mdavis@pro-sol.cts.COM (Morgan Davis) (05/24/88)
Two Guys in Boston
Copyright 1988 Morgan Davis
The following is a report about AppleFest in Boston, MA. It describes the
four days that my co-author Dan Gookin and I ("Mastering the Apple IIGS
Toolbox" and "Advanced Programming Techniques for the Apple IIGS Toolbox"),
spent while attending the show recently.
This is being distributed to select information services because I believe
in the online system of information distribution. You have my permission
to copy this piece, in its entirety (including this introduction), to any
online information or bulletin board system. Because this is copyrighted,
please obtain permission to include any or all of it in any printed
(analog) format (newsletters, magazines, whatever).
_____________
I just returned from AppleFest Boston (May 20 - 22). Compared to the last
one in San Francisco (September 1987), this one was by far more interesting
and a lot more fun. It was also much bigger -- at least three times the
size in terms of space, numbers of vendors, and attendance by the general
populous. I spent the four days there with my co-author, Dan Gookin. This
is a brief summary of the things we did and saw.
We arrived in Boston around midnight on Wednesday. After checking in at
our hotel, which was right across the street from the Hynes Convention
Center where AppleFest would be held, we took to foot and scouted out a
late-night restaurant to get some dinner (recall, it's about nine o'clock
Pacific time). We found a bar and grill, called Hunters, very nearby the
convention area, and we made it our official "when everyone else is closed"
place to grab a bite. We were determined to stay on Pacific time, so
dinners would be late.
On Thursday we got up around nine o'clock (yes, Eastern time) and began
foraging around the whole convention center area on this day before
AppleFest began. The weather was dismally dreadful from this Californian's
point of view -- not too many Bostonians were thrilled with it either: cold
and very wet. We stayed indoors mostly.
We attempted to look out over Boston from the top of the Prudential Center
building as I had done in '82 while there for the Boston Marathon, but the
weather was so bad that the top third of the skyscraper was shrouded by a
thick layer of fog.
Later in the afternoon, we decided that an indoor excursion was about the
only sight-seeing option we had available. Being computer nerds, we
trekked over to Boston's Computer Museum (the only one like it in the
entire world).
Dan and I both love mass transit systems such as Frisco's BART/Metro and
Boston's "T" (get it?) -- we don't have such a thing in San Diego. So we
were excited about cruising around the city on just a 60 cent fare -- beats
the heck out of $9 cab fares, and you're pretty much assured of:
a. getting there on time
b. getting there alive
both of which are important points to us. So we hopped on the T and slid
down to Boston harbor toward our destination.
We spent an enjoyable four or five hours at the Computer Museum. We were
surprised at it's completeness. It's packed with all sorts of interesting
computer-related history, and has enough hands-on exhibits to keep even the
"normal people" (i.e., non-nerds) entertained. This museum is a "must see".
In the evening, we headed out into the Italian district to find some good
food. On a recommendation, we stopped at a little "ma and pa" place
called Saraceno's (come to think of it, all the restaurants in this area are
family run). Dan ordered traditional lasagna, and I, feeling a bit reckless,
went for a two-pound lobster smothered in a spicy Italian red sauce.
While dining in Little Italy, two friends of ours, Harry and Alex, at the
other end of town, were feasting on free lobster at Boston's Chart House.
Some elderly world traveller had noticed their lack of experience in carving
away at whole lobster and sauntered over from his table to help them out.
To their surprise, the gentleman offered to buy them a second round. Upon
refusing this generous request, our buddies were shocked to learn that this
"anonymous benefactor" had picked up their tab. Compliments. Makes you
sick, eh?
After Saraceno's, Dan and I wobbled on over to another small shop called
"Cafe de Paradiso" to order up a round of espressos and gelatos. It was
refreshing -- though we felt as though we were back in Frisco, as these sorts
of joints abound.
The evening was just getting interesting.
We made our way back to the hotel Colonnade just before Letterman started.
Fifteen minutes into the show, the hotel's fire alarm goes off. It didn't
sound like a fire alarm -- it sounded like some kid in the hallway playing
a hand-held electronic game. We thought nothing of it and went back to TV
watching. After a few more cheerful "bleeps", the alarm engaged in a
warbling sound, reminiscent of a Star Trek "red alert". At that moment, a
barrage of hook-n-ladders came careening toward our hotel, only the stop in
front. It was at that time that we knew that we might become that rare,
but oh so tasty delicacy, nerds-flambe'. Fleeing for our lives, we grabbed
our essentials, having the presence of mind to throw on some jeans and
sneakers, and dashed out into the stairwell to make our way out through the
fire exit on the first floor.
