,
  Apple sold more than 2.5 million Macintosh personal computers."

  "Sales of Macintosh PowerBook computers account for much of our
  growth. Apple sold more than 400,000 PowerBook computers in fiscal
  1992, representing $1 billion in net sales."

  "In 1992, we introduced more new Macintosh models - twelve in all
  - than in any other year in our history."


1993
  "We shipped more than 3.3 million Macintosh and PowerBook personal
  computers, brought to market the first product based on our Newton
  Intelligence technology, and shipped our first family of hardware
  and software server products."

  "To keep pace with customer expectations, we cut prices on Apple
  Macintosh and PowerBook computers by up to 34 percent and
  introduced new models at - or in some cases below - the prices of
  competitive products."

  "In 1993, we remained on schedule with the development of our
  first Macintosh systems based on the PowerPC architecture. The
  PowerPC 601 is the first microprocessor resulting from our
  sweeping technology alliance with IBM and Motorola. Apple plans to
  deliver its initial PowerPC processor-based Macintosh systems in
  the first half of calendar year 1994."


Singing Macs
------------
  In honor of the Mac's 10th birthday, Jon Kleiser
  <[e-mail]> worked up this set of embedded speech commands
  (with some bits modified intentionally to sound better - hence
  "Mackintosh") for Apple's Speech Manager. You must have the Speech
  Manager installed, and you need one of the many programs that can
  translate the text below into speech. I found Speaker 1.12 on my
  hard disk and it worked fine. You can find these on the nets as:

ftp://ftp.apple.com/dts/mac/sys.soft/speech/speech-manager.hqx
ftp://sumex-aim.stanford.edu/info-mac/snd/util/speaker-112.hqx

[[rset 0]] [[pmod 0; rate 110; pbas 45]] Happy [[pbas +2]]birth[[pbas
-2]]day [[pbas +5]]to [[pbas -1]]you, [[pbas -4]]Happy [[pbas
+2]]birth[[pbas -2]]day [[pbas +7]]to [[pbas -2]]you, [[pbas -5]]Happy
[[pbas +12]]birth[[pbas -3]]day [[pbas -4]]to [[pbas -1]]Mackin[[pbas
-2]]tosh, [[pbas +8]]You are [[pbas -1]]ten [[pbas -4]]years [[pbas
+2]]to[[pbas -2]]day.

[[rset 0]] [[pmod 0; rate 110; pbas 45]] Happy [[pbas +2]]birth[[pbas
-2]]day [[pbas +5]]to [[pbas -1]]you, [[pbas -4]]Happy [[pbas
+2]]birth[[pbas -2]]day [[pbas +7]]to [[pbas -2]]you, [[pbas -5]]Happy
[[pbas +12]]birth[[pbas -3]]day [[pbas -4]]to [[pbas -1]]Mackin[[pbas
-2]]tosh, [[pbas +8]]I have [[pbas -1]]heard [[pbas -4]]worse [[pbas
+2]]than [[pbas -2]]this.


New Apple Technologies
----------------------
  Along with the PowerPC, Apple showed in its Macworld Apple
  Pavilion a number of upcoming future technologies that promise to
  add to the power and the complexity of the Macintosh experience.
  Perhaps, if we're lucky, some will add to the overall enjoyment of
  that experience as well.


Scriptable Finder
  I suspect that one of the technologies that we'll see soon is the
  Scriptable Finder. Those who have used Frontier and AppleScript
  know that the Finder is not particularly scriptable and does not
  support script recording. People have hacked around some of the
  Finder's scripting limitations in AppleScript, and Frontier has
  long been able to bend the Finder to its will. Still, the
  Scriptable Finder (which, if I remember my rumors right, may
  appear this spring), will be welcome, and for scripting weenies
  like me, the recordability will make it easier to get started.
  Much of my problem with scripting the Finder is that unlike a
  rigid DOS system in which there are relatively few directories due
  to the difficulty in navigating and managing them, a complex
  Macintosh file hierarchy doesn't play by as many rules, making it
  harder to discover patterns that cry out for a script.


