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- TidBITS#320/25-Mar-96
- =====================
-
- So you think you know how the Macintosh came into existence?
- Pioneer Mac developer Bruce Horn sheds some light on the Mac's
- early development. Also, check out the latest news on PageMill
- and SiteMill updates, details on the new version of APS
- PowerTools, and last week's lost Newton MailBIT. Finally, we
- round out the issue with another installment of InterviewBITS,
- this time with Darryl Peck, founder of Inline Software and
- Cyberian Outpost
-
- This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
- * APS Technologies -- 800/443-4199 -- <sales@apstech.com>
- Makers of hard drives, tape drives, and neat SCSI accessories.
- For APS price lists, email: <aps-prices@tidbits.com>
- * Northwest Nexus -- 206/455-3505 -- <http://www.halcyon.com/>
- Providing access to the global Internet. <info@halcyon.com>
- * Power Computing -- 800/375-7693 -- <info@powercc.com>
- Now shipping... The Award-Winning First MacOS Compatible!
- Press comments! <http://www.powercc.com/News/quotes.html>
- * America Online -- 800/827-6364 -- <http://www.aol.com/>
- The world's largest provider of online services.
- Give Back to the Net -- <http://www.aol.com/give/>
- * EarthLink Network -- 800/395-8425 -- <sales@earthlink.net>
- Providers of direct Internet access for Macintosh users.
- For eWorld refugees: no setup fee! <http://www.earthlink.net/>
- * DealBITS: Deals on wheels for denizens of the net.
- <http://www.tidbits.com/dealbits/> -- <dealbits@tidbits.com>
-
- Copyright 1990-1996 Adam & Tonya Engst. Details at end of issue.
- Information: <info@tidbits.com> Comments: <editors@tidbits.com>
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Topics:
- MailBITS/25-Mar-96
- New Version of APS PowerTools
- On Xerox, Apple, and Progress
- InterviewBITS with Darryl Peck, Part 1 of 2
- Reviews/25-Mar-96
-
- <ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/issues/1996/TidBITS#320_25-Mar-96.etx>
-
-
- MailBITS/25-Mar-96
- ------------------
- If you're interested in reading a short interview I did recently
- and learning more about the computer book industry, check out:
- [ACE]
-
- <http://www.studiob.com/cafe.html>
-
-
- **EarthLink Network Sponsoring TidBITS** -- We're pleased to
- welcome our latest sponsor, the national Internet provider
- EarthLink Network. EarthLink is best known for expanding from
- being a Los Angeles-area provider to offering flat-rate nationwide
- dialup service in 210 cities and also an inexpensive (as it goes)
- 800 number for dialup access. EarthLink offers true Internet
- connections, and their TotalAccess package provides an automated
- signup process via a customized version of MacPPP, and installs
- licensed copies of Netscape and Eudora Light.
-
- I've followed EarthLink Network from its beginnings, because in a
- small way I'm responsible for their existence. Way back in late
- 1993 or early 1994, EarthLink founder Sky Dayton bought my book,
- Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh, and - after reading it - sent
- me mail asking what I thought about creating an integrated
- Internet program. He was ready to find funding and hire
- programmers, but I talked him out of it over the course of a few
- messages. Then, in June of 1994, I got mail from Sky again, saying
- he'd put the integrated Internet program project on the back
- burner and was starting an Internet service provider in LA. At the
- time, there were hardly any providers in LA, and none, if I
- remember right, who knew much about the Mac and PPP connections.
-
- I remember thinking then, as I do now, that being an Internet
- service provider isn't a job I'd like to have, but Sky and the
- folks he hired to work with him at EarthLink have done an
- incredible job of growing the company, so much so that at times
- they've had troubling training people quickly enough. When I
- stopped by the EarthLink booth at Macworld SF this year and asked
- for Sky, the woman I spoke with had only been working with
- EarthLink for a few days and didn't even realize who Sky was. Such
- are the problems with growth, and going national opened the
- floodgates. Once you're caught up in the floodwaters, though, it's
- best to go all out, and I wish them luck. [ACE]
-
-
- **Newtons in the Dark** -- Apple recently announced the Newton
- MessagePad 130, which resembles its predecessor, the MessagePad
- 120, but adds several key features, including a user-controllable
- backlit screen, a new writing surface that's more durable and less
- prone to glare, and 512K of additional system memory. The 130 has
- 8 MB of ROM and 2.5 MB of RAM, resulting in 1,361K of RAM
- available to the user. Apple expects the 130 to be available
- beginning in April for $799. Apple's propaganda didn't mention any
- upgrade programs from previous models. [ACE]
-
-
- **As the Update Mill Turns** -- In the wake of its withdrawal of
- PageMill 1.0.1, Adobe has quickly released PageMill 1.0.2.