It turned out to be a false alarm for us. But it was fun watching
scantily-clad femmes shivering in the night air. Then we realized there
was another half hour of Letterman, so we dashed back up to the eighth
floor. As we made our way to our room, a sleepy-eyed gentleman in T-shirt
and boxers stuck his head out through his door and inquired, "What's going
on?". Dan responded, "Fire. False alarm, though. If it wasn't, you'd be
toast, pal." Ah, Dan and his infamous dry wit.
Friday rolled around at nine o'clock, and we trooped on over to the Hynes
Center to register for the first day of AppleFest Boston '88. We picked up
our press badges and other sundry credentials to make us look like big-
shots, and hiked up to the second floor where all the exhibitors were
hocking their goods.
A surprising number of educational vendors were arranged around the
perimeter of the main exhibit room. A plan of attack was formulated. We
would make our way around the outside "cheap booths" and then worm through
to the inside booths. By and large, the majority of exhibits were grouped
by these categories:
o Vendors selling hardware and software at discount
These are the booths you see packed full of boxes and junk. Not surprising,
these booths are about as organized as their mail-order advertisements in
the back of computer magazines.
o Clubs, organizations, and CES vendors who are really lost
Who are these people? We saw clubs with names like "The Good Ol' Boys Apple
Computer Club and Farming Co-Op". There was one vendor selling cellular
phones. Bizarre. I don't know about you, but we really missed not seeing
Saint Silicon there this year.
Most of these types of booths were on the outside perimeter of the room,
except for two: Byte Works and Diversified Software Research.
I met Mike Westerfield's charming wife, Patty and her equally bright (and
petite) sidekick, Barbara Allred (allredb here on BIX). Barbara wowed us
with Byte Works' graphical shell for the ORCA Desktop which uses the mouse,
menus, windows, etc. as an alternate desktop interface for APW. The text
scrolling in SHR was impressive. Even more so, Byte Works demonstrated a
sample ORCA Pascal program that ran the Savage bench marking test using a
yet-to-be-released floating point coprocessor card for the IIGS. What would
normally take 70 seconds to complete, the sample program whizzed through in
just a couple of seconds. Keep your eye out for this thing.
One of the most innovative items at the show was Bill Basham's Diversi-Tune
(which I bought, by the way). I think DSR's literature describes it best
when it says, "Diversi-Tune is not just the best Apple //gs music program,
it's the best computer music program running on ANY computer!" Perhaps,
though it certainly is the best I've seen so far. Basham has done an
amazing job of harnessing every last bit of power out of the Ensoniq chip
that the IIGS uses to synthesize and playback music. To prove this, DSR
flew jazz musician Nathen Page to Boston to do a live recording using
Diversi-Tune. The ease at which multi-track recordings and overdubbings
could be done was astounding. Needless to say, a full-out review of this
program is warranted, though I've got a lot more to talk about. Rest
assured, you'll be hearing (ha ha) a lot more of Diversi-Tune for some time.
Once you made your way into the heart of the exhibit room, things got even
better. PBI Software staged an impressive demonstration of their new game
product, Alien Mind, programmed by Robin Kar. The programming behind Alien
Mind is about as outrageous as the way Kar and his cohorts dress
themselves. Clad in the typical Los Angeles-style punk garb, it was
difficult NOT to notice the PBI programmers. Kar and crew comprise perhaps
the most talented team of gamesters at the show, and they're great bunch of
guys to boot. Just so my IIGS would have something great to boot, I bought
a copy of Alien Mind. On our flight back to San Diego (via L.A. Int'l), I
spied Kar on our 767 and spoke with him briefly. He assured me I'll enjoy
Alien Mind -- no doubt I will -- but just as soon as I can offload (once
and for all) this useless UniDisk 3.5 to supplant it with an AppleDisk 3.5
needed to run Kar's game.
Dan and I were surprised to find that there wasn't any "Bitch At Zip" lines
at the Zip Technology booth. The reason was clear -- the Zip Chip exists,
and they were proudly sporting them in open-faced IIe's. Their booth
wasn't as crowded as I had thought it would be. This might have been due
to the fact that another vendor at the show was selling a 5Mhz Zip Chip
"clone" called Rocket Chip. We were a bit leery at Rocket Chip's claims
because they had only one computer out in the open, a bolted-shut IIc,
running a demo. We saw zip as far as the Rocket Chip was concerned.
Speeding along nicely, however, and in plain sight, was Applied
Engineering's prototype TransWarp GS card. Since it was a pre-production
unit (and according to Dale Therio, AE Tech, the only working unit in
existence) it was quite ungainly in size. Regardless, it effectively
speeds up the IIGS by a factor of two. Not quite as impressive as a 4MHz
Zip Chip when compared to a 1MHz Apple IIe, but still amazing nonetheless.