QuickDraw GX
  I'm not a printing fiend - it took me over three years to finish
  off the toner cartridge that came with my laser printer. So, I
  have less enthusiasm for QuickDraw GX than I'm sure many people
  do. In brief, QuickDraw GX is a long-awaited rewrite of how the
  Macintosh handles device-independent display of fonts and graphics
  along with a more powerful printing architecture. Those who print
  constantly will appreciate queue control and a completely-
  redesigned print dialog box. QuickDraw GX has improved color
  management technology to ensure that colors are consistent across
  different output devices and other Macs. Along with improved
  low-level graphics functionality for developers, QuickDraw GX
  includes more advanced typographical capabilities, automating the
  process of dealing with line spacing, kerning, ligatures, and the
  like.

  Perhaps the most interesting new feature in QuickDraw GX, which I
  had not heard about before Macworld, is the capability to create
  portable documents. As far as I can tell, you can essentially
  print to a special file that QuickDraw GX can then display
  properly on any QuickDraw GX-equipped Mac. This sounds exactly
  like what Adobe, No Hands Software, and Farallon have done with
  Acrobat, Common Ground, and Replica, respectively, except for the
  fact that it would be built into the system software. I haven't
  heard anything about cross-platform capabilities for the portable
  documents, but Apple would be foolish not to create some sort of
  limited reader for DOS and Windows. Of course, they may avoid
  doing that purely to avoid the competition with the existing
  portable document architectures, not that any of them have wowed
  the market.


Apple Interactive Help
  Of all of the new technologies features, Apple Interactive Help
  has the most promise in terms of helping the most Macintosh users.
  At the same time though, it is the least impressive and seemed to
  be more highly touted than its capabilities warranted. Admittedly
  the Apple person gave a lame demo, but perhaps there wasn't
  anything cool to show.

  As far as I could tell, Apple Interactive Help is a system level
  text browser offering "how do I?"-oriented questions and answers.
  You can search or browse through it, and if you wish, create your
  own help databases. However, I saw no indication of interactivity
  other than the fact that the user could search in it, and I saw no
  indication of context-sensitivity that would allow it to suggest
  answers to your unspoken questions. I don't want it making
  suggestions without being asked, since there's no accounting for
  personal methods of working, but it seems that we've advanced
  sufficiently that we can go beyond balloon help and little help
  browsers.

  I may have suggested this before, but I'd like to see the concept
  of user level in help. Balloon help bugs me because it's so
  stinking persistent - listen to it and you'd think that I didn't
  know that I was pointing at an inactive window after years of
  using a Macintosh (and yes, I know how to remove those messages).
  If only we could code help balloons, and now sections of the Apple
  Interactive Help database, such that they would appear once no
  matter what level, but then only appear if they were judged to be
  of interest. So, for instance, I would see the balloon telling
  what Open does once, but never again. However, the balloon
  informing me what the modifier keys go with an obscure menu item
  would continue to pop up until I explicitly dismissed it.


Macintosh Drag & Drop
  One of the most interesting features in Word 5.0 was drag & drop
  editing. I was an initial skeptic but now admit that it works
  well. (I use it all the time in Nisus.) I believe some high-end
  graphics and layout programs enable you to drag and drop graphics
  and text blocks from one document to another rather than forcing
  you to use copy & paste or the Scrapbook. Macintosh Drag & Drop
  takes these ideas and implements them to the hilt, so you can drag
  & drop text and graphics from one application to another. Of
  course, for those of you who have yet to convert to the religion
  of multiple monitors, it may be difficult to view both documents
  on screen at once. Apple helps you with this by letting you drop a
  selection on the Finder, to create a Clippings file which you can
  later drag into a different document window. Barring the problem
  of screen real estate for many people, I have high hopes for
  Macintosh Drag & Drop.


OpenDoc
  Last, but most certainly not least, Apple showed OpenDoc. I cannot
  hope to do OpenDoc justice in this small space, but the idea is
  that it provides a document-centric interface with applications
  appearing only as tools (think ClarisWorks). As it initially
  stands, you can create a document in any OpenDoc-savvy application
  (being a container is the easiest level of savvyness and
  theoretically requires almost no code changes, whereas later
  levels may require almost complete rewrites) and then use any
  other application or part of another application that knows about
  OpenDoc as a tool within the first.

  At a basic level, OpenDoc works much as Microsoft's OLE does
  today, where you can embed an Excel spreadsheet in a Word
  document, and clicking on that spreadsheet launches Excel, as
  though you opened an Excel worksheet from the Finder. However,
  instead of a behemoth like Excel, eventually we'll see tiny
  applications, or tools, that do specific tasks. The big issue here
  is that programs must be rewritten to work in this fashion, and in
  theory large companies with big programs (WordPerfect, as one of
  the early OpenDoc supporters, will probably face this soon) will
  break programs into different tools that the user can use in any
  OpenDoc application.

