by Lawrence I. Charters, Vice President,
Macintosh
Putting on a public event, be it a neighborhood soccer game or a
Washington Apple Pi General Meeting, has something in common with a
military operation. There are logistical problems and disasters you must
anticipate and overcome, plus the usual problems with coordinating people,
all while attempting to carry out a sequence of events according to a
schedule. They say no plan ever survives contact with the enemy, which is
a good summary of the March meeting.
Of course, there was no "enemy," just a number of small
problems designed to drive the meeting organizers out of their minds. This
was the first time the Pi had met at Burning Tree Elementary School, and
some people had trouble finding it. (Plus a few people didn't read either
the Journal or the message on the bulletin board, and didn't call the
office, and ended up not only at the wrong location, but even in the wrong
state.) The meeting space, which seemed to be a combination
cafeteria-gymnasium-auditorium-whatever room, was comfortable, with
adult-size chairs, but the lighting was too bright for the
projection equipment. And, after staying up until the wee hours of the
morning preparing a computer-based slide show, the Vice President for
Macintosh programs managed to bring a Bernoulli disk drive to the meeting
-- but forgot to bring the right cartridge.
These little problems delayed the start of the presentations, so both
of this month's vendors, Timeworks and GeoPoint, were forced to speed
things up a bit. Which they did -- and still managed to put on a good
show. Timeworks
Terry Fleming, R&D Director for Timeworks, promised to put on the
best presentation we'd ever seen. No vote was taken, but he did his best
to keep his promise; he has a keen wit, a minimum of canned jokes, and a
mastery of his company's flagship product, Publish It! Easy.
Admitting that the name and the low price cause some to dismiss the
program as a toy, at least compared to industry leaders Aldus
PageMaker and Quark XPress, he went out of his way to
make head to head comparisons between the three programs. To the surprise
of may, if not most, Publish It! Easy appeared up to the task,
displaying outstanding speed, great flexibility and genuine
innovation.
Terry did manage to crash the program, but that may be due more to the
hardware (the Pi's Mac IIci is a case study in how to clutter a computer)
than Timework's software. The combination of traditional page layout
features, plus surprisingly complete graphics tools, plus an innovative
10-level undo, plus an incredible mail-merge utility, all combined to
support Terry's contention that Publish It! Easy is a worthy
competitor to PageMaker and Quark. Retailing for
$149.95, Terry brought coupons offering the program for $79.95 through
April 15. GeoPoint
John Garner, Vice President of GeoPoint, followed with what he
described as the "shortest demo of BaseMap he'd ever
given." According to their literature, BaseMap is "the
world's easiest personal mapmaking tool," and John left little doubt
that this was true. Rather than traditional clip art, BaseMap
creates custom maps on demand using a database of world political
boundaries and coastlines, plus databases of cities, plus user-defined
databases. It can even import information from the Macintosh Map Control
Panel, which John dryly noted might be one of the few good uses for that
Control Panel.
Most map-plotting programs are both expensive and cryptic.
BaseMap is inexpensive (list price is under $200; coupons at the
meeting offered it for $129), and the interface is so clear that any Mac
user -- grade school student, business user, or computer professional --
will have no problem using the program. Select an area of the world of
interest, zoom to the desired level of detail, import selected information
(city coordinates, airline routes, international borders, or something
bizarre, like locations where Apple has held product introductions), and
either print the custom map direct from BaseMap or copy it and
paste it into your word processing or page layout program.
John passed out demo copies of BaseMap at the meeting, plus a
copy was uploaded to the TCS. Indicative of GeoPoint's attention to detail
was something else he passed out, but didn't mention: a three-page errata
of the locations in Apple's Map Control Panel. I'd always thought it funny
that Seattle, home of Microsoft, wasn't listed in the Map; now I also know
that Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, is mislocated on the wrong
Caribbean island, 349 miles its actual location.
GeoPoint is serious about maps.
Upcoming events: April 1994
Microsoft will present FoxPro 2.5 for Macintosh at the April
23, 1994, General Meeting. Since you will probably read this notice
ex post facto, we'll skimp on the details. May 1994
MacWorld Summit will be held at the Washington Convention Center on
May 10-12. Everyone should attend, and drag all your coworkers, friends,
enemies, spouses, children and parents. This will be the first MacWorld
since the introduction of the Power Macintosh machines, and there should
be hundreds, if not thousands, of things of interest. Rest during the show
by volunteering to help at the Washington Apple Pi booth; you won't
believe the people you'll meet.
Ares Software will demonstrate their outstanding font technology at
the May 21 General Meeting. Note that this is on the third Saturday, not
the usual fourth, to avoid a conflict with the holiday weekend. June 1994
Washington Apple Pi will host its semi-annual Computer Garage Sale at
a date to be determined in June, at a place to be determined. Already
confirmed is a record crowd; between the bargain hunters, and people
looking for cash to buy a new Power Macintosh, there will be
a bumper crop of used Macs for sale, plus the usual electronic
miscellany. July 1994
Global Village will be at the July 23 General Meeting to show off
their telecommunications products. Joining them will be Microsoft's Home
division, showing off their latest consumer software offerings (games,
CD-ROMs and applications). August 1994
For those not totally exhausted by the blizzard of Mac events this
year, MacWorld Boston will tax even those with extreme stamina. Do
yourself a favor: get a place to sit at the show by helping out part-time
at the Washington Apple Pi booth. Volunteer now. Your feet, and your user
group, will thank you. Drawing Winners
Mouse Tamer (American Business Systems): Erik Dunham Ren & Stimpy Screenie (Screenies): Gary Nooger Quicken T-shirt (Intuit): Attila Horvath System 7 Revealed (Addison-Wesley): Bill Wydro Fully Powered PowerBook (Brady): Elizabeth H. Null Spin Doctor (Calisto): Martin Brock Publish-It! Easy (Timeworks): Beth Medlin BaseMap (GeoPoint): Dave Weikert Credits:
Macintosh IIci: donated by Falcon Microsystems
Proxima Ovation: loaned by Proxima Corp.
Setup and re-setup: Bill Wydro, Terry Fleming Return to Pi Meeting Summary Index
