freund@nada.kth.se (Peter Freund) (08/23/88)
(too long?)
*** MacWorld ****
So I'll tell what I saw INTERESTING on the show. My first expo in the states!
Boston was hot (a lot of degrees). Some products "to come" are probably
equally as hot. That's fun.
Farallon, is a networking company worth looking closer at!
Timbuktu 2.0, AppleTalk-observe/participiate package for Mac. Innovative.
They'll be out with "ScreenRecorder" (code-name Katmandu), a DA to record
Macintosh-managing (like the Timbuktu - yet instead of sending QuickDraw to
a networked Mac, it saves it to a file.)
A demo I saw, with MacRecorder (their "Mac-sampling-unit"), HyperCard and
ScreenRecorder was impressive. (Like a Mac on video...).
Also to come, Timbuktu/Remote for file-transfers "...at 2/3 of normal
filetrans-speed", chat, observe, etc.
Insignia (they'v talked about it on the net before...) showed
SoftPC. A true emulation of a IBM PC on the Macintosh II (runs even a little
faster :-). The only complaint (after seeing FlightSimulator, Lotus, etc) was
the design of some swedish characters. SoftPC even worked with Option-numkeys
for direct ASCII-number-entry.
((( That's a feature I lack on Mac, where it is really difficult to obtain a
"Times, upside down circumflex", ASCII-255.)))
SoftPC (really MS-DOS) has my VOTE for BEST IMPLEMENTED ADVENTURE-GAME 88.
I suppose emulation of a Macintosh on some odd computer will come NEXT!!
BMUG, Berkley Mac User Group, sold their "bibles", binder of their newsletter!
If you seriously want to communicate among US bulletin-boards, this is THE
source. Also there are LOTs worth reading. My VOTE fo BEST BOOK of MacWorld!
Paragon Software, many people I guess missed.
They showed Nisus, a REAL word processor. Almost "fast as WriteNow, double
the features of MS-Word, yet half the size of FullWrite..." I was really
impressed. They said that "it's been stabile since january, yet we wanted to
implement thresaurus, dictionary and some betatesters wishes", so it will be
out like November. Perhaps THIS is THE WP-program?
Quark showed off their XPress 2.0.
Silicon Beach is shipping their nifty Digital DarkRoom. SuperPaint II soon.
CE-Software is shipping QuickMail.
Symantec (THINK) will be out with really sharp InBox 3.0 (1Q 89).
All these have one thing in common! All can easily (they state) use separate
programs, and incorporate these as additional menus, tools, etc, into the big
program.
!!! Would be very interesting if anyone on the net would show how!!!
(Quark XPress said they'll get PC Ventura file-import. If they get the Aldus
PageMaker file-format, they'll could get that one too. Can anyone help?! :-).
I saw SuperPaint II with some funny tools.
FAST & PRETTY.
FoxBase 1.1 seems to be as the advertising says - "all right!".
Super 3D from Silicon Beach, animation in 3D in color on Mac II in real time.
Symantec showed MORE II, LSC 3.0, LSP 2., InBox 3., "I need" SUM, SQZ!, well, a
GrandView - worth looking at.
There was a lots of painting programs, CAD programs, odd utilities, hard disks.
Fun was to see Brotherbound at the show, with games, paint, etc.
I misseed a lot to, though.
(Some, many of the above products has not been released - please check with
whoever is appropriate, regarding, what, when, how and - how much!)
Then there was the parties!!!!!!!!!
A show is a half show witheout the parties. I met the funny guys, pretty girls,
and so on. The netters dinner was great food and even greater company. (I found
out very few looked at my article in July88 MacTutor, because it by mistake
got mixed into the Forth column. The "real hackers" just read C...?)
Cutest girl at the show I think was Amanda Goodenough (the one doing HyperCard
stacks with cat Inigo - for children), wearing her big pretty hat all the time.
DISCLAIMER: Yes, the company I work for, Software Plus, distributes a lot of
the stuff above in Sweden. So we'v got the best - I know!
I'll be back...
Peter Freund, freund@nada.kth.se,
phone#: +46 8 247460, fax#: +46 8 240802