  What difference will OpenDoc make to us users? WordPerfect and
  friends (although I seriously doubt that Microsoft will support
  OpenDoc, since they see it as competition for OLE) will probably
  continue to sell large, expensive packages of many modules that
  combine to offer the same features as the behemoth programs of
  today. My hope is that these programs will instead be split up so
  that you can purchase a set of the necessary modules and fill out
  your collection with modules from other vendors that work better
  for you. If priced properly, this technique should lead to cheaper
  or similarly priced complete solutions, but the solutions will be
  customized and better suited to specific tasks. In an equally
  ideal world, small developers will sell modules that are highly
  tuned for specific tasks, in contrast to the checklist-pleasing
  modules that the large companies ship. I hope that small
  developers stay in business in this way, but frankly, I'm
  concerned since the tasks of marketing, selling, and supporting a
  module may be too great for a small developer to bear, even if she
  can produce a tremendously cool module. The only hope for such
  developers might be to go completely electronic, since the
  Internet amplifies the individual and enables a single person to
  do the marketing and tech support work of many.

  In any event, I'm rambling slightly, because even though Apple
  showed some OpenDoc code running, it's still difficult to get a
  sense of how well it will all be implemented in the end, or if the
  market will change to accept OpenDoc. Sure, IBM, Novell, Taligent,
  Oracle, and Xerox are also OpenDoc supporters, but since when has
  an industry alliance meant squat for creating something that
  works, and that works for a large number of real users?

  If you wish to stay up on what's happening with OpenDoc, Component
  Integration Laboratories has several low-volume mailing lists that
  talk about OpenDoc. To subscribe or to get more information, send
  email to:

    [e-mail]

  with one or more of these lines in the body of the letter:

    subscribe opendoc-announce [e-mail]
    subscribe opendoc-interest [e-mail]
    help


Meeting Space
-------------
  Tired of doing lunch? Don't want to wake up for a power breakfast?
  A small company called World Benders has a program for you. Called
  Meeting Space, the program creates a virtual conference center in
  which you can interact with your online colleagues. The idea
  behind Meeting Space is to make it easier and more efficient to
  meet with people, especially those who are, as my mother would
  say, geographically unsuitable. If you're spending more time or
  money getting to a meeting than it's worth, holding the meeting in
  the virtual conference center of Meeting Space can save time and
  money (and since time is money, I suppose that means it saves both
  money and money, always a popular feature).

  Meeting Space has a number of other advantages over physical
  meetings. Since everything takes place on your Mac, it's trivial
  to record the complete minutes of the meeting, or to transfer
  information from the meeting record to other applications (I hate
  transcribing). Unlike physical meetings, you can be in more than
  one place at once, and if the meeting gets slow, you can do
  something more productive than doodling on a pad (like switching
  out to your word processor). Finally, if you've ever been in a
  meeting with someone you don't know, it can be awkward to find out
  who they are and what they do, whereas in Meeting Space you can
  just click on that person's icon to display personal information,
  including phone number, job title, duties, and so on.

  I should note up front that Meeting Space is text and graphics-
  based - it doesn't attempt to do video or sound since few people
  have the necessary equipment and few networks can handle the
  traffic. However, you can appear as any one of a large set of
  icons (or make your own) and in fact you can clone yourself to
  appear in multiple places at the same time, and each clone can
  have a different icon to indicate its role or mood (I recommend a
  Clint Eastwood icon for the Monday morning hours before the first
  cup of coffee to properly warn your coworkers).

  Meeting Space provides tools for structuring meetings and keeping
  them moving, including agendas, automatic recorders, and
  presentation screens. Planned for future releases are tokens for
  speaking, moderator gavels, white boards, voting, and various
  privacy enhancements like digital signatures, encrypted network
  connections, and digital envelopes. You can create presentations
  in any application that can print or export data through copy &
  paste to the Scrapbook, and if you've ever had a bunch of people
  crowding around a small screen, you can see that a virtual
  presentation could work a lot better than a physical one.

