90.06 apple bug

June 1990 Edition Ruy Volume 9/Number 5 WSeEy GROUP —_ S — Se Apple-Q Inc. Information Page | Help Line Executive Committee Apple I+ Bob Godbehere (07) 808-3892 7-9pm&W/E Vince Crosdale President (07) 351-3090 Apple He Bernie Benson (07) 345-1545 Business Hours John Finch Vice-President (07) 260-5218 Apple IIgs Vince Crosdale (07) 351-3090 7-9 pm BobGodbehere Secretary (07) 808-3892 Dale Rodgie (075) 38-6942 7-9 pm Bernie Benson Treasurer (07) 345-1545 AppleWorks Bemie Benson (07) 345-1545 Business Hours Ann White Registrar (07) 371-4067 Todd Dixon (07) 891-6299 Business Hours Dale Rodgie Editor (075) 38-6942 Sheryl Mann (071) 96-7401 7-9 pm & W/E — Sheryl Mann — Software Librarian (071) 96-7401 AppleWorks (education) Ann White (07) 371-4067 Anytime Graham Black Hardware Librarian (07) 883-1525 AppleWorks GS Dale Rodgie (075) 38-6942 7-9 pm Applesoft Graham Black (07) 883-1525 1-6 pm. Assistant Vince Crosdale (07) 351-3090 7-9 pm Todd Dixon Reseller Contact (07) 891-6299 Beginners Ann White (07) 371-4067 Anytime Communications Vince Crosdale (07) 351-3090 7-9 pm “ Discovery (Viatel) Sheryl Mann (071) 96-7401 7-9 pm & W/E Bulletin Board Disk of the Month Dale Rodgie (075) 38-6942 7-9 pm Apple-Q Inc. BBS Educational Programs Ann White (07) 371-4067 Anytime hours a day General Software/Hardware Todd Dixon (07) 891-6299 Business Hous Tetephone: (07) 851-1711 Bulletin Board) Machine Language (Ile, gs) Dale Rodgie (075) 38-6942 7-9 pm (07) 351-3090 (Voice), Macintosh ‘Todd Dixon (07) 891-6299 Business Hours Baud Rates: 300, 1200/75, 1200 & 2400 John Finch (07) 260-5218 7-9 pm & W/E (CCITT & Bell) Modems Vince Crosdale (07) 351-3090 7-9 pm :, i it i Software Library Sheryl Mann (07!) 96-7401 7.9pma&wre Pat Specs: Bees Stoo bie: No Paria Sysops: Vince Crosdale, Graham Black Please only call between the times listed. W/E stands for weekend. This Month Coming Events General Meeting Committee Meeting June: Sur-Jay 17th June 1990 Monday 18th June 1990 Todd Dixon from Computer City will be doing a demonstration on Hovrs: 11.00 am 104.30 pm —_— Starts: 7.00 pm HyperMedia, Todd will look at some of the latest releases in HyperMedia. Next Month iui: General Meeting Committee Meeting Now that you have built your Hard Drive, John Finch will show Sunday 15th July 1990 Monday 16th July 1990 you how to maintain and manage it. Hours: 11.00 am to4.30pm Starts: 7.00 pm ; August: All meetings are held at: Get ready for another of the famous Apple-Q Auction. Check out Hooper Education Centre, Kuran Street, Wavell Heights Membership Fees Adults/Students: $25.00 Corporate Membership: $50.00 Associate Membership: $10.00 (BBS only) Joining Fee: $10.00 (first year only) the Editorial for more details. More Info + The copying of Commercially produced software is not sanctioned by Apple-Q Inc. and members who do so risk expulsion from the group. * No one is allowed behind the Trading Table counter except the Committee members and anyone appointed to work at the Trading At the discretion of the Executive Committee Advertising Table. Contributions to Apple-Bug Classified advertising is Free to all Financial Members. For non- members, the charges are$ 18.00 for a Half Page and$30.00 fora Full Page. For moie information, contact the Editor. If you would like to contribute to the Apple-Bug, please send in your article (on disk where possible) to the clubs address. Your disk will be retumed. Deadline for the Apple-Bug is the General Meeting. June 1990 == Copying Fees Apple-Q Inc. has a wide selection of Public Domain, Shareware and Demonstration software available to members. We charge a copying fee so the group can obtain more software to expand the library. The copying fee for 5.25 inch disks is 50 cents a side with a minimum charge of $2.00. For the 3.5 inch disks, the fee is $3.00 per disk. See the Software Librarian at the next Meeting for a catalogue. Also see the "Disk of the Month" section for more great Public Domain software. On the centre page you will find a software order form. This form can be filled out if you wish to order by mail or you can order and pick it up at the meeting. For mail orders, remember to add $2.00 for postage and packaging. Meeting Format 11.00 am - 12.00 pm - Informal period including: Trading table open. Registration of members (new and renewals). Disk of the Month sales. Raffle Tickets sold. Public Domain Software available. 12.00 pm - 12.30 pm - Lunch Trading Table, etc continues during this period. 12.30 pm - 2.00 pm - Demonstration Invited speaker to givedemonstration and follow up with organised question and answer session relating to the demonstration. 2.00 pm - 2.30 pm- Afternoon tea break Draw raffle prize and door prize. 2.30 pm - 4.00 pm - Special Interest Groups: Appleworks ‘New Users (Beginners) Apple //GS Computers Macintosh Computers 4.00 pm - 4.30 pm - Open for Business Trading Table, Software Library open for business, 4.30 pm - Close the day. Production Information The Apple-Bug was written with AppleWorks. AppleWorks GS ‘was used for the Page Layout and the orginal copy was printed on a LaserWriter. Thanks to Computer City for the use of their LaserWriter. Apple-Bug Magazine is a publication of Apple-@ Inc. (the Brisbane Apple users group) Postal Address: P.O, Box 721, South Brisbane, Qid 4101. Meetings Held at: Hooper Education Centre Kuran Street, Wavell Heights Editorial by Dale Rodgie Welcome to the AppleFest edition of Apple-Bug. Most of this edition contains a report of the AppleFest that finished a few days ago in the United States. For those who don't know, the AppleFest is similar to the computer show we have in Brisbane except it is only for the Apple II computers. This year the promoter of the AppleFest decided to include a ComputerFest for all computers. Ann White talked on educational software last month, 1 have included some of her notes in this edition. Thanks Ann for the great demonstration. Committee Positions Myself, Vince Crosdale and Bernie Benson have decided not to stand for positions on the Committee in October. So I have included a list if the duties of each of the three positions so you may consider filling one of these positions. President - To act as Chairman for all meetings and as such the person should be fully aware of the rules of the group and also the rules of debate to be able to control situations which may arise. To foster a favorable climate for the growth of the club. Treasurer - Maintain records to reflect the true financial position of the club and to exercise control over all income and expenditure of the club and to offer advise on the availability or otherwise of funds necessary for club pursuits. Editor - Organise the production of the groups publication to enable distribution to members within the time limits. Liaise with printers to ensure timely publication. Establish and maintain contact with outside sources to obtain suitable material. At the Annual General Meeting we will also be calling for anumber if General Committee Members to help in different areas of running the club. It is good training if you want to be on the Committee at a later time or to find out which position you are interested in. June Demonstration This month Todd Dixon of Computer City fame will knock our socks off with a HyperMedia demonstration. He will be bringing some of the latest products available for HyperMedia. Be at the Hooper Centre at 12.30 pm sharp for this fantastic demo and bring your socks! Apple-Bug Back Issues We have a number of Apple-Bug back issues available. Bernie has packaged them in packs of 11 and they are available from the Trading Table at this General Meeting. The packs are selling for $5.00. 