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One Guy in Kansas

By Andy Nicholas

     July 20, 21, and 22 saw a gathering at Avila (ah-vill-a) college in
Kansas City unlike anything the Apple II community has ever seen.  It
was the A2-Central Apple II Developers conference and it was incredible.

     The show started thursday night with a party sponsored by Apple Computer
in the Avila Cafeteria.  It was timed just right because the first thing th
everyone seemed to do was to catch up on what everyone else was doing.
Everyone sat, stood, ate pizza, and basically got all the chit-chat out of the
way before the real meat of the conference began.  I don't know who suggested
that the conference be scheduled this way, but they certainly did a good job.
You see, at something like Applefest there's just no time or even space for
talking to other developers with the absolute crush of 20,000 show-goers.
People just talked themselves out until around 12pm when things finally broke
up and we went back to the ridgway dorm.

     I was told later that some of us yahoos stayed outside and talked on the
lawn outside ridgway until 2-3am, but I wasn't that daring and knew I'd have to
wake up and act semi-responsibly the next morning.  While I was walking
through ridgway it was nice to see developers of all stature next to each
other without any of the pretentions that big shows (like AppleFest or Comdex)
sometimes project.  Everyone quickly discarded the standard business suits
in favor of jeans and sneakers through out most of the conference.  Even
Apple's Home Markets Evangelist, Jonathan Fader, often known for his "dress to
kill" attire at AppleFest was surprisingly wearing sneakers and a regular
golf-tee.

    Randy Brandt from Beagle Bros (AppleWorks 3.0, TimeOut series) was just
down the hall from me as was Bill Stephens from So-What Software.  So-What
Software is a small shop operation run out of Fountain Valley California
that has done such projects for the IIgs as SONIX, ICONIX, and HyperLaunch.
This time Bill was raving about his latest project, Call Box, which is
basically a sort of IIgs program editor promising to be very much like
the Simple Software Genesys product.  Bill's sports an image editor (icons,
cursors, any sort of image.  Kind of like a mini-deluxepaint), window editor,
dialog editor, and menu editor.  All of Call-Box's editors outout either APW
source, linkable object code or resource files much the same way that
Genesys expects to.  I never did ask Bill when they expected to begin shipping,
but he sure did sound really up-beat about it.

    At almost that same time I met Chris Haun of RavenWare Software.  Chris
works for Davidson, the education software company, but was also showing his
latest effort, the System 5.0 compatible DesignMaster.  DesignMaster is
a program which performs much the same tasks as Call-Box or Genesys.  The
difference (for me) was that Chris's program is available in a System 4.0
version right now for $30 and a reasonable upgrade fee for the System 5.0
version for $5.  Chris demoed DesignMaster/5 for me the next day and I was
_very_ impressed with everything it can do.  If you program the IIgs and
use dialogs, windows, or any sorts of controls in windows, you should get
a copy of DesignMaster (especially if you're as cheap and desperate for a good
tool like I am).

    All in all, there were about 150 of us actually attending this conference,
but we had no idea what the next 2 days would hold for us.  When it happened,
it was amazing.

    Friday I actually managed to make it to breakfast and the first session of
the day, which, for me, was "Fonts,  LaserWriters, and the Apple II" where we
learned that Mark Collins was working hard on the A2-Central font clearing
house (about 15 disks filled with fonts) and had solved some the problems
people have with having to restart their system once they find that a font
they need to use is missing from their FONTS folder.  Mark's program, Font
Engineer does essentially what the Mac program, Suitcase, allows - add a
font to the "Fonts" list without rebooting your machine.  We also chatted with
some of Apple's Tool group and Developer Tech people about the non-existence of
any way to dump PostScript fonts to a LaserWriter.  Currently, if you want
to download fonts to a LaserWriter and use them to print stuff on your IIgs,
you have to use a Macintosh.  Most people with a GS and a LaserWriter aren't
going to consider downloading PostScript fonts to their laser printer if they
have to buy another $2500 machine to do it.  Apple's people said the problem
was being looked into, and in all fairness, Apple's had their hands full with
System 5.0 until now anyway.  The Mac System 7.0 core technology of Outline
Fonts was mentioned briefly as a question "will the IIgs be getting Outline
Fonts?" -- the answer was "We are investigating it."  My assumption would be
that the tools group will watch the Mac System Software group to see what
mistakes they make in using the outline fonts and try to make then alot
better on the IIgs.

     I then sat through "Integrating music with your products" at which
Bill Basham showed the ever-present Diveri-Tune and talked about the
advantages of "writing to the bare metal" over doing stuff with Apple's tools.
Jim Mensch, from Apple's Tools Group (he rewrote alot of QuickDraw II for
System 5.0) then showed us a forthcoming Note Synthesizer that was absolutely
amazing.  For a long time now the only sort of IIgs quality music came from
purely digitized sound.  Digitized sound tends to take a HUGE amount of memory.
After this new tool is released, this will no longer be the case simply because
the new note synth is amazing.  The author (one of the other guys at Apple, not
Jim himself) has managed to shrink 16 instruments into the DOC ram in the GS.
We listened to an 8 minute selection of very entertaining and high-quality
music that we were told took a miniscule.  If any of Apple's tools are half
as good as these sound tools, the GS will have taken a giant step forward.