  Should you wish to modify your virtual conference center, it's
  easy to do - you could recreate your physical offices or create
  your ideal offices. Either way, you don't have to worry about
  physical rooms being free or being large enough - Meeting Space
  can handle up to about 50 simultaneous connections, although
  that's somewhat dependent on the server hardware and the network
  load (a IIci can easily support about 20 people). World Benders is
  working with one company to create an online tech support center,
  and they're also working with a number of educational sites on
  things like language-learning centers, negotiation-skills centers,
  virtual classrooms for the gifted, and so on.

  Meeting Space requires a 68020 or better Macintosh along with
  System 7 and at least 1 MB of RAM and 1 MB of disk space (for
  either the client or the server). Meeting Space works over
  AppleTalk networks such as standard LocalTalk and modems connected
  via ARA, and over TCP/IP networks like the Internet with MacTCP
  and an appropriate connection (via a network or SLIP or PPP). The
  client software may be freely distributed, but the server software
  is a bit steep at $1,750 for a five-user license ($350 per user on
  a scale that drops the per-user cost to $200 for twenty users).
  World Benders offers discounts for site licenses, educational
  uses, and resellers. In general, they're aiming at the business
  market that can compare the cost of Meeting Space to a plane
  ticket, or even a dozen time-wasting trips across town, and
  quickly recoup the cost. In an especially clever move, the server
  allows more than the specified number of users to connect, but if
  you're over the limit (and this applies to everyone who connects
  after the limit is reached), it lets you connect for only 10
  minutes, enough time to get on, find someone, talk briefly, and
  get off. If someone else disconnects while you're on borrowed
  time, so to speak, you become a full user with no time limit. The
  client software is currently only available for the Macintosh, but
  World Benders plans to create Windows and Unix clients later this
  year.

  If you've been on the Internet for a while, you'll realize that
  what I've described is essentially a MUD, or Multi-User Dimension.
  I walked up to the booth at Macworld, and since I had never heard
  of Meeting Space or World Benders before, I asked Jon Callas,
  World Benders' Director, what Meeting Space was. Luckily he
  recognized my TidBITS card and instead of trying to describe the
  program in generalities, simply said, "It's a business MUD." That
  describes it perfectly, a MUD with a slick Macintosh interface
  devoted to making it easier to do business over long distances.
  MUDs have developed a bad reputation because of users becoming
  addicted to them, but I'm sure any business or organization would
  be thrilled to have its employees devote the same kind of time and
  attention to what goes on in Meeting Space as the less-productive
  MUDs on the Internet.

  Of course, with anything like this, the best way to check it out
  is to try it. World Benders doesn't yet have a high-speed link to
  the Internet, but would like to create a public Meeting Space on
  the Internet. If anyone would like to volunteer a Macintosh with
  an Ethernet link to the Internet as a public Meeting Space server,
  the World Benders folk have said they will donate a server and are
  interested in working the volunteer to create a useful and
  interesting Meeting Space that will serve as a demo of Meeting
  Space, a pleasant meeting place for Macintosh Internet users, and
  as a feedback mechanism for World Benders so they can find out
  what users think of Meeting Space. To reiterate, they want to help
  set up and run the demo area, not to just donate a server and go
  away. So, if you're interested in helping demo Meeting Space and
  providing a virtual meeting place for Macintosh Internet users,
  send World Benders email so they can pick someone. I will announce
  the site name when it comes up, and by that time World Benders
  should have posted the necessary client software to the nets.
  Extremely interesting!

    World Benders -- 603/881-5432 (voice & fax)
      [e-mail]

  Information from:
    World Benders propaganda
    Jon Callas, World Benders -- [e-mail]
    Tamzen Cannoy, World Benders -- [e-mail]


Reviews/24-Jan-94
-----------------

* MacWEEK -- 17-Jan-94, Vol. 8, #3
    Leaf Systems' The Lumina -- pg. 1
    Arrange 1.1 -- pg. 35
    PhotoFlash -- pg. 35
    VideoShop 2.0 -- pg. 38

* InfoWorld -- 17-Jan-94, Vol. 16, #3
    Portable Document Software -- pg. 66
      Adobe Acrobat Exchange for Mac and Windows 1.0
      Adobe Acrobat Distiller for Mac and Windows 1.0
      Common Ground for Windows 1.0
      Common Ground for Macintosh 1.0
      Replica 1.01
    DeltaGraph Pro 3.0 for Macintosh -- pg. 78
    Snap Mail 1.0.1-- pg. 94
    Elastic Reality -- pg. 95


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