jayf@islenet.UUCP (Jay Fields) (05/18/85)
Ramblings By J Fields 5-16-85 Good things are showing up all over these days. Applied Engineering has a Z-80 addon kit for the Apple //c that lets us run CP/M on the 2-see. Apple is delivering the kit to make the //e completely compatible with //c. Ensemble and MacEnhancer arrive for the Mac, and Hawaii's beaches are once again filling up with good scenery from the mainland. What more can we ask for? If you drop in on a friend and catch him/her at work on a Macintosh, the chances are that you will catch them using a Microsoft product. Sometimes it seems like Microsoft has cornered the market on getting things done with the Macintosh. Only two things are wrong with Microsoft products: 1) Copy protection, and 2) speed. Apart from these two shortcomings you should find unadulterated ease of use. First, let's look at the shortcomings - in reverse order: Speed has been the common denominator for most Mac-complaints. Microsoft can not do much to make disk to memory transfer rates faster than 230K baud. Fortunately Apple seems to have found a way of improving the speed of the System and Finder in the surprise System Update delivered with the new version of Macwrite - Version 4.5. If you switch between applications often in the course of your day then you will want to try the new system's minifinder feature. It will save you considerable time switching between applications that you can keep on the same disk. Want a pat-on-the-back for buying Apple? The upgrade is available at no charge. Contact any authorized Apple dealer to obtain your update. As for copy protection - doesn't everybody hate it? Microsoft believes *very* strongly in copy protecting their programs. Why? A recent article in PC World says that Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) was burned bad by piracy very early his career. As you probably know, Microsoft paved the way for programmers by giving us one of the very first Basic languages for microcomputers. It seems that right after he put the product on the market copies started turning up everywhere. Thousands of people were suddenly raving about the new Basic. When Bill checked he had only sold a hundred or so. There went his anticipated revenues. If you've thought of depending on your own business for a living, then you may know how important a breakeven analysis is. If so, then you may appreciate what 10% product performance means. In any case, before we grumble about copy protection we should remember that we caused copy protection to be necessary in the beginning. Still, copy protection degrades considerably from the performance, or possible performance of Microsoft products on the Macintosh. Macintosh programs are tantalizingly slow loading. Stopping to insert the original for verification adds one more fly to the ointment. Consequently, I've taken to using one of my original disks as a work disk. Yesterday something new happened to my *original* copy of Microsoft Word while using it. Upon booting I received a message saying "PLEASE INSERT WORD MASTER". I asked myself, "W.T.F.?" Obviously, something had *happened* to my disk. I invisioned the weeks ahead using my backup and waiting for the damaged disk to be returned. What if something similar should happen to the backup disk? To make a long story short, I found someone with a copy of Copy II Mac and used Bit Copy to back up the backup onto my original. I then ordered my own *original* Copy II Mac disk from: Central Point Software, Inc. 9700 S.W. Capitol Hwy #100 Portland, OR 97219 (808) 244-5782 Price was only 29.95. You would not hear me go on so about this except that otherwise I'm totally in love with Microsoft word. Multiple windows allow you to cut and paste between documents quickly. Want to see just one document full screen? Just double click on the title-bar and the small box popps up full-screen. Double click again and it returns to the smaller, more manageable size. Multiple windows are useful also if you want to make some global changes on a limitted part of your document. Select the text you want to work with, copy it, open a new window, paste, make changes then cut and paste back over the original text. Glossary functions allow you to quickly change ms to Microsoft by pressing two keys. And you seldom have to take your hands off the keyboard once you've learned some of the secret key sequences. MS Word is probably the best word processor ever. What's the difference between FACE and FADE? Try sixteen. Confused? Then try 10 Hex. I discovered this while trudging through Kane, Hawkins, & Leventhals' "68000 Assembly Language Programming." Trudge, trudge, trudge. Hayden's ENSEMBLE is on the street now, and well ahead of Jazz. Looking at the guided tour disk that comes with it I would say that Hayden has a winner. The format seems a little unorthodox for the Mac, but I forgot the differences once I got going. Someone said that ENSEMBLE was originally developed in France. That might explain the slightly different approach of using Icons inside programs. MacEnhancer is something many people have been waiting for. If you know someone who has put off getting their own Mac (and scrapping whatever rust-bait they're using now) simply because they already had a printer and could not see buying a new printer also, then let them know about the Enhancer. MacEnhancer (a Microsoft *hardware* product) lets you hook up any IBM (who?) compatible printer to your Mac. Only an arm and a leg, but you won't miss them - much. Apple now has a bulletin board for dealers to use to communicate with techies. Lots of up to the minute tips can be found on various Apple-dom subjects. If your dealer does not know about this board ask them to save themselves some time dealing with your questions by finding out about it. Speaking about dealers, the chances are that by the time you read this I'll be going to school full time. The good things Marv Weisman says about Charlie Kong's machine language abilities have made me envious. Time for a re-tread back at the noodle factory. A recent pay cut also tells me that I have to find another way to earn a living. Not only do I have a carrot (incentive) in front of me, but someone's given me a kick in the butt (motivation) to get started. Who wants to wake up in five years doing the same thing and earning the same income while the people you work for seem to enjoy higher and higher standards of living? CUL8R