- PageMill devotees will recall that 1.0.1 brought PageMill up to
- the level of the PageMill portion of Adobe's recently released
- SiteMill 1.0 (see TidBITS-317_). But, both PageMill 1.0.1 and
- SiteMill 1.0 have a problem which manifested itself by damaging
- graphics. The PageMill 1.0 to 1.0.2 and 1.0.1 to 1.0.2 updaters
- fix the problem, as does the SiteMill 1.0 to SiteMill 1.0.2
- updater.
-
- You can download updaters for PageMill 1.0, PageMill 1.0.1, and
- SiteMill from Adobe's Web site. Adobe's FTP site currently offers
- a PageMill 1.0 to 1.0.2 updater and a SiteMill updater, but no
- PageMill 1.0.1 to 1.0.2 updater. Adobe has also posted updated
- PageMill documentation, which now includes an index. [TJE]
-
- <http://www.adobe.com/Software.html>
- <ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/Applications/PageMill/>
-
-
- New Version of APS PowerTools
- -----------------------------
- by Florin Neumann <florin@quartz.geology.utoronto.ca>
-
- APS Technologies, a leading vendor of data storage devices for the
- Mac [and a sponsor of TidBITS -Adam] has recently released version
- 4.0 of its disk management utility, APS PowerTools, which is
- bundled with every APS drive.
-
- <http://www.apstech.com/>
-
- ProSoft Engineering wrote version 3 of APS PowerTools for APS, but
- after the release of version 3.6 the contract with ProSoft was
- discontinued, and APS licensed PowerTools 4.0.x from CharisMac
- Engineering. Version 3.6 has several small bugs, which ProSoft -
- though no longer bound by contract to support it - fixed in
- version 3.8. APS, though it no longer supports PowerTools 3, has
- placed upgrades to version 3.8 on its FTP site. These actions are
- both remarkable and commendable.
-
-
- **PowerTools 4** -- With version 4.0, PowerTools now supports a
- wide range of disk drives, including IDE drives and the new low-
- cost removable Zip drive. In other respects, though, version 4
- offers the same capabilities as version 3, albeit with a different
- interface. I'm not as fond of version 4's interface; it feels more
- sluggish than 3.8 on my LC 475 and Power Mac 7100/80, and there
- are a few confusing items. For instance, in version 4, SCSI ID 7
- (which 3.8 doesn't show because it's always assigned to the Mac
- CPU) is identified only as "INITIATOR" - a term familiar to SCSI
- propeller-heads that may confuse users unfamiliar with SCSI
- terminology. (There's no entry in the manual index for initiator.)
- One good thing about version 4.0, though, is the Help menu, which
- concisely describes every command.
-
- The Drive Controls control panel from version 3 has been replaced
- by the APT Extension/APT Mounter application tandem. The APT
- Extension loads device drivers at startup and displays a SCSI bus
- status window, showing the SCSI devices as they mount; the APT
- Mounter is used to configure the extension and to mount devices
- after startup. An optional performance-enhancing utility that lets
- users change internal drive settings, APS PowerControl, comes with
- PowerTools as the APS PowerTools Professional Package.
-
- APS PowerTools 3 and 4 are intended to support only APS drives and
- although APS PowerTools 4's end-user license is for APS drives
- only, it supports a wider range of drives than version 3, many of
- which were never sold by APS.
-
- Should you upgrade to APS PowerTools 4? If you're happy with
- version 3, sticking with or upgrading to version 3.8 may be your
- easiest option. If you have drives from other manufacturers -
- especially something like a Zip drive - and you don't mind the
- backup/reformat/restore process involved, you can't beat the cost
- of upgrading.
-
-
- **Upgrades** -- If you already have PowerTools 4, note that the
- program is currently at version 4.0.4. Version 4.0.4 contains
- numerous bug fixes and enhancements (check the PowerTools Updates
- directory on the APS FTP site for a complete list of changes).
- Updates from older versions of PowerTools 3.x to version 3.8 are
- also available.
