MailBITS/28-Oct-91

Hoo boy, it’s correction time again. You can tell I’m still slightly out of touch because I made the excellent suggestion that Apple bundle AppleTalk Remote Access with the PowerBooks and a modem. What I didn’t know when I wrote those fateful words was that Apple was already bundling AppleTalk Remote Access with the PowerBooks and that the 170 even has a modem built in. Oh well, the world moves fast and sometimes it’s hard to keep up. Thanks to Mark H. Anbinder, Charlie Mingo and Norton Chia (who calls it "Ring Ring AppleTalk", as you really have to phone it up. :-)) for setting me straight.

Terry Morse of Salient writes, "Just saw your TidBITS-088 on CompuServe. Good article, very fair and informative. Just one correction: the article said that DD updates the modification date. It doesn’t. Creation and modification dates are preserved through a compression/expansion. The type and creator are changed, however." [Thanks for the compliment, Terry. I did know that the modification dates didn’t change but was confused because files often appeared "changed" when backing up with Retrospect. Sorry about that.]

Mark H. Anbinder, our estimable contributing editor, writes, "You commented in TidBITS recently that you hoped Apple and Adobe would allow unrestricted electronic distribution of ATM. I would not expect that to take place, because they may need to keep track of the number of copies being distributed. Now, they may be able to do it through normal electronic distribution channels [i.e. CompuServe and AOL], but I would not expect to see it up for anonymous FTP or on comp.binaries.mac." [I just spoke with an Adobe representative, and he said quite specifically that the ATM for $7.50 was only available through Adobe right now. As far as he knew there were no plans for expanding the ATM distribution to Apple dealers, software vendors or the various networks. He had no information about when ATM might be bundled with Macs, or even if Apple and Adobe have plans to do so. My recommendation, then, is that if you want ATM to call and order it. $7.50 is basically materials, shipping, and handling, so it’s hard to complain about the price, and it might be a while before it is freely available from Apple. One additional note. As Bob Snyder mentioned in email, if you are a network administrator and want to buy multiple copies of ATM for all your machines, you can only order one copy per call. Sorry about that.]

Adobe — 800/521-1976, ext. 4400

Information from:
Mark H. Anbinder — [email protected]
Charlie Mingo — [email protected]
Norton Chia — [email protected]
Bob Snyder — [email protected]