Novell buys WordPerfect? Yup, and the big news had been the Aldus and Adobe merger, which they managed to keep secret the day of the Power Macintosh intro. We also look briefly at General Magic and grumble about insulting book titles. Mark Anbinder reviews Silicon Casino, a Newton game from Casady & Greene, and Doc Kinne examines the MessagePad 110, the MessagePad’s sequel.
The late-breaking news that we've had no time to digest is that today Novell purchased WordPerfect for a whopping $1.4 billion in stock, creating one of the world's largest software companies
Apologies to Graphisoft Software and Graphsoft, Inc., the publishers of ArchiCAD and MiniCAD, respectively. In our "Power Macintosh Nativeware" article in TidBITS #217 we incorrectly listed both products as being from Graphisoft
John Baxter writes:
I've been running my Power Macintosh 8100/80 since setting it up Thursday. My general impression is that everything is fast, but since I'm comparing the new machine with my unaccelerated Macintosh IIci, that's not surprising
Dave Peltier wrote to tell us that the AudioVision adapter cable, necessary to connect a standard Mac monitor cable to a Power Mac's HDI-45 video port, is not included with every Power Mac as we stated in TidBITS #217
Erik Speckman writes:
In TidBITS #217 Mark Anbinder asserts that, instead of advancing the PowerPC architecture, the MPC 603 brings the PowerPC to low cost and low power applications.
This is only half right
Don Pickens , Product Manager for Word for the Macintosh, writes:
In reply to TidBITS #217 on the Power Macintosh launch and Microsoft's participation:
At the Power Macintosh launch on March 14, Microsoft showed a very powerful demonstration of a solution built in AppleScript using support of AppleScript in the new versions of Word, Microsoft Excel and FoxPro
Jamie McCarthy writes:
I just ordered a pair of the Yamaha YST-M10 speakers that Craig O'Donnell mentioned in TidBITS #216. The YST series is Yamaha's part number for its cables; the first two dealers I talked to were puzzled by that
Kyle writes to tell us that MEI/Micro Center now sells refill kits for HP DeskWriter printer cartridges. It seems that they have figured out how to refill both the original DeskWriter cartridges and the new high-capacity ones, which were previously thought to be good for only one use
In the shocking news of the week, two of the 600 pound gorilla companies of the Macintosh market announced a plan to merge. That's right, Aldus and Adobe agreed to become one and the same, dependent on the agreement of the shareholders at meetings in July
Director of Technical Services, Baka Industries Inc.
Early Newton technology adopters have paid quite a bit of money for the distinction of owning a Newton
I attended a talk by General Magic's CEO, Marc Porat, a few weeks back, and although I'm not sure I've fully assimilated everything he said, I came away with one important realization - General Magic has the right idea
I spend a fair amount of time in the computer sections of bookstores these days, and I've noticed a disturbing trend. The trendy titles all insult the reader
Apple introduced Newton MessagePad 110 in early March, and it was immediately picked up and put through its paces by an eager contingent of Newton fans