    The last seminar of the morning was "Animation and the Apple II" at which
Brian Fitzgerald, Jim Mensch (QuickDraw), Bill Heineman (Tass-Times, Bard's
Tale I,II GS, Crystal Quest GS), and John Brooks (Tomahawk GS) we were treated
with a big splash of John's forthcoming "Rastan" arcade game.  The animation
had some of the best animation I'd yet seen for the IIgs and played a demo
while the four animation wizards spoke.  This seminar turned out to be
the most technical of all the seminars which I attended and certainly wasn't
for the faint of heart.  This was good for alot of us because we rarely get
to "talk shop" amongst each other and compare/contrast programming styles or
techniques which can get extremely complicated and incredibly technical.

    Lunch was less-than spectacular, but better than some cafeteria food I've
had, and certainly better than alot of AppleFest food I've tried to stomach.
Overall, I'd rate Avila's food something of a B to B- and probably give
my own college (Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA) something of an A- or B+.

    After lunch is when all the fireworks started to happen.  A fellow named
Jonathan Eder from Apple and probably the highest ranking Apple official to
attend anything like an AppleFest or developer's conference started his
seminar of the "Apple II Update and Feedback Forum" where he basically
repeated that Apple was firmly committed to the Apple II, admitted it provided
in the range of 1 BILLION dollars a year in revenue for Apple and it would
be very stupid for Apple to try to hinder the Apple II in any way.  Most of his
talk, while still the official company line was given in a very congenial
manner and presented to us in a very forthright manner.
    Unfortunately, where Eder was congenial and somewhat mild-mannered (as
was Jonathan Fader and the other fellow who answered questions.. Steve Glass?)
we (the developers) were were blatantly ugly to Apple.  The Q&A session started
simply enough with a question about apple's lack of support in their
user-interface on all their machines for blind or visually impared people.
Apple really had no answer to this because the desktop IS a visual metaphor
and is totally visually oriented.  Next came the question volunteered by John
Brooks about "does the fact that the IIgs is less-than competitive bother
Apple?"  The response we got was very much "yes, it does bother us and we'll
be continuing to address that issue with such things as System 5.0" but the
usual "We cannot comment on un-announced products" reared its ugly head.
    Right about this time Barney Stone stood up and basically started blasting
Apple for their lack of support and lack of belief in the II series.  What
seemed like a torrent of accusations against Apple followed.  Some of what was
said was justified and some of it not-so.  I interpreted it as this was the
first and only place that Apple really allowed themselves to be vulnerable and
put in a potential bad light.  All of the developers in the room had never
_really_ had a chance to vent their frustrations at Apple.  They did so in
one fell swoop.
    Cecil Fretwell left with about 15 minutes remaining, stomped outside and
told us (I had left earlier to talk to Jim Mensch about their new sound tools)
that he just could not agree with all the accusations which were being flung
around inside and that there were "some really low-blows being dealt to Apple.
Stuff they just don't deserve."  But, amazingly enough the Apple folks sat and
took about a half hour of everyone's ranting and raving.  But then again I was
also told by one Apple fellow that these were the guys that are "paid to keep
their temper."  If you get the chance to see this on videotape (all the
sessions were taped), watch this one.  I was hoping that this would be the time
that everyone would sort of 'vent their spleen' and get back to the business at hand, saving and re-invigorating the Apple II.
    After this session I just hope that the Apple folks aren't scared to come
back next year.  I overheard one Apple fellow muttering on his way outside
"I was just mugged in there."  Indeed he was.  Some people felt they deserved
the battering they got.  Some didn't.  Only time will tell if it had a
good or bad influence on Apple's decision making.

    Immediately following Apple's mugging was a presentation by William Mensch
of the Western Design Center (WDC) who was the designed of the 65c02, and
65816 amongst others.  Bill's talk was dynamic, visionary, and bold.  He
basically asked us to place our faith in Western Design that they would
deliver the promised technology of the very much vapor 65832 and 65816
chip speeds of 100 Mhz.  Bill very much himself believes in Gallium Arsenide
(gaAs) technology and told us that was where the future of his own
W65C technology was headed.  Some of us, myself included, though that although
he was very invigorating he wasn't as essentially practical as he could
have been.  While he talked of 100 Mhz 65816's and 1-nanosecond dram, he only
once tackled the issue of companies not being able to get fast 65816's.  Bill
said they were doing an experimental production run of 1.5 micron line chips
(vs 2.0 micron line chips as 65816's are now) sometime this week and that they
would be available in volume in January, 1990.  For what its worth, I had
one Apple engineer tell me that if a large quantity of fast 65816's were
available right now that they'd have increased the speed of the IIgs by now,
and another told me that one of the reasons that the IIgs was initially 2.8
Mhz is that Apple couldn't _get_ chips in sufficient (try like lots of 100,000
at a time) quantity that were faster.  If you think the speed problem on
the IIgs is Apple's fault it isn't.  It can be laid primarily at WDC's
doorstep until they have the faster chips operating.  After all, Bill Mensch
did say that a 10 Mhz 65816 is roughly equivalent to a 40 Mhz 80x86 chip.  I'd
be willing to wait for that.

