This issue brings you news of new products being released in conjunction with this week’s Apple World Wide Developer Conference and an timely essay about software development phases and the meaning of the word "beta." We also cover recent Internet provider arrests in France; review Mail Drop, an IMAP email client; and note an upcoming live talk by Don Norman, and new versions of FreePPP, StuffIt Expander, DropStuff, MacDNS, and AOL’s client software.
FreePPP 2.5 Released -- On Sunday, the FreePPP Group released version 2.5 of their free PPP client. FreePPP 2.5 is a major step up from the previous 1.0.5 and contains more features than MacPPP 2.5, Apple's version of the same code
StuffIt Expander 4.0.1, DropStuff 4.0 -- Last week, Aladdin Systems released new versions of their popular utilities StuffIt Expander and DropStuff with Expander Enhancer
Don Norman Speaks Live on the Net -- Don Norman, Apple Fellow, former Apple User Experience Architect, and expert in the field of human interface design, will give a talk via the Internet at the KMi Stadium on Wednesday, 15-May-96
DNS on Macintosh Heats Up -- Apple has released version 1.0.2 of MacDNS (its DNS server software) for free. (DNS software maps the names of Internet machines to their IP addresses; before Macs had DNS capabilities, they were forced to rely on other platforms for DNS service.) MacDNS is included in Apple's Internet Server Solution package, and while it seems to function relatively well, it has been criticized for not providing recursive or secondary name service.
Not to be out-done, Men & Mice of Reykjavik, Iceland, released the results of performance comparisons between MacDNS, Unix BIND, and their QuickDNS Pro product
AOL 2.7 -- America Online released version 2.7 of its client software last week. The new version fixes a number of outstanding bugs and offers an improved Web browser, although Web performance through AOL's network still seems quite slow (although that's not the browser's fault)
On 06-May-96, under orders of a judge investigating pedophile circles in France, French police seized computer equipment and arrested the heads of two Internet service providers for allegedly allowing their services to propagate Usenet newsgroups that the judge considered to contain elements such as "pornographic photographs of minors." The distribution of such material is illegal in France
Each year, Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference in San Jose spawns a host of product releases and announcement and, as usual with any trade show or conference these days, the emphasis is on the Internet
Few people know about Mail Drop, a great freeware mail client for the Mac. Mail Drop is an IMAP email client being developed by Carl W. Bell as a Baylor University project
It's funny, but at TidBITS hardly a day goes by that we don't hear about some new piece of "beta" software. Maybe it's a utility program, a Web browser, a plug-in, or a major commercial application