4 AppleFest, May '90. Somerset, New Jersey. by Dean Esmay EDITOR: It was just hours before going to press and the latest A2-Central Disk arrived. On the disk is an objective report of the AppleFest last month. It was written by Dean Esmay for the online service GEnie. He uploaded reports every few hours to GEnie. The following has been compiled from his reports. Fri May 04, 1990 at 00:02 EDT Got up this morning an hour late (my alarm failed to go off on time, you see) and barely made it to Chicago's O'Hare airport in time to catch my plane to Newark airport. On the long flight to New Jersey, I had a lot of thoughts about the coming AppleFest. Would it be as fun as past ‘fests? Apple wouldn't be there according to rumor. Applied Engineering supposedly wouldn't be showing. It was hard to know what to think. Some felt this AppleFest was going to be a bust, that Cambridge's intent to "dilute" AppleFest holding it alongside the general interest “ComputerFest" would make it not worth atiending. Some said the best way to deal with this would be to boycott... and that this might be Apple's motivation for not coming. Yet when I spoke to Barney Stone last week at the National Apple User Group Conference in Chicago, he'd emphasized the importance of vendors showing. He felt that the vast majority of people showing up at this conference wouldn't know anything about the politics... and that if they saw a poor Apple II attendance, it would teil people at the show that the Apple IT is dead. And we don't need that. When Chet decided to send me here to AppleFest, he emphasized the need to find and communicate positive things at the show. I honestly worried about this. The show could be an utter disaster. Maybe nobody would be there, maybe things would be dominated by non-Apple II stuff, etc. Well, boys and girls, the ‘Fest hasn't started yet but it's already looking like I have nothing to worry about. But more about that later, Arriving at Newark, after unexpected entanglements with our car rental agency, I had to wait for Eric Mueller (A2PRO.ERIC) to arrive (he was an hour late). We drove to the Somerset Holiday Inn (if you're here, come and look us up!), Amusingly, the first people we met walking into the hotel was a herd of sysops from (ahem) a Competing Information Service. It was nice to see that we're not the only ones here. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. We took off across the street for the Garden State Exhibit Center (misnamed "Convention Center" in the AppleFest/Computerfest literature) to see what was up. Apple-Bug People were busily setting up booths and hobnobbing (there'll be no time tomorrow). I thought for a minute we should stay out of everybody's way, but... nah. :) We walked in, wangled badges from the Exhibition Management, Inc. (formerly Cambridge Marketing) people and walked in. Who did we find? Well, there was Barney Stone (of course), Roger Wagner, Tom Snyder, the editors of GS+, and a bunch of others. Applied Engineering had a small booth set up (they apparently changed their mind about boycotting the show), and Beagle Bros had their usual fancy booth set up. While most of the booths were in various states of construction, just about everybody important was there setting up. Dozens of Apple II booths could be spotted in the Apple II section, and most of the companies in the “general” (non- Apple II specific) areas had Apple II's set up alongside of Commodores, Macs, and PClones. Everybody looked like they were having fun and ready for a good show. Well, after that we had to get back to Newark airport to pick up Tom Weishaar (UNCLE-DOS). By the time we got back it was late, but we did manage to meet up with Bryan Pietrzak. We all went out to dinner at a nice quiet restaurant (we met Dan Muse briefly there) and came back to the hotel room. Now Eric, Bryan and I are sitting up in a hotel room. Eric and Bryan are teasing me about my typing, while Stevie Ray Vaughan plays guitar in the background. I'm tired already but I'm really looking forward to the ‘Fest. It looks like, despite some flaws, it's going to be a hell of a show. Good night. I'll see you all tomorrow. Dean Esmay [Eric's notes: yeah, what he said. The only difference is, Tm about to put the B-52's on.] "Dozens of Apple Il booths could be spotted in the Apple II section..." Fri May 04, 1990 at 13:35 EDT I woke up late again this morning, This time it was Eric Mueller's fault. Make sure to send him nasty letters about that, Anyway, I managed to meet up with Tyler & Leah Weisman (A2.TYLER & wife) at breakfast in the hotel. In the restaurant were a lot of people wearing exhibitor badges for the show. I was really looking forward to this. As I walked across the hotel grounds toward the street to reach the Exhibit Center, I met up with Shawn Goodin (sysop from a Competing Information Service) and we chatted as we tried to cross the street. I was very happy that we'd rented a hotel room so close to the convention. Cars June 1990 5 were backed up nearly a block, and traffic was murder. It looked like everyone in the New York/New Jersey area had decided to come to AppleFest. Got into the show about 20 minuies before it actually started. There everyone was. Even more exhibitors were there than I'd seen the night before. I barely had time to say "hi" to a few people before it was time for the keynote address. The keynote speaker was Tom Snyder of Tom Snyder Productions. Snyder spoke for more than an hour this morning. He talked mostly about education (that is, after all, his area of expertise), and, while he didn't speak much about the Apple II itself, he talked a lot about his own experiences using a computer in the classroom as a teacher, and his personal philosophy on computers in the classroom. "MIDI Synth is, quite simply, an incredible sound tool that takes full advantage of the llgs' Ensoniq Chip." Snyder's philosophy is very interesting (and one which I agree with wholeheartedly) - that computers should be considered a tool for teachers more than anything else. That having one computer in the classroom, sitting on the teacher's desk, can do a lot more for the education process than giving each student a computer. Snyder was very charming and quite engaging. He injected a lot of humor and personal anecdotes in his speech. His attitude on educational computing is challenging and I hope others listen to him. I was disappointed, however, because it wasn't an Apple II speech or even a computer speech so much... and yet I suppose it served the audience it was intended for because a show of hands indicated that teachers made up an awfully large chunk of the several hundred member audience. Snyder's speech went a little long, so I had time for little se this morning. However, I did manage to pop in to the Jast half of "Music, MIDI, and the IIgs," a small workshop/demonstration of the IIgs and sound - music programs, sound programs, and MIDI connections. This workshop was pretty interesting. Tim Barwick of <ahem> Another On Line service presented with help from Greg Dib, a local teacher and modem user. Such programs as Music Studio, Master Tracks Pro (IIgs version!), Diversi- Tune, and SoundSmith were presented and talked about. 1 was impressed at how far music programs have come... although I was disappointed at some of the negativity toward good products like Diversi-Tune. Then they showed off sound digitizing (nothing new there, but a lot of the audience members had never seen it). One of the most interesting parts, though, was when Barwick showed off MIDI Synth and the new music tool that Apple hopes to put on the next version of the IIgs system disk. Barwick indicated that Apple programmers had told him (how's that for hearsay, eh? :) that they hoped to have this new tool available in beta form to APDA members early next month. This new sound tool is fantastic. While it was first showed off at the A2-Central Developer's Conference last summer, it's been improved further and looks just about ready to ship. MIDI Synth is, quite simply, an incredible sound tool that takes full advantage of the IIgs' Ensoniq Chip. When developers get their hands on this baby, we're going to see sound in games and other programs as a matter of course that challenge the quality of Diversi-Tune or SoundSmith or Nucleus. Watch for it. After that session, I managed to make my way back to the convention site. I was shocked at the number of people. The place was jam packed! Trying to get within ten feet of Roger Wagner's booth to see HyperStudio requires a real fight. Everyone is busy and having a good time. [Yeah! -Eric] At this point I rounded up Eric Mueller and Bryan Pietrzak and forced them to bring me back to their hotel room so I could write this article up. Now we're listening to the Steve Miller band as I type madly away. It's just after 1:00, and I'm off to find lunch and get back to the show. Believe me, there's a lot more for me to tell you about. :) Dean Esmay [Eric's notes: yeah, what he said. The only difference is, T'm about to put Madonna on.] Fri May 04, 1990 at 13:37 EDT Neat Things At The Show So Far Okay, I know you're all going to be asking about this so Tl say it right now: NO, Apple hasn't announced any new products, They're not even here. The only Apple employee I've spotted here is Matt Deatherage of Apple II Developer Technical Support, hanging out in the Byte Works booth with Mike Westerfield & Co. However, other fun things that have I seen here are: + GENESYS, a new resource editor/creator from SSSi, Inc.,~ has finally been released. This new tool is going to create a revolution for IIgs programming, I can feel it in my bones. It can cut program development time