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From Frying Pan to Fire

Steve Mann

Things just keep forging ahead whether you like it or not. We just finished tying up all the lose odds and ends from MADACON, and now WWDC looms on the horizon. Depending on when you read this column, MADA will be, is, or has been at WWDC. We arranged to have a table in the Concourse section as in previous years. We will be recruiting new members, selling the MADACON '93 CD-ROM (yes, it's done), and offering some WWDC product specials (if everything goes according to plan, there should be an insert in this issue of FrameWorks detailing the specials). In addition, we are holding a special WWDC meeting at the San Jose Hilton. I'll report all the details next issue in my WWDC report.

One final piece of MADACON '93 business before we move ahead to new challenges. Those of you that went to our conference in San Diego know about the banquet. For those of you not in attendance, some background. The day of the Sea++World banquet it rained. In fact, it was quite stormy. Having polled the attendees as we registered them, we knew that many of the conference goers were very interested in seeing the Shamu the Killer Whale show. We shortened the day's conference agenda and arranged special bus transportation specifically so that people could get to the park in time.

That Thursday, it was so stormy that SeaWorld canceled the final Shamu show of the day. Unfortunately (probably due to inclement weather) they forgot tell us. Quite a few conference goers got on the buses and schlepped through near-squall conditions to see a show that no longer existed. They were not pleased.

There is a happy ending. After contacting SeaWorld and expressing our displeasure, they sent us a batch of half-price admittance tickets, each good for multiple adults and children. These tickets are valid through the end of 1993. Any MADACON attendees that will be back in the San Diego area this year are welcome to contact us for a ticket. Depending on the response, we will probably have some leftovers for members who did not actually make it to MADACON as well. Our thanks to SeaWorld for their customer-oriented service.

NEW (AND NOT SO NEW) PRODUCTS

Enough fish stories. Once again, I'm pleased to announce some new product acquisitions. First, in response to numerous member requests, we are now an official distributor for Rational's Booch Components. After the Bedrock team announced at MADACON '93 that they were licensing a subset of Rational's second-generation C++ class library, a lot of people expressed an interest in this product. After a quick inquiry, we signed up to sell the components. The discount is not as substantial as we like to offer our members (the retail price is $495, the MADA member price is $440), but it's the best we can currently offer under the terms of our agreement with Rational. Look for articles about this component library in future issues of FrameWorks.

Second, as I mentioned in my opening, the MADACON '93 CD-ROM is finished. It contains close to 600 MBytes of stuff. We were able to get at least slides for almost all sessions (about five are missing). Unfortunately, Taligent would not let us include Mike Potel's slides from his outstanding banquet keynote, but we were able to include the soundtrack. There's also a QuickTime™ movie with slides and audio of the keynote Bedrock session. It's a great overview of Bedrock (of course after WWDC, it will probably be very old news). There are lots of demo programs (like ObjectMaster 2.0, Ad Lib 2.0, BETA, Camelot, NeoAccess, and the complete Iconix product line), source code (C++, MacApp, Serius, Prograph, and BETA), and a huge quantity of stuff about Microsoft's Foundation Classes version 2.0 (including MPW-compatible source code), courtesy of Steve Sinofsky.

Finally, thanks to the tireless efforts of Dan Strnad of Apple's Developer Technical Support group, we included the highlights of the MADACON '92 CD-ROM, including everything that happened on Apple Day, the Developer University Intro to MacApp 3.0 course, Kent Sandvik on debugging, an advanced C++ tutorial, and more. Dan also slipped in the latest versions of Swatch and ZoneRanger, two Mac debugging tools. The MADACON '92 content really captures the essence of MacApp 3.0, including some information that cannot be found anywhere else. The MADACON '93 content is a broad assortment about things we may be using in the future.

Finally, I like to announce the availability of Ad Lib 2.0ß1. As most of you know, Ad Lib is the only third-party ViewEdit replacement that lets you build and manage MacApp 3.0-compatible views. This version has lots of new features and enhancements. See page three for more details and ordering information.

product evaluators

Finally, I like to mention that we're looking for some volunteers to help us evaluate products for possible publishing or distribution. Since taking over as MADA's manager, I've felt strongly that we need to offer the best possible OO tools to our members. It's one way to add serious value to each membership, and, quite frankly, it helps us stay in business. Unfortunately, we're starting to get so many inquiries about publishing (the good news) that we can't possibly look at all of the products in a timely fashion (the bad news). We need members with C++, MacApp, frameworks, and basic software development and debugging experience that have a few hours a month to evaluate products for us. In the near future, we will probably need people with OODL and Think C experience as well. If any of you are interested, please contact me at 408/253-2765 or MADA@AppleLink.Apple.Com.