Let's face it, we computer users are greedy. We always want more power, more speed, and more time. Luckily the more advanced people at Apple (not the geniuses who gave us the crippled Classic) think along the same lines and have come up with a new technology called QuickRing, which promises to significantly enhance the Mac's utility in some data transfer-intensive tasks. Each successive generation of Macs runs faster than the last, but the Macintosh still some notable bottlenecks, including SCSI, the memory subsystem, and the processor itself

If you are in the process of putting together a CD-ROM for a user group or other non-profit, non-commercial organization and wish to include back issues of TidBITS, please contact me so we can talk about what file format to use

WWDC -- As long as I'm being demanding... If you attended the Worldwide Developers Conference last week, I'd appreciate it if you could send me a short note detailing what you felt were the snazziest technologies showcased there

International NUM Pricing -- Nick Rothwell writes, "After the announcement of the $39 upgrade price for Symantec's Norton Utilities for Macintosh 2.0 last issue I checked the UK upgrade price: 49 pounds and (unless I'm mistaken) value-added tax (VAT) extra, which ends up around the equivalent of US$100-$110

Mark H. Anbinder wrote a few details about the new Quadra 950 last week, and since then we have learned more news about what will happen to the 900. Sometimes Apple keeps such machines around at a lower price point, but in this case, the 900 is simply toast

Apple has finally announced upgrades for existing PowerBooks that will bring older PowerBooks up to par with the newer models that ship with larger hard drives and more memory

Although it seems as though AutoDoubler has just come out, we've heard some hints about what Salient is planning for the next version of the utility, but in the meantime, we also have some news about a conflict with Apple's PC Exchange and an unexpectedly useful side effect of the way AutoDoubler works. New in 2.0 -- In many ways, AutoDoubler is too transparent

I've been meaning to write about these two gems for some time now, but as with all the software I want to review, they've taken a back seat to the hot news of the week

Mark H. Anbinder writes to tell us the latest in the court case concerning Mark Pilgrim and David Blumenthal, authors of the MBDF virus discovered this spring

AutoDoubler Support from Fifth -- Robert Hess passes on this note. "FileDirector 3.1 from Fifth Generation Systems includes a brand new version of DiskTools which, among other enhancements, includes additional support for DiskDoubler and AutoDoubler from Salient Software

Sendhil Revuluri recently pointed out that we published an incomplete set of upgrade prices for Norton Utilities for Macintosh (NUM) 2.0. Symantec is offering a lower price to registered users of Norton Utilities 1.1 (as opposed to users of SUM II or NUM 1.0), so if you purchased that package, you can upgrade for only $20

"What does the world need," you may ask if you're one of those who is always asking essentially rhetorical questions. If you're Guy Kawasaki and After Hours Software, the answer is another collection of useful utilities, seemingly along the lines of the popular Now Utilities from Now Software

Dantz Development's popular backup program, DiskFit Pro, has been in the net conversations recently, though mostly on CompuServe. It appears that DiskFit Pro has a few bugs and confusing changes from previous versions, and those bugs have convinced Dantz to send a free upgrade to 1.1 to all registered users when 1.1 is done (soon is all I can say about the timing). The first complaints about DiskFit Pro stemmed from Dantz's decision to change the Only Applications and Only Documents selections so that items in the System Folder were not included

Those of you on the nets may have noticed a flurry of postings about a proposed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) surcharge on modem users. Just to get this out in the open right away, this rumor is FALSE! Phew, now that we've cleared the air and everyone can stop being irate at the FCC, let's look at this in a little more detail. I can't say that this posting is specifically a hoax, because that implies willful maliciousness on the part of an individual

Alberto Ricci writes, "Pressing command-S while (or right before you click Start) Disk First Aid is scanning a disk brings up a progress window that explains what it's doing