-
- <ftp://ftp.apstech.com/PowerTools_Updates/> (use with Anarchie or Fetch)
- <ftp://ftp.apstech.com/Pub/PowerTools_Updates/> (use with Web browsers)
-
- Users of PowerTools version 3 who wish to upgrade to version 4
- should contact APS Technologies Sales at 800/233-7550 or
- <sales@apstech.com>. The update costs $4.95 and is delivered by
- regular mail. If you decide to upgrade, note that - as is usual
- when switching from one disk formatting package to another -
- installing a new driver requires reinitializing (and thus a full
- backup and restore) the disk, because partition maps are
- different.
-
- APS also has a separate CD-ROM support package called APS CD
- Autocache 1.1.2. It too is available as an inexpensive update for
- APS PowerTools 3 users, and updates from previous versions are
- available at the URLs below.
-
- <ftp://ftp.apstech.com/APS_CD-Autocache/> (use with Anarchie or Fetch)
- <ftp://ftp.apstech.com/Pub/APS_CD-Autocache/> (use with Web browsers)
-
-
- On Xerox, Apple, and Progress
- -----------------------------
- by Bruce Horn <bruce.horn@alumni.cs.cmu.edu>
-
- [Any number of people will try to tell you about the origins of
- the Macintosh, but Bruce Horn was one of the people who made it
- happen. From 1973 to 1981, Bruce was a student in the Learning
- Research Group at Xerox, where Smalltalk, an interactive, object-
- oriented programming language, was developed. While there, he
- worked on various projects including the NoteTaker, a portable
- Smalltalk machine, and wrote the initial Dorado Smalltalk
- microcode for Smalltalk-76. At the Central Institute for
- Industrial Research in Oslo, Norway, in 1980, he ported Smalltalk-
- 78 to an 8086 machine, the Mycron-2000.
-
- At Apple (1981-1984), Bruce's contributions included the design
- and implementation of the Resource Manager, the Dialog Manager and
- the Finder (with implementation help from Steve Capps). He was
- also responsible for the type framework for documents,
- applications, and clipboard data, and a number of system-level
- design decisions. Since then, Bruce consulted on a variety of
- projects in the late 1980's at Apple and received a Ph.D. in
- Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1993. He
- continues to work as a computer science consultant with Apple and
- other companies.]
-
-
- **Where It All Began** -- For more than a decade now, I've
- listened to the debate about where the Macintosh user interface
- came from. Most people assume it came directly from Xerox, after
- Steve Jobs went to visit Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center).
- This "fact" is reported over and over, by people who don't know
- better (and also by people who should!). Unfortunately, it just
- isn't true - there are some similarities between the Apple
- interface and the various interfaces on Xerox systems, but the
- differences are substantial.
-
- Steve did see Smalltalk when he visited PARC. He saw the Smalltalk
- integrated programming environment, with the mouse selecting text,
- pop-up menus, windows, and so on. The Lisa group at Apple built a
- system based on their own ideas combined with what they could
- remember from the Smalltalk demo, and the Mac folks built yet
- another system. There is a significant difference between using
- the Mac and Smalltalk.
-
- Smalltalk has no Finder, and no need for one, really. Drag-and-
- drop file manipulation came from the Mac group, along with many
- other unique concepts: resources and dual-fork files for storing
- layout and international information apart from code; definition
- procedures; drag-and-drop system extension and configuration;
- types and creators for files; direct manipulation editing of
- document, disk, and application names; redundant typed data for
- the clipboard; multiple views of the file system; desk
- accessories; and control panels, among others. The Lisa group
- invented some fundamental concepts as well: pull down menus, the
- imaging and windowing models based on QuickDraw, the clipboard,
- and cleanly internationalizable software.
-
- Smalltalk had a three-button mouse and pop-up menus, in contrast
- to the Mac's menu bar and one-button mouse. Smalltalk didn't even
- have self-repairing windows - you had to click in them to get them
- to repaint, and programs couldn't draw into partially obscured
- windows. Bill Atkinson did not know this, so he invented regions
- as the basis of QuickDraw and the Window Manager so that he could
- quickly draw in covered windows and repaint portions of windows
- brought to the front. One Macintosh feature identical to a
- Smalltalk feature is selection-based modeless text editing with
- cut and paste, which was created by Larry Tesler for his Gypsy
- editor at PARC.
-
- As you may be gathering, the difference between the Xerox system
- architectures and Macintosh architecture is huge; much bigger than
- the difference between the Mac and Windows. It's not surprising,
- since Microsoft saw quite a bit of the Macintosh design (API's,
- sample code, etc.) during the Mac's development from 1981 to 1984;
- the intention was to help them write applications for the Mac, and
- it also gave their system designers a template from which to
- design Windows. In contrast, the Mac and Lisa designers had to
- invent their own architectures. Of course, there were some ex-
- Xerox people in the Lisa and Mac groups, but the design point for
- these machines was so different that we didn't leverage our
- knowledge of the Xerox systems as much as some people think.
