The world ends not with a bang, but with a kerchunking sound from a hard disk. Jeff Carlson relates how DriveSavers brought his data back from the dead. We also review Apple Confidential, a book packed with insider stories and little-known details of Apple’s tumultuous history, and note recent changes in the PowerPC universe. News this week includes the release of SkyLINE wireless networking and updates to Anarchie, Documents to Go, and BBEdit Lite.
Farallon Ships SkyLINE Wireless PC Card -- With Apple's AirPort still under construction, Farallon has flown out of the Macintosh wireless networking gate with the SkyLINE Wireless PC Card, which provides 2 Mbps wireless Ethernet capabilities to Macs and PCs with PC Card slots
Anarchie 3.6.1 Eliminates Version Control Bug -- Stairways Shareware has released Anarchie 3.6.1, a small but important update to the just-released Anarchie 3.6
DataViz Offers More Documents to Go for Palms -- DataViz has released version 2.002 of Documents to Go, its utility for viewing word processing and spreadsheet documents on Palm handheld devices
Free BBEdit Lite 4.6 Still Shines Brightly -- Bare Bones Software has released BBEdit Lite 4.6, the latest version of its long-standing free text editor (discussed in TidBITS many times over the years)
The future of the PowerPC chips has recently lain in quiet, murky waters between IBM and Motorola, the chips' manufacturers. A little over a year ago, the companies disagreed over the forthcoming PowerPC G4 processors - specifically, whether to include the AltiVec vector processing unit - and parted ways, with Motorola keeping AltiVec and taking over the primary PowerPC design facility, and IBM focussing on developing PowerPC chips for use in embedded systems and its server products
Having just finished writing a pair of books that should appear in October, I've switched to a more relaxing gear and done a little summer reading. The first book on my list to finish was Owen Linzmayer's Apple Confidential (No Starch Press, ISBN 1-88641-28-X, $17.95 or less via Amazon or for a signed copy direct from Owen), a record of the tumultuous history of Apple Computer from Apple's founding through 1999's Macworld San Francisco.
Despite the new title and publisher, Apple Confidential is essentially a second edition of Owen's 1994 collection of historical Macintosh quotes, facts, and stories, The Mac Bathroom Reader
Late one night when I was writing for my high school's newspaper, I finished an article using the staff's new Mac Plus and saved it to my floppy disk. Perhaps because I was glad to have finished the piece, or maybe just because adolescent males seem predisposed to the motion, I wound up my body like a major league baseball pitcher and then uncoiled in a pantomime of delivering a winning fastball over home plate