Software Toolworks will acquire Monogram, maker of Dollars and Sense, a popular home finance package, at the end of June. Owners of Dollars and Sense need not worry, though, since Software Toolworks will continue to support Dollars and Sense, and the upgrade to version 5.0 will still be released in a month or so
An INIT called STEROID has been discovered to be a Trojan Horse. It falsely claims to accelerate QuickDraw on 9" monitors but in fact contains a time bomb that will erase all mounted volumes (floppies and hard disks) on July 1st, 1990
Color PostScript printers still cost more than their speedier monochrome counterparts, but now that they list for under $8,000, they should become more widely available
Several people on Usenet report that CompuServe has killed its National Bulletin Board service as of June 1st, 1990. In its place is a new bulletin board service that charges $1.00 per line
In all the discussions about what the new Macintosh computers will have in terms of hardware, it seems that much of the original simplicity of the Mac has been lost
Deciding what events in the computer industry merit mention in TidBITS is a difficult task, since the headline grabbing events are not always the most interesting ones
Robert Noyce, one of the inventors of the integrated circuit, died recently of a heart attack at age 62. In 1959 he was awarded a patent for his work in connecting a number of transistors on a single silicon chip, the first of the integrated circuits that are now responsible for the $500 billion electronics industry.
Noyce founded Intel, but his influence was also distributed to the political aspects of the industry, and he spent much time in Washington lobbying on behalf of the industry
A/UX, Apple's version of Unix for the SE/30 and Mac II line never gained a great deal of popularity. Version 2.0, due out in June, should help A/UX's reputation significantly though, judging from the rave reviews it has received on Usenet
The Macintosh virus count increased by one last Monday when a new virus called either MDEF or Garfield was found at Cornell University. Contrary to an article in MacWEEK, the virus was found by Gordon Suggs of Cornell Information Technologies and Adam Engst of TidBITS
Bob Boynton reports on a Washington Post article that claims Sony will introduce the Data Discman, a portable text reading system. The hand-held system consists of a 3" CD-ROM drive, a ten line screen, and a small keyboard
Despite numerous criticisms, HyperCard has been extremely popular among Macintosh users because of its ease of use and flexibility. Clones were inevitable, and Silicon Beach introduced SuperCard and Olduvai introduced PLUS (now marketed by Spinnaker) to complement HyperCard
A common question on Usenet is how to use the Mac to read mail and Usenet news directly, without having to use a mainframe or workstation and their less-intuitive interfaces
Microsoft never formally announced Windows 3.0, so its release last week was not officially late, though users had been waiting anxiously since early this year
We at TidBITS have a fondness for interesting ways of connecting computers together, which accounts for a number of past articles on networking with radio waves and electric lines
TML Systems is developing a set of seven software modules that, when completed, will challenge Microsoft Works 2.0. Collectively called Zebra, the modules share tools with each other so appropriate tools are available in any module (i.e