You could watch the SHR screen manipulate graphics and actually feel good
about saying the word "QuickDraw". One hardware engineer from Apple
commented to us that he was quite excited that Applied Engineering had
hardware at that stage, so close to being released. AE has a few more
months to go before the Transwarp GS is ready. My guess is that we'll be
spending about $300 - $400 for it. AE also demonstrated their DataLink
2400 by dialing up Dale Therio's ProLine system in Texas.
Epic Technology had a rather large booth showing off their line of modems.
They ran a dozen or so machines with various types of software such as
ProTERM, Talk Is Cheap, GBBS Pro, AppleLink Personal Edition, and the Prime
BBS to name a few. Oddly, they omitted MouseTalk and ProLine, an obviously
glaring oversight on their part.
While we're talking about telecommunications, Beagle Bros demo'd new
additions to their TimeOut series of AppleWorks add-ons. Mark de Jong used
a new TimeOut desk tool to dial up the Beagle Bros ProLine system in San
Diego. It isn't ready just yet, but they should have a full-out telecom
add-on to AppleWorks soon. More impressive, however, is the TimeOut
Thesaurus which sold out in the first five hours of the show (200 copies).
Frantic, Mark Simonsen radioed Beagle HQ and ordered a fresh batch to be
sent out via Federal Express. The ever-delightful Bert Kersey was on-hand
to help demonstrate the company's products.
TML Systems did equally well selling TML BASIC and Pascal hand over fist.
They had two IIGS's hooked up to an AppleShare file server on a Macintosh,
showing that the TML products are fully "AppleShare-aware". Neat.
StyleWare presented a surprisingly complete (but beta) version of the
much-discussed GSWorks productivity software. It looks real good, folks.
Once the thing boots up, it's actually quite fast at switching between
segments. The page layout module appears to be quite robust and is very
similar to PageMaker in many respects. Both the spreadsheet and database
portions outdo their AppleWorks counterparts. And the word processor is
pretty much an enhanced MultiScribe. Any sluggishness could be attributed to
the limitations of the IIGS hardware. Hopefully the Transwarp GS and GSWorks
will be released around the same time, and will make using GSWorks (over and
above AppleWorks) an unquestionable thing to do if you own a IIGS.
Berkeley Softworks showed GEOS. After seeing the abundance of extremely
impressive IIGS graphics and sound software, GEOS was less-than-exciting for
this IIGS owner. A favorable remark will be have to be left by someone else.
I suppose if I had a IIe, I'd consider GEOS. But if I had a IIe, I'd run
right out and sell it for a IIGS after returning from this AppleFest.
Claris, which I've decided stands for "Can't Let Apple Risk Its Sales", was
there. This booth was staffed with the largest selection of clowns since
Ringling Bros. They were there only to show that they really do not give a
flying fish about the Apple II. Due to their extreme ignorance, it was
pretty obvious. As one Apple employee commented to us, "Why do you think
we kicked those people out of Apple?" Indeed, the people at Claris are
doing about as much in the way of software improvement for the Apple II as
they did when they were a part of Apple Computer. Apple did well to give
them the boot.
The Nicest Looking Display award went to Dondra at the Spectrum Holobyte
exhibit. Those who saw her there know what I mean.
The BIG DEAL at AppleFest was Apple's announcement of "AppleLink Personal
Edition" (or APE, as I affectionately refer to it). I've been a beta
tester for this new online information service for few months now. The
prevailing comment by all of the AppleLink staffers who haunted the "Hands
On" AppleLink exhibit could best be described by this one quote, "I've
never seen such a large group of everyday non- telecommunicators become so
fascinated with AppleLink."
Because the word "modem" usually sends such folks running away in terror,
Apple strategically placed all the modems out of sight in the Hands On
room. Users sat down at a IIGS or IIc and signed onto AppleLink to begin
using it without any documentation, and at the very least without much
hand-holding by the staffers.
When asked if AppleLink would ring the death knell for other online
information services which cater to Apple users, Tom Weishaar, chief sysop
of GEnie's Apple II Group, rebounded, "It will certainly have an effect on
other information services. But AppleLink doesn't provide any information
that [GEnie] doesn't already have. About the only thing you really get
with AppleLink is a new interface." Indeed, the interface will be a key
issue with new telecommunicators. For us diehards who have been online for
years, that may or mar not be a persuading factor to leave our current
systems for AppleLink land. Weishaar continued, "And besides, the people
who staff AppleLink and make up its team of forum leaders are regulars on
other services."
Most service leaders, like Weishaar and myself (for the BYTE Information
Exchange), agree that we can only speculate what kind of impact AppleLink
will have. We'll know shortly after it's been officially released this
summer. I personally think that AppleLink with have a good effect on other
services because it will do one important thing: it will make
telecommunicating more of an everyday thing for those people who would
never consider buying a modem and going "online" before. That alone means
there is a larger market out there for services like GEnie and BIX to begin
targeting.