down dramatically, which I'm sure we'd all like to see. It's been sold here at the show for $100 (it lists at $150). I spoke to Mark Wolfgram about it. They're very happy with the interest GENESYS is getting and hope to do well. + The SSSi people were also showing off a new memory card called the GS Sauce by Harris Manufacturing (Wolfgram of SSSi indicated that they'd been in the Apple IT business for over 10 years, but I'd never heard of them). SSSi isn't manufacturing it but they are selling it. It\ooks like a very nice card! It's very tiny and sells for only $90. It accepts SIMMs, expands up to four megabytes, and is fully DMA compatible. (I'm beginning to wonder, though, a Apple-Bug why cards that go up to exactly four megabytes are getting so common.) + Roger Wagner Publishing has set up a fascinating gadget: a kiosk with a slanted top. Embedded in the top is a IIgs monitor (facing upward) with a touch screen. Down below (on the inside) is a IIgs running HyperStudio, All you need to do is walk up to it and touch the screen, You can get a list of everyone exhibiting, touch their name, and be presented with a map that shows you where they are in relation to you. You can get text on the exhibits, too. The whole thing includes digitized voices to help you find your way around. It's really neat. Garland Buckingham (RWP's marketing guy) told me that they'd gotten calls from people who wanted to use HyperStudio to do exactly this kind of thing... directories in shopping malls, for example. So they thought they'd set something like this up for the show. It's very impressive. The more I see HyperStudio, the more impressed I am with the innovative things you can do with it. More later. By the way, I'll try to drop into the RTC room tonight around 8:00. Hope to see you there. :) Dean Esmay. Fri May 04, 1990 at 19:57 EDT Jean Michel-Jarre's Magnetic Fields is playing pleasantly in the background as I write this. My feet are tired, my back hurts, and I'm very tired. As soon as I'm done with this I'll be bopping over to the party being held by Another On Line service. Eric and Bryan have already left and gosh only knows what Tom's up to. Let's see, let's see.... The first person I wound up buttonholing after lunch this afternoon was Richard Stivers, President of Zip Technologies. I'd been heading over to the Beagle Bros booth to find out more about the new Timeout accessories announced at the show (more on that later) when I noticed an energetic young man named Tony (a.k.a. THE.ZIPPER) was showing off. He'd installed the Alpha board version of the ZIP IIGS in one of Beagle Bros’ computers. He was moving around with this board all over the ‘Fest. ‘Well, standing behind him was a dignified, white-haired bear of a man named Richard Stivers. I pulled him aside and talked to him extensively about Zip Technologies, past, present, and future. I asked him quite a bit about all the trouble Zip Technologies had in the past... the initial problem with delivering the product after announcing it, the suit with Rocket Chip, and then the reliability problems with later Zips... Stivers was neither defensive nor apologetic. He took my questions head on and answered every one. He described the company's past as "rocky," saying that the first problem they had (not delivering a product until months after advertising it) was just a bad move by the company's leadership (Stivers was not President at that time). He described the Rocket Chip as out-and- out theft, and apparently the courts agreed. Nevertheless this cost them money and resources, The problem with reliability of some later Zip Chips was due to questionable practices by their chip manufacturer. At one point Zip had actually ceased all production for several months while they changed manufacturers, But it's all behind them now, apparently. They are delivering the chips in quantity, the suit is over and they've won, and they now claim that less than 2/10ths of 1% of all Zips shipped come back. Even that 2/10ths is mostly due to faulty installation (bent or broken pins, for example), according to Stivers. "Zip plans on making the Zip llgs available in June, listing at $299...and speed upgradeable to over 20 Mhz" The information on the Zip GS we've already heard here, but I'll re-cap briefly - Zip plans on making the Zip IIgs available in June, listing at $299. It will start at 8 Mhz speed and 8K of Cache memory, with cache expandable to 64K (empty space will be available right on the board, so you can just plug it right in) and speed upgradeable to over 20 Mhz (by replacing just a chip and a crystal). There are other nice things about this board. The board Tony was showing off had over a dozen selectable operating speeds, just like the Zip Chip. Its speed is now selected through a CDA, but they plan on having CDEVs and NDA's, too, Also, the board will be able to selectively accelerate the SLOTS, which the Transwarp GS can't do at all. It looks to be a very exciting product at a great price. I wish them luck. Anyway, after talking to the Zip guys, I got back to the Beagle booth to have Mark Munz demonstrate the new TIMEOUT programs for Appleworks - Timeout TextTools and MacroEase. TextTools is another collection of “little” desk accessories that add up to a big package. Similar in concept to SpreadTools, TextTools greatly expands the power of the Appleworks word processor. They include the following: Glossary - lets you select boilerplate text from a menu SuperFind - lets you do find or replace on anything in a document, including printer options (underline, boldface, margin settings, etc.). QuickTabs - Lets you select tab rulers in Appleworks 3.0 from a menu, and also makes setting and changing tabs easier. CopyBlock - You guessed it, copy text in blocks (good Sue 1990 ee way to make columns, for example!). MarkMerge - It basically brings back the old Autoworks mail merge function. It's much more powerful than Appleworks' built-in mail merge. Analyst - a style checker Table of Contents Generator - automates the process of building a table of contents. Indexer - automates the process of building an index. This isn't a review of course, but the TextTools looked quite useful and they're shipping now. List price $49.95. MactoEase, the other new Beagle product, is basically an updated and enhanced version of the old MacroTools that Beagle sold before TimeOut 3.0 came out. It's a collection of sample macros and useful tools for macro programmers, including some extra Timeout applications (a debugger, a reference chart, a linker, and a few others). It looks really good and lists for $39.95. Dean Esmay {Eric's notes: yeah, what he said. The only difference is, T'm about to put ZZ Top on.] Fri May 04, 1990 at 20:17 EDT Editorial The following opinions are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of GEnie, A2-Central, or any other member of the A2 staff. Applied Engineering... forever? I made a small mistake yesterday. 1 indicated that it looked like Applied Engineering had changed its mind and decided to come to AppleFest, because they were "sharing" space with CDA Computer Sales and had a nice display of AE stuff. Well I was wrong. There are two people from Applied Engineering here, both of them with badges that say "CDA Computer Sales.” Applied Engineering's presence here is only token and completely informal. "MacroEase, the other new Beagle product, is basically an updated and enhanced version of the old MacroTools" This is a mistake. A bad one. Not only are they shooting themselves in the foot but they'te doing a disservice to the Apple II community. Not, J suppose, that they "owe" the community anything, After all, they're just a business, trying to make money (nice slick ads they've got in this month's AmigaWorld, by the way. That Ramworks 500 card for the Amiga 500 sure looks neat...). Nevertheless, the majority of people coming to this AppleFesi don't know anything of the politics behind AppleFest. They know nothing of the disputes between. Apple and Cambridge/Expo Management/whatever they're 7 called this week. Most of them are just Apple IT people looking for information. And companies that pull no-shows just make the Apple II market look bad. Fortunately, there are so many other companies here, Applied Engineering's presence isn't all that much missed. But a company that became the huge success that Applied Engineering is financially ought to think twice about not having a presence at AppleFest. If nothing else, just so they don't look like a bunch of two-bit pikers. I hope Cambridge and Apple figure this mess out. There's no doubt that Cambridge's decision to dilute AppieFest with this “Computerfest" nonsense is