alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) (12/23/88)
The following is a repost (it was sent out over two weeks ago). It
apparently got caught when the system I was using died. If anyone gets
this twice, sorry...
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Five weeks ago I attended the Mac Business Conference & Expo in Anaheim.
I haven't seen anything about this show on the net so I though I'd post
my own review.
The show was very different from MacWorld Expos. Fewer people, fewer
exhibitors. The Party Line is that those fewer people were 'quality'
people. Maybe they were. There were more suits, fewer t-shirts. More
marketing types, fewer hackers. The tone of the show was every bit as
businesslike as the name would suggest.
My initial impression was that the show was dead, an absolute disaster.
After more thought, though, I remembered the first MacWorld shows. There
weren't too many people there either. So I hope that by next year (the
next MBC&E show is in April, in New York) they will pick up their
attendance figures and get a slightly more lively show. There are
certainly many advantages over the MacWorld zoo. The convention
organizers treated their exhibitors, speakers, and attendees with
respect. This is a marked change from the Mitch Hall treat-'em-like-
animals attitude.
One other major difference between the two shows is the series of half-
and full-day conferences run concurrently with the MBC&E. They were
well-run and well-received. I talked to a number of people who attended
and they were all glad to have been there.
There were no really major new products on display, but some recently
released (or recently announced) programs generated a lot of interest.
The following are some of my favorites:
1) Timbuktu and Timbuktu Remote, from Farallon Computing
This is a very elegant piece of software. It allows any Mac on a
network to show exactly what any other Mac is doing and control the
remote Macintosh. It will do the intelligent thing when dealing with
screens that are larger, smaller, or have a different number of bits per
pixel than your own. The Remote version is optimized for use with a
modem. There are a variety of security options- you can allow others to
control your machine, you can let them view it without any control, or
you can lock them out entirely.
There are many uses for this kind of product. I will be using it in my
consulting business, to avoid the expense of trips to my clients' sites
every time they have a support question. I can have them set up Timbuktu
on the offending machine, and watch what they are doing via modem. In
many cases, I won't have to go on-site to solve the difficulty. This is
especially useful when my clients are in a different state. One
round-trip ticket saved (not to mention travel time saved) will fully
pay for the cost of the software and a pair of modems to run it on!
Local user support in a corporate environment will also be much easier
with this product, for the same reason. Computer workshops will find
some instruction much easier- you can look at the screen in front of you
and see the teacher do what he is discussing, rather than squint at a
poorly-focused projection on a screen thirty feet away.
Timbuktu is also good for other tasks. If you want to share a modem
these days, there are a variety of modem servers on the market. But many
more expensive, less common peripherals cannot yet be shared in that
way. For example, you can't yet serve a 3270-style mainframe connection
(such as the MacIrma boards) over an AppleTalk network. But if you have
a dozen or twenty people, each of whom needs occasional access for file
transfer (or other tasks), you can set up one Mac with the board and
have it run Timbuktu. Then anyone who wants to connect to the mainframe
can take control of that mac and use it to talk to the mainframe. This
same approach will work with nearly any expensive, non-shareable
peripheral. It's a little less automatic and elegant than a dedicated
peripheral server, but it works well, and it exists now.
2) Perfect Timing, from Imagine Software
I have mentioned this product in the past. It is much closer to
completion now, and should be ready to ship at the next MacWorld. It is
a well- designed multi-user calendar and scheduling system. It runs on
any AppleTalk network, and it doesn't need any other software (like
Tops).
Imagine was the distributor, until a month ago, of Smart Alarms, an
invaluable DA/Init. Now that they have Perfect Timing, Smart Alarms is
being marketed by Jam Software.
For more information on Perfect Timing, look in the net archives for
my second MacWorld Expo review.
3) QuickMail to Unix Mail bridge, from StarNine
This wasn't really a major hit, but it's highly interesting to many
people on the net... This is a genuine working mail bridge. It works
nicely, and does what you would expect. It was shown running on A/UX and
will also run on Suns. There isn't much else to say about it... Starnine
has a usenet address; inquiries can go to uunet!starnine!mcgee. By the
way, the node 'starnine' is a Mac II running A/UX.
4) Oracle for the Macintosh, from Oracle
I was very skeptical when I first heard about this program. Running
a relational DBMS through HyperCard seemed a little silly to me. I have
since changed my mind. Oracle will definitely NOT be for everybody, but
it's perfect for a variety of EIS systems. If corporate MIS takes off
the blinders for just long enough to see it in action, they'll be sold.
The Oracle HyperCard interface's strength is in consolidating lots
of information from a variety of (computer) sources, using SQL, to
produce a few facts which are really important. It would be less useful
for presenting massive amounts of data, since HyperCard itself is not
suited to that too well.
In addition to the impressive HyperCard interface, there is a report
generator, a C subroutine library, a single-user database engine, and
some other stuff as well.
Since the show I have been waiting to hear that Oracle shipped. As
of Early December, they still have not. I don't know why they've slipped
so badly, but that's nothing new in the Mac market. I hope they get it
out soon. (The latest word is that they will ship Dec. 29. We'll see.)
And now, my award for least exciting product of the century: the
Macintosh IIx. There was one of these sickly excuses for an innovation
in the Apple booth. Nobody noticed.
The award for worst speaker goes to Allen Loren, Apple's president. His
Keynote session was the only one to fill the majority of the seats in
the main hall, and it was really very bad. He was utterly uninspiring
and said very little. In fact the only thing I came away with was the
conviction that he had absolutely no technological vision whatsoever. In
fact, I know he's not nearly as bad as that... but you wouldn't know it
from his speech.
The award for best party goes to Fred Davis at MacUser. For the little
one after the big one. Not too loud, not too crazy, not too many people,
but the right ones. After the first day, who's got the energy to shout
at the top of his lungs just to be heard? And who wants to make like a
Sherman tank just to get to the food before it's gone?
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Alexis Rosen
alexis@ccnysci.{UUCP,BITNET}