    After that evenings meal I spent most of my time in the "Hacker's Playroom"
where there were a few IIgs's to be used.  One of the things I found most
frustrating was the lack of machines to use to demonstrate, copy, and look
at anyone's programs.  It seemed like we could have used double the number of
machines we actually had ready access to.  The fact that the IIgs's were locked
in another building was probably a good move, though.  Otherwise, I'm very sure
that there would have been a few of us that got less sleep then we did...  but,
if YOU decide to attend next year and want ready access to a machine, you
should probably bring your own.

    Apple DTS, despite all the whining and complaining going on (it does affect
the troops on the front-line, and can be extremely demoralizing), sponsored
a "BugBusting" room in which they had a $5000 machine set up that could help
some of us debug even the worst problem.  Many people came out of that room
hollering "they really did bust my bug!"
    The next day in the next seminar, Bill Mensch was determined to help make
the IIgs "a real machine" and volunteered to underwrite anyone who would be
willing to write a Fortran and/or Cobol compiler.  He was dead serious.  He
offered an off-the-cuff figure of $100,000 or "whatever it would take" to get
those compiler written.  I was very impressed with the man's dedication to his
own products.  If your interested, contact the man.  He'd love to hear from
you.

    I spent most of the afternoon preparing a problem for Apple DTS to bugbust,
but they never had enough time to get around to it... others attended Beagle's
session on writing TimeOut applications.

    Before attending the ballgame (our tickets were all paid for by WDC),
Tom Hoover, Vince Cooper of TML Software, Lance Taylor-Warren and
Kevin M. Smallwood of L&L Productions and I went to a steak-house in downtown
Kansas City.  I ordered my steak well-done and our meals arrived an
hour later much to everyone else's chagrin.  (Everyone else ordered stuff like
'medium rare' or 'medium-well' but I wanted mine done 'bricket-city'... they
all hated to wait.)  I was told that during the ballgame the Royals flashed
the "A Royal welcome to:  Western Design Center/A2-Central" and the cheer
that came out of our section shook the stadium.  We arrived 3 innings late
because of my steak fiasco.

    After returning everyone basically cruised through the dorm hallways
looking at what everyone else was doing.  One room saw all the
hacker/programmer types demonstrating their routines on Bill Heineman's
IIgs.  Another saw a group who were a little sloshed trying to write a
lo-res fractal mountain maker.  Me?  I stayed out in the hall and threw an
aerobee frisbee around the hallways of the dorm until 4am with Lane Roath,
the author of the soon to be released Dark Castle GS.

    Saturday afternoon I did get to meet John Stephen, the author of EasyLink,
Applied Engineering's Apple II terminal program.  That terminal program
is easily hands-down the best terminal program I have yet to see written for
the Apple II line.  The thing is incredible.  You can do stuff that I had no
idea could be done in a terminal program.  It's wild.  You'll love it.

 ___
|Q&A|
|___|


- Would I go again?

  You'd better believe it.

- Should I go next year?

  Are you intrested in programming/developing for the II line?  If so,
  if you don't go, you're making a very big mistake.

- What would you have done differently?

  I hope that next year the a2-central folks can find a place where the folks
  who stay at a hotel and the folks who stay in the dorms can be closer
  together.  All but one of the Apple folks (Tim Swihart, he's great!) stayed
  in the Marriot.  This directly/indirectly led to a felling that every night
  Apple would "pull-out" and go back to the hotel.  Sometimes it led to an
  "US vs THEM" attitude among some of the developers.  This was not good.
  I mean, for that matter, Bill Mensch, who is probably worth more than all
  the Apple folks put together, stayed with US in the dorms.  Maybe no
  alternative should be offered.  Besides, the dorms were fine.  They
  were at least 2X as large as the dorm rooms at my own college, and helped
  very much to foster a "community" atmosphere (which dorms usually do at
  college).

- Was it worth it?

  This is a conference that people will be talking about for years to come.


If you are ever given the chance to buy video/audio tapes of the event, I
would suggest getting to following:

o  Apple II Update and Feedback Forum

o  Philosophy and Direction of the W65C Microprocessor Family

o  Animation and the Apple II [if you can handle technical issues]

o  Integrating Music with Your Products

o  Laser Computers: Opportunites for Future Products


Andy Nicholas