very* questionable, and that it's equally questionable for Apple not to be here. But this has been a good show. I hope AE things again before deciding not to come to future shows. More on the show later this evening. - Dean Esmay Sat May 05, 1990 at 04:17 EDT Hi everyone. Bryan and I just got back from Matt Deatherage's room. It's 4:00am. We're very tired. Attendance seems HIGH!! The show floor isn't very large (only five aisles!), but the floor was packed today and I suspect that it will be even more busy tomorrow (Saturday). Not sure what everyone's feelings are about ComputerFest vs. AppleFest. { know that RWP's booth is swamped, as is Byte Works’, SSSi's, Barney Stone's booth, MAUG's, AOL's, GS+'s, and a BUNCH more. Lots of Apple WI supporters here. (And... get this... a BIG BOOTH by Commodore! Yes! The Amiga people are here in full-force, but only in the Commodore booth, from what is that 75% of the booths are exclusively Apple Il, 10% are Apple Il & IBM or Apple II & Mac, and the other 15% are anything but Apple II [Mac or IBM, no Amigas I saw other than Commodore's booth]). ‘Well, I'm really tired. :) And I think Bryan wants to use his computer. And, I have to go to sleep now. I'm really tired. :) Have a GREAT day,ya'll...... Sat May 08, 1990 at 12:56 EDT Ym here at the Beagle Bros booth. Next to me, on my left... <- is Mark de Jong. On my right ---> is. Jerry Kindall, now known by the respectable moniker of QC. (Catchy, huh?) The show is realililly realllllllly neato. And I wish everyone could be here. Later tonight is the big GEnie get-together at the Holiday Inn (in the Ambrose Room; no invitation necessary but you really should have a GEnie account if you're going to drop by <grin>). Welp, that's about it for now. 1 have to go find a panel now, and I think Mark wants his computer back. That's the impression I'm getting, anyhow. Mark just shrugs when I ask him if he wants his computer back, but I can tell that he really does. Really. (Beagle Bros has a VERY nice booth, by the way.) - Beagle Mueller 8 Sat May 05, 1990 at 14:47 EDT More news from AppleFest - Roger Wagner Publishing has released and is now selling HyperStudio version 2.1. While Roger couldn't give me a list of all the new features, he showed me a few and promised that all registered users would receive free updates along with a manual addendum. Among the new features, though, are: « A Free Runtime Module - that's right, you can now run HyperStudio stacks without owning Hyperstudio. Wagner will license the run-time version for a small fee (not decided at this time) for commercial purposes but will be free for anyone putting together public domain stacks. Look for us to convert our entire HyperStudio library to this new format ASAP. + New paint features, including "restricted motion" for drawing straight lines and "stretching" of graphics. + Improved memory management - HyperStudio and its stacks take up less space. + Improved ability to "insert" new cards in the middle of a stack. That's not all there is to it, but it was all Roger had time to show me and that I was able to scribble down. Roger did indicate that this would probably be the last free update HyperStudio owners would get, simply because it's getting too expensive to keep doing it. Moving on to other things, two new issues of Apple II magazines appeared here. The latest issue of II at Work is out, including the usual assortment of useful Apple II productivity information and a nice editorial by Barney about good directions Apple might take in the future toward the Apple II. The latest IIgs Buyer's Guide is also here, aad it contains a very interesting open letter from John Sculley to the Apple II community. I won't repeat it here because it's quite long (and we'll all see it soon enough I'm sure), but Till highlight his main points: + He thanks Apple II buyers for their loyalty and passion and says that Apple is very gratified by it. + He said that they are working to improve the computer themselves and that they are working closely with hardware and software developers to "encourage the creation" of innovative products. + He went over the new things they've released for the Apple Il in the past year. + He stated that Apple understands that we need continued enhancements, + He said he wanted to reassure Apple II users that they value the Apple II, consider it an asset, and that they will continue to "nourish" it. + He then said he wasn't at liberty to tell us anything about their future product plans. Apple-Bug + He stated flat out that while there are limits to the Apple II, the technology is not obsolete, and because of that, they are committed to enhancing its functionality, improving customer support, encouraging more development and to push the machine to its limits. Good letter, Byte Works has two interesting bits of news. First, they've put together a $50 package to help you learn Pascal programming. It's slightly IIgs specific but for the most part is just a generic Pascal learning environment that should be applicable anywhere, though it does use the IIgs for the base machine. It looks like 2 pretty extensive package, including disk, worksheets, etc. Might even be useful in a classroom situation. "Design Master is a resource creator (not a full blown editor) for IIgs programmers and lists for $55. Also, Chris Haun's DESIGN MASTER has gone commercial, and Byte Works is the publisher. Design Master is 2 resource creator (not a full blown editor) for IIgs programmers and lists for $55. I talked to Mike Westerfield about it and he said Chris had enhanced the product considerably over the shareware version (available in A2Pro, I believe). A gentleman by the name of Bill St. Pierre was at the Tri-State Computer User's Group showing off a card he'd designed call the TurboRez GS. It's still in the prototype stage but definitely working. It's basically a graphics enhancement card that plugs into the IIgs. Apparently this is the second prototype, the first having been shown at the last AppleFest in September (I'd never heard about it, though). What the card does is give you the following display modes on the Hgs: 320 X 200 mode - 256 colours 640 X 200 mode - [6 colours A mixed 320 AND 640 mode with 192 320 mode colours and 8 640 mode colours. It has half a meg of memory and even allows "page flipping" (an easy to use animation technique that was used on the IIe but not the IIgs). Another neat features: It uses graphics "sprites," it allows you to overlay images, mixing in standard IIgs graphics with the card's graphics, and you can actually divide the screen up into "zones", each of which can have its own mode and palette, and it can connect to an optional LCD "3D" glasses driver (he wasn't showing that, though). He also hopes to add a 640X400 mode. The card does not interfere with normal IIgs operations in any way. St. Pierre's company, SYNovation, hopes to have the card available by September and to price it between June 1990 == $400 and $500. - Dean Esmay Sat May 05, 1990 at 15:58 EDT I missed-most of last night's party (wasn't in the mood) but I did get there in time to say "hi" to Andy Nicholas, who had just arrived. I met up with Matt Deatherage, Doug Davies (who did the art for those great Solitaire games), Tony from Zip Tech (THE.ZIPPER), and went out for a late dinner at a local restaurant. There we ate with Roger & Pam Wagner, the two guys from Milliken whose names I keep forgetting to write down (doggone it), Dave Klimas (one of the HyperStudio authors), and of course Bryan Pietrzak & Eric Mueller (I can't shake off these guys). Tony regaled us with outlandish stories about his youth, while the Milliken guys talked intently about the Apple II education market.’ Milliken has no intention of doing Mac educational software, since they don't feel the market is big enough. Apple keeps encouraging them to do it, though. I was probably poor company myself. I've been feeling slightly ill since I got to the ‘Fest. Last night was patticularly horrible. I couldn't draw more than half a breath without my lungs feeling like they were on fire. Throat hurt, head hurt, whole body hurt, and I was dizzy. Fun, fun, fun. Luckily, I found a kind soul by the name of Marty Friedman who helped me find a 24 hour drug store. At 1:00 in the moming. In the middle of a cold, violent thunderstorm. With lots of aspirin, throat lozenges, and antihistamines I managed to get 8 hours of sleep, and today I feel almost normal again, though I did miss the first hour or so of this morning's show. "Roger Wagner...also stressed that the Apple Il is not '10 year old technology." Anyway, during the ride, Marty told me that he'd been told by a lady from Exposition Marketing that Apple (I say that he said that she said that Apple said... what, me spread hearsay?) had sent a 6 page letter to some of the exhibitors explaining why they weren't here. I haven't had time to track that down but if it's true I'll find it. Count on it. The first thing I did this morning was sit in on a great conference moderated by Mike Harvey of Nibble magazine, with panelists Roger Wagner, Barney Stone, Tom Weishaar (who is that guy, anyway?) and Rick Taft (President of a local user group). The conference, "Using the Apple II in the home, school, and small business," was very interesting. While criticism was leveled at Apple, things were surprisingly positive. It was more than an hour long, but basically: * Tom Weishaar said that as far as Apple is concerned, there is no home market for computers. He thinks they're wrong, (and a show of hands of the audience showed home users to 9 be the overwhelming majority, with the rest evenly split between education and business (hmm!)) but regardless of this, that's just how Apple's marketing people feel. He said that Apple's basic belief is that there are two main markets - education and business. And that whatever few home users might exist could be covered by one or the other branch. But that while all this might be true, a huge home market exists and they won't disappear just because Apple doesn't Tecognize it at the moment, * Roger Wagner rambled quite a bit but mentioned that he feels the Apple II is capable of far more than any other machines in its price class in a lot of areas, and that he tries as often as possible to show people from Apple what he can do. He also stressed that the Apple II is not "10 year old technology." While it has its roots in that, the IIgs is very modern and has incredible capabilities. He says that a common mistake people make is in thinking of Apple as one entity. He said, "Nobody talks to Apple." Because there are 10,000 people working for Apple and you can't have a dialogue with them all. And that's the problem. He said talking to Apple was rather like talking to a schizophrenic. Simply because that's how any large corporation tends to be. He also said that the II is a wonderful education machine... and that he considers "education" to mean any learning experience in any environment, not just in schools. + Barney Stone emphasized the power of the Apple II, especially in its-ease of use. He encouraged people to stop worrying so much about the future of the Apple II, about wanting the latest and greatest. He pointed out that IBM's entire philosophy of personal computers is to ot use the latest and greatest technology. The IBM PC was built entirely on off-the-shelf products commonly available, and that it seems to have served them (and their users) fairly well. He said we must think of computers as tools. Does this tool do what you want it to do? If not, then go buy a Mac or an IBM. But otherwise, do you need a 33 Mhz AT clone for what you do? Besides the fact that those numbers are totally meaningless from a technical standpoint, they're doubly meaningless to most individuals. There's plenty of great things you can do and still stay within the Apple II. He says some people are getting upset for no reason. Apple isn't abandoning the II, there's still tons of great software, there are more products all the time. Stone also encouraged people to look beyond Appleworks to see if there are other programs that do what Appleworks can't do for them. He said he's seen some people who give up and think they need anew machine when they can't get Appleworks to do what they want, and that's a mistake. « Taft pointed out that user groups are extremely important... that they can provide technical support and guidance that no dealer can. That they're extremely important to the future of the Apple II and that starting one is a good idea if it doesn't already exist in your area, When asked about Apple's non-attendance of this AppleFest, all three panelists (and Harvey) basically said the 10 same things - it's bad that they're not here, and nobody knows exactly why they aren't, but none of them believed it's because Apple doesn’t care about the Apple II. They pointed out a few things - that Apple DID provide money to set up a large display area, including computers where people could have hands-on experience with a number of 3rd party programs), that Apple's had serious financial difficulties lately and they generally DO NOT attend a show without attending with a very big display (Barney said they usually spend at least a quarter million dollars per show), that there was rumor of bickering between Apple corporate and the show's presenters, Cambridge/Exposition management/whatever they're called this week. In essence, while nobody really knows, there are a lot of possibilities and the notion that it's because they don't care about the II is probably way too pessimistic. Everybody emphasized that the Apple II is a great machine, that great products continue to be availabie for it, and that things at Apple are getting better all the time as far as the Apple II is concerned. Thaven't had time to attend too many seminars, but I'll try to cover the more interesting sounding ones. Glad I made this one (and hope I haven't improperly paraphrased anyone). After that session, I wandered out to the Stone Edge Technologies booth. David Westbrook of Ingenuity, Inc. and Brian Fitzgerald were there, showing off the two latest gadgets from Ingenuity! They're not "officially" here but, like the Zip folks, they decided to come at the last minute and wander around the show showing their stuff off. ‘The two neato gadgets they were showing off were the CDr.ve and the new INNERCARD. The CDrive is the internal hard drive for the Iic. We've seen ads for this for a while now but apparently it's now shipping. The unit he was showing was plugged into one of Stone Edge's IIc+'s and was working like a champ. It was a 20 meg unit (the 40 meg units won't be available for a while). It's sure neat. It works by plugging right into the main processor, and uses an ESDI interface that runs at about 120K per second, according to Brian. It only draws 2 watts of power, is compatible with the Zip Chip, and doesn't interfere with Apple, Applied Engineering, or Checkmate RAM cards. Very impressive! Jeez, is there ANYTHING you can't add to a IIc? :) The other really neat thing that we hadn't heard about from Ingenuity before is the Innercard - a hard drive on a card! It's really cool. Just one little card (it's smaller than my memory board) holds the hard drive and controller. It doesn't block any of the other slots. It's quite quick (Westbrook said it wasn't as fast as the Cirtech hard drive on a card) and not too expensive. The unit he had there was 40 megabytes and will cost $699. They hope to be shipping in two weeks, Okay, I'm off to find lunch, get new information, and track down that rumor. See you all later. Apple -Bug Sat May 05, 1990 at 17:54 EDT Spoke to a number of vendors today. None of them seem particularly upset about the "mixture" of Apple II with “everybody else" stuff, although I haven't asked any of the non Apple II vendors what THEY think. Some vendors are looking pretty bored, though. On the 6 page letter from Apple - Marty says he's got two people who've promised to give them to him, including an Apple dealer (he showed me the guy's card). He's promised to fax it to me on Monday. If that's the worst I can get, I'll do that. Supposedly the reason is that Apple wouldn't come to an "AppleFest" that was diluted. That's still hearsay, I'll let you know when I have facts. One of the nicer things about this show is the number of small vendors here. It's nice to sce a lot of cottage industries. Greenwing software, for example, or the HyperStudio Network ~ Compuco. I'll write more on them later. I'm going to the GEnie party in a few minutes. It should be fun to hob-nob with people. I'll be back on after that with some closing info for today. Sat May 05, 1990 at 22:53 EDT This will almost certainly be my last post from Somerset. We have to check out of the hotel at noon, and there'll be no easy way for me to get on-line after that. And, after all, the convention doesn't even start until 10:00. However, I'll promise you two things: if anything really exciting happens Tl rush to a phone to call Chet so he can post it, and I'll write a final report Monday afternoon and post it here (will be getting back too late Sunday night to do it sooner). "Jeez, is there ANYTHING you can't add to a IIc?" I spent a good long while talking 1 Daniel Lampert of Techware about their product Tutor-Tech. To refresh your memory, Tutor-Tech is