AppleLink does have some drawbacks. You can only use it with Apple's
software. This means that if you've learned to work (and really like) the
terminal software you're using now, you're going to have to learn how to
use the highly criticized AppleLink software. If you want to use AppleLink
from another computer (for example, from the IBM at the office or from a
laptop computer while travelling), you're out of luck. When asked, during
a telecommunications panel discussion at AppleFest, if Apple would be
creating the AppleLink terminal software for the IBM PC, AppleLink engineer
Trevor Griffiths announced no such plans. Is this a ploy to induce added
pressure on companies to invest in Apple hardware? Could be.
Although Apple introduced the unfinished AppleLink in high style, it did
not show any of the new items that had been announced beforehand: the new
line of Apple laser printers, AppleShare, AppleMIDI, Apple's CD ROM, MPW
IIGS Cross Development system, nor the long-awaited Apple IIGS system disk
update.
By far, the exhibits at AppleFest were the most interesting things to see.
Unfortunately, the panel discussions, the ones I attended anyway, were
dismally boring and shamefully disorganized. They lumbered on for one-hour
stretches, trying desperately, though unsuccessfully, to be entertaining
and informative. If I had not been a panelist on the two telecom
discussions, I probably would have nodded off, as I almost did during the
two programming conferences I attended. An authoritative source reported
that the conference on programming standards was more intent on "how to
talk about standards" than actually discussing them; very few issues
regarding standards for programming the Apple II were debated at all. Dan,
my co-author who endured these conferences, targeted the organization and
moderation of these conferences as being the primary problem.
Conference attendees were responsible for filling out a review form for
each of the panel discussions. As a panelist, I received one of these review
forms in my AppleFest Speaker Kit. However, these did not appear to be made
readily available to those who attended the conferences. None of the
moderators even mentioned the existence of review forms to the attendees
during the discussions.
Meanwhile...
After the first day of the show, Dan, Harry, Alex and I resorted to foot
travel and walked a few miles around town to check out the night life.
We ended up at Hunters, our trusty "open really late at night" bistro for a
snack. Afterward, we caught a cab and headed over to Beacon Street to grab
a beer at the famous Bull and Finch Pub -- the inspiration for the
successful TV show "Cheers". Thus ended a pleasant Friday. Dan and I
would have loved to hob knob at the A+ party (which was being held in our
hotel on Friday night), but oddly we were omitted from the invitation list.
That was fine with us anyway. We had a more important bash to attend:
Apple Computer's ritzy, glitzy AppleFestivities Party at the Boston World
Trade Center. Overall, I enjoyed this party more than the one Apple threw
in Frisco last year. The now-legendary footlong shrimps were no where to
be seen. It wasn't a concern for me, though. I didn't even have a chance
to grab a spindly carrot stick. I spent most of the time rubbing elbows
with a lot of great people, both luminaries and those not so luminescent.
After the party, trying to get a cab back to the hotel was an interesting
experience. Apple could have done better at organizing adequate post-party
transportation as they did in San Francisco. Alas, Dan and I were
sufficiently wobbly so the search for a cab probably did us some good.
Come Sunday the weather finally begins to clear up. We've got a four o'clock
flight home today, so it figures. To avoid paying for another day at the
Colonnade, we check out around nine o'clock, and stash our baggage in the
press room at AppleFest. Then it's off to the Au Bon Pain for orange juice
and croissants as usual.
Back at the show, we catch a few more exhibits, and ask the vendors how
things are selling. Invariably, EVERY vendor reported that sales were very
good. Indeed, I spent quite a wad on this last day of the show. But to
top off a perfectly wonderful trip, Dan and I were treated to lunch by our
pals Rob Moore and Larry Thompson, both hardware engineers at Apple,
responsible for intrinsic features of the IIGS, such as component selection
(the Ensoniq), and the design of VGC, FPI, and other important areas of the
circuitry. It is these two guys who keep Dan and I from disowning Apple
altogether. Any time we see Apple slipping and doing something stupid, we
need only to think of Rob and Larry, and of all the other really great
employees who work at Apple, and we know there is hope.
Even though there was an immense amount fantastic software and hardware at
AppleFest, the most rewarding part of our excursion was just meeting and
talking with the people whose livelihood and hobbies revolve around the Apple
II computer. I'd love to list all the wonderful folks we had a chance to
speak with, but it would take pages and pages to include them all. So in
sum, let me say that it was great to see you all there; you made it one heck
of a fine gathering. I'm already looking forward to the next one.
Morgan Davis
"A good time was had by all."
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