-
- The hardware itself was an amazing step forward as well. It
- offered an all-in-one design, four-voice sound, small footprint,
- clock, auto-eject floppies, serial ports, and so on. The small,
- portable, appealing case was a serious departure from the ugly-
- box-on-an-ugly-box PC world, thanks to Jerry Manock and his crew.
- Even the packaging showed amazing creativity and passion - do any
- of you remember unpacking an original 128K Mac? The Mac, the
- unpacking instructions, the profusely-illustrated and beautifully-
- written manuals, and the animated practice program with audio
- cassette were tastefully packaged in a cardboard box with Picasso-
- style graphics on the side.
-
-
- **Looking Back** -- In my opinion, the software architectures
- developed at Xerox for Smalltalk and the Xerox Star were
- significantly more advanced than either the Mac or Windows. The
- Star was a tremendous accomplishment, with features that current
- systems haven't even started to implement, though I see OpenDoc as
- a strong advance past the Xerox systems. I have great respect for
- the amazing computer scientists at Xerox PARC, who led the way
- with innovations we all take for granted now, and from whom I
- learned a tremendous amount about software design.
-
- Apple could have developed a more complex, sophisticated system
- rivaling the Xerox architectures. But the Mac had to ship, and it
- had to be relatively inexpensive - we couldn't afford the time or
- expense of the "best possible" design. As a "little brother" to
- the Lisa, the Macintosh didn't have multitasking or protection -
- we didn't have space for the extra code or stack required. The
- original Macintosh had extremely tight memory and disk
- constraints; for example, the Resource Manager took up less than
- 3,000 bytes of code in the ROM, and the Finder was only 46K on
- disk. We made _many_ design decisions that we regretted to some
- extent - even at the time some of us felt disappointed at the
- compromises we had to make - but if we had done it differently,
- would we have shipped at all?
-
-
- **The Past and Future** -- In many ways, the computing world has
- made remarkably small advances since 1976, and we continually
- reinvent the wheel. Smalltalk had a nice bytecoded multi-platform
- virtual machine long before Java. Object oriented programming is
- the hot thing now, and it's almost 30 years old (see the Simula-67
- language). Environments have not progressed much either: I feel
- the Smalltalk environments from the late 1970's are the most
- pleasant, cleanest, fastest, and smoothest programming
- environments I have ever used. Although CodeWarrior is reasonably
- good for C++ development, I haven't seen anything that compares
- favorably to the Smalltalk systems I used almost 20 years ago. The
- Smalltalk systems of today aren't as clean, easy to use, or well-
- designed as the originals, in my opinion.
-
- We are not even _close_ to the ultimate computing-information-
- communication device. We have much more work to do on system
- architectures and user interfaces. In particular, user interface
- design must be driven by deep architectural issues and not just
- new graphical appearances; interfaces are structure, not image.
- Neither Copland nor Windows 95 (nor NT, for that matter) represent
- the last word on operating systems. Unfortunately, market forces
- are slowing the development of the next revolution. Still, I think
- you can count on Apple being the company bringing these
- improvements to next generation systems.
-
- I'm sure some things I remember as having originated at Apple were
- independently developed elsewhere. But the Mac brought them to the
- world.
-
- [This article originally appeared in Guy Kawasaki's Evangelist -
- for more information send email to <evangelist@macway.com>.]
-
-
- InterviewBITS with Darryl Peck, Part 1 of 2
- -------------------------------------------
- by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
-
- Welcome to the second installment of InterviewBITS. This interview
- is with Darryl Peck <dpeck@cybout.com> whose name is less familiar
- than that of our previous interviewee, Peter N Lewis. Nonetheless,
- Darryl has been a major participant in the world of the Macintosh
- for years, and most recently, has expanded his horizons to the
- Internet. Darryl was president of the New York Mac Users' Group
- (NYMUG) for a year after being the group's sysop. Darryl then
- started Inline Software, a small Macintosh publishing firm known
- for some innovative utilities and about a dozen games, including
- the relatively recent PopupFolder and the Eddy Award-winning 3 in
- Three. After running Inline Software for six years, Darryl sold
- the company to Focus Enhancements, which has done little with the
- Inline products. Next, in mid-1995, Darryl founded Cyberian
- Outpost, a retailer of hardware and software on the Web. Cyberian
- Outpost is unusual in the Internet retailing market for being run
- primarily on Macs and catering more to the Macintosh world than
- many other Internet retailers.