the 8-bit hypermedia program thacs been around for a couple of years. I finally got to see a full, complete demo of it and ! must say it's a system that looks just about as complete and well rounded as HyperStudio. They have a very large installed base (Lampert claimed that they had many more users than HyperStudio--even more IIgs users). He effectively demonstrated, too, that it could do all the really cool multimedia things that HyperStudio does using a Video Overlay Card and a Video Disc player. Their literature also lists dozens of 3rd party hardware they work with: speech synthesizers, audio digitizers, audio tape recorders, and video tape recorders. One of the things that also impressed me about it was that it worked very fast. It worked so fast it looked faster than a Ugs application, even at only 1 Mhz. Not bad. They spend all their effort advertising to schools, it June 1990 — — VW appears. Strange. They may be missing the boat. I popped over to the Timeworks booth and spoke to the gentleman in charge there. They were showing off Publish- It! for the Apple II and Macintosh. They seemed a bit uncomfortable when I didn't want to look at their Macintosh version, and had no idea how well their Apple II version was selling by comparison. He did say that Publish-It!3 was selling extremely well and that they did plan on doing even more with it in the future. I asked about Graph-It!_ but none of them there knew much about it. One of them even laughed at me. I found this unfathomable and walked away. Strange guys. "Bannerworks...it makes banners in the same fashion as Print Shop, but at much higher quality." I walked over to the Broderbund booth and talked to the people there. They were showing one new Apple Il product, Bannerworks. It makes banners in the same fashion as Print Shop, but at much higher quality. The quality was so good I was stunned. Watch for this product. They also filled my ear about the new Print Shop for the Tle/Ilc. They're promising lots of neat features, but they say it won't be available until July. They also said they hoped to see a Print Shop Companion GS available at that time. I spoke to a pretty young woman named Evelyn Koslow at a booth for a small company named Compuco. They'te doing some really neat things with LogoWriter (published by Terrapin, who's also here). LogoWriter is a great version of Logo that's getting very popular in schools in my area, and apparently elsewhere. Compuco is a small company that's publishing add-on products for it... templates, programs, and activities that focus on reading skills for grade levels 1 - 8. A nice little cottage industry. Their address: Compuco, Inc, 26-05 D Failr Lawn Ave, Fair Lawn, NJ 07410, 201- 703-9676. I also spent a while talking with Robert Staats of anew group called the HyperStudio Network (formerly the HyperLearning Network). They're publishing a new newsletter, HyperStudio Forum (formerly HyperLearning Forum). They're an organization devoted to the distribution of information about HyperMedia. They also sell HyperStudio, a few stacks of their own, and public domain stacks for reasonable fees (about $5.00 per disk). Their address: HyperStudio Network, Box 103, Blawenburg, NJ 08504 The organization started out as the HyperLearning Network but they quickly found out that another organization had a trademark on that name. However, Staats said that by that time they'd realized that HyperStudio was what most of the people they talked to were interested. in, The vast majority, he claimed. So they spoke to Roger Wagner about it and just renamed themselves the HyperStudio network. Why not? More and more I just wonder if HyperStudio isn't going to become the driving force behind the IIgs as much as Appleworks was for the Ie and IIc. Anyway, HyperStudio Forum looks very professional, and the people I spoke to were very positive. I wish them luck, Their address: HyperLearning Network, Box 103, Blawenburg, NJ 08504 I spoke to two gentlemen from the American Printing House for the Blind. They're all set to release TextTalker GS. This program will allow blind IIgs users to access tons of software they never could before. All they need is an Echo or SlotBuster speech synthesizer. This program will allow blind users to have much greater access to software that many of us take for granted. It's very good news. They indicated that it probably wouldn't cost more than about $60, which is darned reasonable. Their address: American Printing House for the Blind, P.O. Box 6085, Louisville, KY 40206 (502)-895-2405 Insignificant Events: Got to chat with Paul Statt and a bunch of the guys at inCider (yes, they had a booth). HangTime (Bruce Caplin, one of our assistant sysops in A2) finally showed up. Eric found a couple of new friends, including one guy who owns a NeXT (no kidding). He's run off this evening to see their computers and stuff. Uncle DOS threw us a nice GEnie party with great chili and sandwiches. The room was jam packed. According to HangTime is was much bigger than the last party in Boston, Unfortunately, I'd screwed up and told everybody it started at 7:00 when it actually started at 5:30. Oops. I bought nachos at the convention center. They had a picture of nachos that showed hot peppers on them. But they had no hot peppers. Can J sue them for that? Tomorrow: There will be a meeting of the Apple I! Developer's Association. Barney has invited everyone who programs the Apple II or makes their living off of it to attend. He wants to discuss further ideas to share with Apple in order to improve relationships and help the future of the Apple II. One of the things he'll discuss is his proposal that Apple should interface the IIgs to the Superdrive. Beagle Bros will also be holding a special breakfast for Beagle Buddies. Other than that, no significant news is expected (sorry guys). I'll talk to you all on Monday and give you the wrap up. - Dean Esmay Sun May 06, 1990 at 04:36 EDT Eric's Big Day Continuing where I left off about this time yesterday 12 morning, I got back from Matt Deatherage's room at 4:00am and went to sleep, ASAP. (I was really tired. <grin>) Then, I got up EARLY (9:30am!) and went over to AppleFest for the second day, the big Saturday. I met up with Walker Archer and Jerry Kindall (was A2.Jerry, now QC!) from Quality Computers, and a few other guys that weren't there on Friday. I also talked to Andy Nicholas, who just finished Shrinklt 3.0.2. OH! AND I MET GLEN BREDON AND SHOOK HIS IT WAS SOOOO0O COOL! I WAS TONGUE-TIED! (And if you know me, you know that I'm rarely at a loss for words. I was stuttering and stammering. Heck, it was Glen Bredon, what can I say. <grin>) [Editor's note: Don't belicve him. The first thing Eric said to Glen when he met him was “There's a bug in Merlin you need to fix."--DEE] Then, about four Apple II pirates and hackers that used to be in the business but now do legal things with our time (myself included, I admit it) seemed to all walk down the same aisle in the show at the same time (noonish). We all recognized each other, so we met. I found two guys, Declan and Tom, that used to bereally into the Apple II, but now develop for the NeXT and the IBM (Declan for the NeXT, Tom for IBM). In any case, we seemed to hit it off quickly and spent the rest of the day wandering around talking to people and seeing the show. At about 6:30pm, I left the convention hall and Declan, Tom and I went over to the GEnie party, which was already in progress (and in full swing!). I'll let Dean give you the run-down <grin>, but it was *VERY* busy, probably around 75... I met lots of our online support reps and quite a few clients that I hadn't known before. It was a BLAST! And the sub sandwiches were really good, too. (I was too late for the chili, Sigh.) The party started to break up around nine, and by 9:15 there was a core group left in the room: HangTime, A2.Dean, A2.Tyler, Uncle-DOS, Mark Munz, Declan and Tom, Steve Chick, and myself. We talked until around 10, _ when Declan, Tom and I went over to Declan’s dorm (he's a Rutgers University student) to check out his NeXT machine. (Tom W, Matt Deatherage, and Bryan Pietrzak _ went to dinner here at the hotel. Bryan says it was “unreal.” Til have to pry further to understand what he means.) Declan, Tom and I went back to the hotel room and found Dean and Bryan sitting there playing on Bryan's IIgs [I was typing reports, not playing--DEE] (thanks, Bryan!) and talking. Declan and I suddenly realized we hadn't had dinner, and Dean was starving too, so D & T & I went out to pick up a pizza. We got back around lam and sat there eating pizza (Dean left early) and exploring Internet (I had never seen it. How totally cool!), And then they left. I'm going to meet them tomorrow in the morning at the Apple Developer Conference and we'll probably hang around all day together. So anyhow, it's 4:19am and I'm in a great mood, Apple-Bug because I've made two new friends and I'm going to meet them tomorrow and I got to shake Glen Bredon's hand today. And I'm just so happy to be here. :) Mon May 07, 1990 at 12:27 EDT All the reports have been great. Just thought I'd throw in a few comments from a vendor's point of view: Attendance was a bit disappointing - 12,000, down from 22,000 in Boston - but booth traffic was very good. I think the small size of the show was disappointing to some attendees, but the other exhibitors that I spoke to were all quite pleased. I was too busy to walk around much, but I've heard that the Commodore and IBM areas were pretty empty. Hope that info helps us get rid of the generic half of the show. New stuff is still coming out. In my booth alone, we had the internal drive for the //c, a hard disk on a card and the RamFAST/SCSI, which was making people's eyes pop every time I booted GS/OS. The shareware version of DB Master has been getting a lot of attention. We sold quite a few of them, some just disks, and others with the full book. And there was a lot of interest in the new DB Master Developer's Pak and run-time version, too. "lalso talked to Andy Nicholas, who just finished Shrinklt 3.0.2." All told, I felt that it was a very good show. (Except for the conferences, which had terrible acoustics. Hope they never make that mistake again.) - Barney Stone Mon May 07, 1990 at 15:42 EDT Applefest Report Final wrap-up and epilogue Details I Forgot - I got to shake Glen Bredon's hand too. I was very pleased to finally meet him. Two guys from Thunderscan were sitting in a corner of Roger Wagner's booth, showing off the new Lightningscan. The Lightningscan is another hand scanner like the Quickie. They were demonstrating it and yet it worked just like the Quickie. I spoke to Philip Bennett (one of the two guys) about it and he indicated that they hoped the product would be available in one or two weeks. It worked really well. Just as fast and easy to use as the Quickie, but working in 320X200 mode as well as 640 mode (which Quickie is currently limited to). Of course, Vitesse (the guys who make the Quickie) say they'll be supporting 320 mode very soon. So for the moment both are somewhat vapor-ish. Hardware-wise, the two products look and work identically with only cosmetic differences otherwise. Sunday was an interesting day. That morning at 9:00 Roger Wagner, Barney Stone, Tom Weishaar, and Mike Harvey held a meeting of the Apple II Developer's June 1990 Association. Unfortunately, hardly anyone was there. I suspect it was too early in the morning and not announced far enough in advance. Bamey talked more about his idea of convincing Apple to support the Superdrive on the Apple IIgs and write FST's for Macintosh and MS-DOS machines. He hopes to get developers of other products such as Supercalc, VIP Professional, Word Perfect, and an as yet unreleased clone of Excel to update their software to support this. He thinks it could significantly boost the Apple II if it were tied to more marketing. Most people thought it was a good idea though some, like Tom Weishaar, were unconvinced that it was a plan to get totally enthused about. It was pointed out that Apple will soon be doing retail advertising of the Apple II, which we haven't had in years. Neat, huh? “Barney talked more about his idea of convincing Apple to support the Superdrive on the Apple ligs and write FST's for Macintosh and MS-DOS machines. People were encouraged to write to Jane Lee at Apple with suggestions on how to better market the Apple II. It was again stressed that polite letters with constructive suggestions for improvement would help a lot, whereas criticism won't help a thing at this point (by now they fully know how we all feel). After that it was time to wander the convention again. By now there wasn't much interesting to do. I sat in on a couple of seminars, none of which were very interesting Tm afraid. All of the seminars | attended at this AppleFest were geared toward beginners. Introduction to MIDI, introduction to Desktop Publishing, etc. I never saw anything particularly innovative or newsworthy there. Mind you, most of the sessions I attended were well planned and well led. But they were all based toward beginners so it won't do me any good to go into it here. It would sound like an article for beginners. :) I finally managed to make it over to the Seven Hills booth (they'd been overcrowded before and I'd managed to miss them) and got a demo from David Hecker of the new GraphicWriter III. I was really impressed. The program was working well and was very quick. He said the only significant problem left was the spelling checker. It still doesn't work right, Otherwise, it looks like it was worth the long wait for this product to be released. David also showed off their new Disk Utility NDA, which looks really good. you can do anything you could from the Finder with this NDA, I mean anything, not just a few things. It's very nice. I think J may buy it. (Eric says ——— he'll post a review in the A2Pro library.) Jalso got a chance to try out something called a Nada- Chair. An interesting contraption that loops around your back and fastens to each of your knees, the Nada-chair provides lower back support when sitting. 1 took one home with me and am very pleased with it. It makes sitting down very comfortable, especially if you like to sit cross-legged like me. It looks kinda goofy but it's really comfortable. Hmm. I can't seem to find the address here but I'll post it if anyone's interested. The thing looks really perfect for spectator sports, sitting hacking at your computer for long hours, or sitting around a campfire. I really like it. Other than that, nothing more happened. People were tushing around seeing the last of the show, asking questions, and talking to each other. By 4:00 (when the show closed) everyone looked tired. The exhibitors especially. I said goodbye to everyone and went back to the hotel. Tom, Eric, Matt Deatherage and I drove back to Newark airport (and nearly got lost in the maze of roads that place has). Uncle DOS and Matt took off two hours before Eric and 1. We wandered around Newark airport, ate in a place called Nathan's, and got on our planes. Eric is staying at my place for a few days, then flying off to Canada, We finally artived at O'Hare late at night. The place seemed empty. On our way out, in a long, quiet corridor, we encountered -a lone saxophone player playing for tips. The mellow, echoing sound seemed a fitting end to a long weekend. - Dean Esmay 13 Afterword: AppleFest was a good show this year. Not a lot of really exciting things happened at the show--no earth shattering announcements, good or bad. But people were there, lots of then. The Apple II was the center of the show and I'm sure the vendors there with "other" computers regretted spending the time to attend. Thousands of people came from all over to see the show. They met each other, talked to each other, learned from each other, They got to know some of the "mini celebrities” that inhabit the Apple II kingdom and to ask them questions about their products. I had fun. Sure, I wish a new super IIgs was announced, or that Apple had showed up and announced more hardware and software for the Apple II. I wish Claris had been there, too. I think one of the important things to note about Apple's absence at this AppleFest is that a lot of people insisted on seeing this as a bad thing. I think this goes back to what Te said in the past about being ceaselessly negative. It also makes me regret (somewhat) the editorial I wrote above about Applied Engineering's absence from the show. From the outset, people deeply criticized Exposition Marketing for deciding to “dilute" AppleFest by putting it 4 alongside of the generic "Computerfest.". Many people decided not to come to the show. While I never did track down that (perhaps mythical) six page letter from Apple, I can guess what it might have said. It might easily have said that they disapproved of Expo Marketing's attempt to dilute their show, so they wouldn't come. That's what the rumor mill said it said, anyway. Perhaps you'd disagree with such an opinion, but isn’t it at least possible that someone at Apple could take that position and not be unreasonable? But even if that letter doesn't exist, or if it says something different than the rumors said... would it matter? Apple-Bug People were there. Thousands of Apple II users having fun together. Thousands