-
- <http://www.cybout.com>
-
-
- * [Adam] Can you tell us about the history of Inline Software -
- who, why, what products, and so on...?
-
- [Darryl] It's a funny story. Inline was started purely by
- accident. An old friend and I had started a company called Inline
- Design that was meant to be a furniture and yacht design firm.
- While we were trying to pull that together, I went to northern
- California for a few months to write articles for magazines,
- mostly automotive-related (when I am not in front of my computer I
- am probably watching a race with my three-year-old daughter), and
- finally bought myself a Mac instead of writing on legal pads. I
- bought a Mac Plus, a $750 20 MB hard disk, an ImageWriter II, and
- a 1200 baud modem.
-
- However my writing productivity went directly into the toilet as I
- discovered the world of BBSs and CompuServe. I slept an average of
- two hours a night for the first six weeks I had the Mac and
- actually wrote a few freeware HyperCard stacks that found their
- way around the planet. I think I downloaded every file on every
- Mac BBS in northern California within a few weeks. I couldn't get
- enough of it. I was seriously hooked on my Mac and thought of
- pitching a tent in Cupertino just to hang around Apple.
-
- In any case, I returned to my native New York City, got heavily
- involved with NYMUG, and found out that the friend I started
- Inline with had actually been accepted as an Apple Developer. He
- did it just so he could buy a Mac II for half price, but for me,
- it was a gold mine of information and tons of cool stuff with
- Apple logos. I loved it! However, Apple called one day to ask what
- we had developed since that was a requirement to stay in the
- program. The thought of losing my flow of Apple stuff was so
- horrifying that I decided to find a way to stay in the program.
-
- It turned out that my friend had a friend who was heavily into
- gaming and was just finishing a HyperCard-based game called
- Bomber, which he intended to post as shareware. I convinced him to
- let me publish it by saying that if we sold 5,000 copies we would
- have about $100,000 in return. He bought the proposal and off we
- went. Rather than start another company, I used the Inline Design
- name we had already registered. Since I did not anticipate this
- being much more than a way to stay in the developer's program, I
- didn't want to spend an extra dime. I was still working in the
- film business as a gaffer so I had to run Inline on my days off
- and at nights.
-
- * [Adam] A gaffer? Hang on a second. You just said you had started
- a furniture and yacht design firm, but had gone off to California
- to write articles for automotive magazines. Where does being a
- gaffer fit in - and what the heck _is_ a gaffer anyway?
-
- [Darryl] A gaffer does the lighting for film and television,
- although I lit mostly television commercials. I had been working
- as a gaffer for about 10 years when we started the design firm.
- Since the design firm never really got going, I continued to earn
- a living making commercials for Federal Express (the funny ones),
- McDonalds, Nissan, Miller Lite, etc.
-
- And, if you want a great piece of trivia, the term gaffer comes
- from the old days in England when a gentleman went around lighting
- the gas lights each day at dusk. The tool he used to reach up to
- light the torch was called a gaffe. Now your readers know a top
- trade secret.
-
- * [Adam] Sorry to interrupt. You were saying about Inline Design?
-
- [Darryl] Meanwhile, back at Inline Design, in short time we had
- sold over 10,000 copies [of Bomber] and I made a decision to
- resign from the film craftsman union and devote myself to Inline.
- I didn't have much choice since I was running the company out of
- my studio apartment on the Upper West Side and manufacturing the
- product on the bed. I would shrink wrap boxes until four or five
- in the morning each night. Since we included a free pair of
- headphones in every box, and I had to buy them in bulk, I had
- cartons piled to the ceiling in every square inch of the tiny
- apartment. The neighbors thought something strange was going on,
- but then again, we had the police running through the building on
- a regular basis with their guns out looking for burglars, so it
- was easy to overlook the shrink wrap fumes.
-
- Eventually I got married and moved to the woods in Sharon,
- Connecticut. My wife helped me run the company out of a spare
- room, and we got a company to manufacture the product. We came out
- with Darwin's Dilemma in 1990 and in 1991 released Swamp Gas
- Visits the USA, 3 in Three, and Mutant Beach. 3 in Three won the
- Eddy Award that year for best game. Swamp Gas was nominated as
- well, but lost out to Kid Pix. And, we finally hired our first
- employee.