of people learning more about their machines and realizing the power and size of this community. What a great event! A lot of good things happened at AppleFest, and a lot of good things have been coming from Apple over the past year (with promises of more to come). Let's stay off the gloom and doom bandwagon. This was a fun show... and I hope to see even more people there at the next one in San Francisco. With or without Apple (but let's hope they resolve their differences with the show's presenters, eh?). Apple II Forever! Disk of the Month It's another month of new release software this month. Firstly for the Apple IIgs we are the forth of the GS/GS Utility Disks. Almost all the programs on this disk require System Disk 5.02. Also included is a powerful word processor. The best news around at the moment is that the second best data base program for the Apple II is now Shareware, DB Master Version Five (DB Master Professional is the best). Better still is that you can obtain your copy from Apple-Q. To order, see Sheryl or Dale at the Software Library Table at the General Meeting or fill in the order form on the Disk of the Month Liftout in this edition. This month's disk: contains the following: DB Master v5 DB Master Version Five is an excellent general-purpose data base management program. With it, you can create large or small data files, collect information in those files, and produce a wide variety of reports based on that information, all easily and without any programming. DB Master is designed for large, demanding applications. Its capacity is not limited by your computer's memory, or even by the size of one diskette. It has many features that will help you create the files and reports you need. DB Master Version Five uses Apple's ProDOS 8 operating system. It can automatically convert files created with earlier versions of DB Master and AppleWorks data base files into DB Master files, And it can prepare normal ASCII or DIF text files for use with AppleWorks and other programs. This Shareware version of DB Master comes with 58 pages of documentation on disk. The program takes up almost two (double-sided) 5.25 inch disks or one 3.5 inch disk. Cost is just $8.00 with disk(s). DB Master requires an Enhanced Apple Ie, Ic or IIgs. GS/OS Utility Disk #4 Desk Color CDev v1.1 - Here is a CDev that allows you to change the colour of the desktop from the old periwinkle blue to any of 15 other colors or to a picture. Whatever colour or picture you choose becomes the new desktop colour and will be used even the next time you power up the computer. Leap Frog - Leap Frog is a program which allows up to eight other programs to run all at the same time! It is like a combination of Multifinder and Switcher, with some advantages all its own. Note that this is a Pre-release version - this means that it works but not all the time. I have included this on the disk to show the future of the Apple Tlgs, so a play with it but I would not use Leapfrog in a situation where valuable data could be lost. MicroEMACS - MicroEMACS is a tool for creating and changing documents, programs, and other text files. It is both relatively easy for the novice to use, but also very powerful in the hands of an expert. MicroEMACS can be extensively customized for the needs of the individual user. MicroEMACS allows several files to be edited at the same time. The screen can be split into different windows, and text may be moved freely from one window to the next. Depending on the type of file being edited, MicroEMACS can change how it behaves to make editing simple. Editing standard text files, program files and word processing documents are all possible at the same time. NuPak Iigs - NuPak Ilgs™ is an innovative creation in packing utilities. Nupak IIgs offers the ability to pack and unpack not only ShrinkIT™ type files, but files in several other formats as well. However, the biggest advantage of Nupak Ilgs is the ability to pack files with resource forks. With the onset of GS/OS 3.0, files containing both resource and data forks will become more prominent. It currently supports AppleShare™ network file servers. However, what sets NuPak off from the rest is its ability to unpack Macintosh files compressed with StuffIT™, the most widely used Macintosh archival program, RunQ - RunQ is a program-launching utility that allows you to instantly switch from one application to another, without reentering the Finder. Because it remembers the June 1990 === location of the installed applications, it can be used to easily access your programs without going through the hierarchy of your disk structure. This program is very similar to the = 15 commercially available program OnCue™ for the Apple Macintosh, which in fact gave me many of the ideas of how to design my program. Education Software: Choosing & Using by Ann White EDITOR: The following are the notes Ann used at the demostration last month. Why use computers and education software? 1. Are intrinsically motivating 2. Facilitate development of independent learning habits 3, Present varieties of learning experience which would be very hard / impossible to arrange otherwise. . 4, Computers are everywhere in the real world in which children operate now, will be even more pervasive in future 5. Computer literacy is a basic pre-requisite for competency in the modern world 6. Great opportunity to develop a regard for computers as both functional tools and sources of pleasure & recreation. Criteria to be considered when choosing software 1. Meets (or partly meets) a particular or general need in a curriculum / program (a) tutorial /basic learning level (b) drill & practice (c) practice / consolidation of concept (c) extension / enrichment activity 2. Is flexible and/or open to amendment with my data input, where appropriate, to fit my objectives. 3. May be able, where appropriate, to be set up by Teacher by access level, subject matter by prior menu control for ‘one or more students. 4, Provides a range of experiences / levels which encourages both intrinsic sustained interest and promotes on-going skill development. 5. Preferably, is useful across several school levels. 6. Is "user friendly" to operate, particularly with regard to reading age requirements. 7. Where appropriate, has a “record keeping” facility 8. Must be able to be backed up to allow safe storage of original discs. 9. Where appropriate, allows for options re number of players: eg self, self against computer, two friends etc 10. Preferably comes with intelligible manuals giving necessary information for optimal use of the program(s) but does not write my lessons for me. {?? Cost factor when unwanted??] 11. May lend itself to classroom parallel activity which accommodates other children waiting access to computer. 12. May allow computer to be used as a "correcting" device. 13. May fit in to a range of software on similar theme eg "Hangperson" type games, Reasons for non-purchase of software 1. Boring 2. Inflexible, perhaps does only one thing or uses only data that the programmer thought we'd need. 3. Reinforcement / graphics / sound is excessively time consuming & therefore a lot of time at the computer is non productive. (May be less of a problem at home where there will not generally be as many children waiting to access the computer.) 4, Sound(s) / graphic(s) resulting from wrong answer are excessive, embarrassing to learner. 5. Program is too long-winded / time consuming for benefits derived. 6. Program is not as good as similar in the Public Domain 7. Operation is without write protection and disk can not be backed up. (Murphy's Law very relevant in this area. Likelihood of program corruption/failure directly Proportional to importance of its not doing so - eg "planned to use for demo lesson with the inspector"!) For Sale 46 meg. Hard Disk Drive $1150.00 Brand New - will work on the Apple II, I+, He, IIgs and Macintosh Cirtech SCSI card Hard Disks made to order (any size) $99.00 Call Contact Graham Black - (07) 883-1525 after 12.00 noon For Sale Apple 5.25 inch Disk Drive (12 months old) $400.00 o.n.0. Epson GX80 with Tracter (Serial Interface) $350.00 includes GS adapter cable and 500 sheets paper Contact Anthony Rich - (07) 202-6135 on weekends A new Apple il Magazine is coming soon... Apple-Bu Gg SURFACE || Postace PAID The Newsletter of APPLE-Q Iic. (the Brisbane Users’ Group) MAIL AUSTRALIA If not claimed within 7 days, please return to: P.O. Box 721, South Brisbane, Queensland 4101, Australia. Please deliver to = Changing Address? so. fill in this slip and send it in as soon as possible. Registered by Australia Post - Publication No. QBG 3485 P.O. Box 721, South Brisbane, Qld 4101