-
- As sales grew we decided to leave the house for a real office. So,
- we packed everything up and moved to a gorgeous 7,700 square foot,
- 150-year-old Victorian house that had been converted into
- corporate offices. We added more employees and released several
- more titles, including the Microseeds line of utilities that added
- considerably to our product line. New titles and re-released
- titles included Firefall Arcade, Swamp Gas Europe, INITPicker,
- Redux Deluxe, HAM, Icon 7, and PopupFolder.
-
- * [Adam] Why did you decide to sell out to Focus? Was it a good
- idea, in retrospect?
-
- [Darryl] There was no question that the rapid consolidation in the
- software industry was beginning to hurt us. It was difficult to
- compete with companies that could afford to lose $50 million in
- one year (Spectrum Holobyte). Then Microsoft entered the consumer
- market and hired a small crew of 500 people to make it happen. The
- writing was on the wall. It was time to get out.
-
- We looked at many alternatives and felt pressure to move quickly.
- In hindsight, we made the wrong choice in a big way. It's no
- secret Focus has done nothing with the line and has lost a few of
- the titles completely due to lack of effort. As much as I would
- love to say more on this issue, I am contractually bound not to
- tell the real story. Too bad too, it's a good one...
-
- * [Adam] OK, enough about Inline then. What gave you the idea of
- starting Cyberian Outpost?
-
- [Darryl] Frankly, I needed a job. When I returned from my seven
- months of exile in Woburn, Massachusetts trying to run Inline for
- a company that didn't have a clue about software, I spent my first
- unemployed time in 23 years thinking about what to do. I had a few
- offers from software companies to run them, but I felt strongly
- that the time had passed for small, ill-funded software companies.
- So, I went to San Francisco for Macworld Expo, which I hadn't
- missed in nine years, and did some consulting there. The other
- thing I did there was buy your book, Internet Starter Kit for
- Macintosh.
-
- * [Adam] Thank you.
-
- [Darryl] Although I had been an online junkie since I bought a
- Mac, I had never explored the Internet. I had spent thousands of
- hours on CompuServe, a few hours on AOL (never my favorite place),
- used CONNECT (how many of you remember that dismal affair?), tried
- Prodigy (for about 10 minutes), and ran a BBS for NYMUG. But on
- the plane home from San Francisco, I read Internet Starter Kit for
- Macintosh cover to cover and decided to become an Internet junkie.
-
- I got home at around 2 AM, did some research on Internet service
- providers (ISPs), and was happily surfing the net by noon. The
- guys at Connix (my ISP) still think I'm a bit nuts. I told them I
- had to have an account right away and could not wait. Basically, I
- told them it was a matter of life or death. Dramatic, eh?
-
- So, I fired up MacWeb (thanks for the disk in the book!) and saw
- the Web for the first time. Within a few minutes I knew I had
- found my place in life. I saw instantly that the Web would change
- everything. Global boundaries disintegrated. Computer platforms
- would become irrelevant. Retail would never be the same. OK, so
- maybe some of these ideas took a few weeks to put together, but I
- spent 12 to 16 hours a day on the Web and visited thousands of
- sites during that time.
-
- Eventually, the idea of conducting computer retail on the Web
- began to form. I felt the Web provided huge benefits over paper-
- based catalogs and retail stores, and that by using the technology
- to its fullest, a virtual store could grab market share from the
- established players. Hundreds of hours went into the business plan
- and research. And since most of the research took place on the Web
- itself, it was a real pleasure putting in the time.
-
- * [Adam] So you started Cyberian Outpost. The media talks a lot
- about how no one's making any money on the Web. Are you?
-
- [Darryl] Yes. We are probably one of the very few making money. We
- are not making much, as we prefer to re-invest nearly all our
- earnings in growing the company, but there is no question that we
- have done extremely well.
-
- [Tune in next week for the second part of this interview, in which
- Darryl talks about his experiences with Cyberian Outpost. -Adam]
-
-
- Reviews/25-Mar-96
- -----------------
-
- * MacWEEK -- 18-Mar-96, Vol. 10, #11
- PowerBook Duo 2300c -- pg. 29
- Extreme 3D 1.0 -- pg. 29
- PowerBook 5300c -- pg. 30
- PowerBook Storage Options -- pg. 35
- SanDisk 85 MB FlashDisk
- Simple Technologies 170 MB DataCard
- VST Expansion Bay Hard Disk
-
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