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Adam Engst

Adam Engst

Adam C. Engst is the publisher of TidBITS. He has written numerous books, including the best-selling Internet Starter Kit series, and many magazine articles thanks to Contributing Editor positions at MacUser, MacWEEK, and now Macworld. His innovations include the creation of the first advertising program to support an Internet publication in 1992, the first flat-rate accounts for graphical Internet access in 1993, and the Take Control electronic book series now owned and operated by alt concepts. His awards include the MDJ Power 25 ranking as the most influential person in the Macintosh industry outside of Apple every year since 2000, inclusion on the MacTech 25 list of influential people in the Macintosh technical community, and being named one of MacDirectory's top ten visionaries. And yes, he has been turned into an action figure.

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Claris Windows Rumors

We've been muttering about a version of FileMaker Pro for Windows for quite some time now, and we've finally gotten some confirmation of that project. Claris reportedly showed an early version of FileMaker Pro running under Windows in a private suite at Comdex last week

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The TrashMan Cometh

When I was growing up, my family took our garbage to the town dump every week. The best part was tossing it over the cliff, and much of the excitement went out of the weekly expedition when the dump was full and the town bought a trash compactor truck (which could be fun on occasion if it actually compacted the trash while you were there)

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Administrivia

To quote from the excellent movie "Spinal Tap," "it's a fine line between clever and stupid." I may have fallen off that fine line in writing TidBITS-114, because despite a few clues and hints, the fact that it was indeed our annual April Fools issue appears to have gone generally unnoticed

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Oops

Oops -- [Open cultural mouth, insert foot. R.P. Aditya writes to set me straight on my analogies in TidBITS-113. Thanks for the correction, I really do appreciate it

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DiskExpress II/SuperLaserSpool Conflict

DiskExpress II/SuperLaserSpool Conflict -- Jonathan Feinstein of Shrink2Fit Software has contacted us again to report an oddity that users of DiskExpress II and SuperLaserSpool 3.0 may face. DiskExpress II, a disk optimization system extension (actually, it's a control panel) from ALSoft puts up a dialog box the first time it runs on your computer during the startup process

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Tune-Up 1.1, Just Get It

Apple released version 1.1 of the System 7 Tune-Up extension last week, and they strongly recommend that everyone using System 7.0 or 7.0.1 use it. Tune-Up 1.1 replaces version 1.0, and you do not have to install 1.0 before 1.1 or anything strange like that

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Personal, Not Private

I'd call it chilling, but others may have even stronger words for a recent proposal which could reduce the moderate level of privacy currently enjoyed by American computer users (along with American phone users)

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Administrivia

Ralph Amundesen wrote with some interesting information about IBM. Evidently, IBM is so worried about OS/2 that the company has expanded its battalion of salesbots by drafting the entire company

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Remote Backup

I'm beginning to like living in a metropolitan area - there's so much more happening here in terms of computers. At a local computer fair put on by the University of Washington a few weeks ago, I came across a small local company with a product that could become extremely popular with anyone who doesn't like losing data

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Microsoft & NeXT?

Microsoft is just full of surprises these days. First Fox, what could be NeXT? The latest news from Redmond is that Mr. Bill has apparently overcome his dislike of Steve Jobs and the company will be porting its most popular applications to the NeXT

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Future Finder

Are you happy with the Finder? Most people like it a fair amount, and there's people who would die before using anything else like DOS. But let's face it, the Finder is far from perfect, and even Apple knows it

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New Life for Old Macs

As long as we're trying to get people to raise their hands this issue, how many of you out there have a compact Mac and would like to upgrade it? I thought so

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More RAM for IIf and IIg

More RAM for IIf and IIg -- In TidBITS-108/24-Feb-92 we reported a rumor that the LaserWriter IIf and IIg were likely to be upgraded with extra RAM, and indeed, that has happened

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Fox Swallowed by Microsoft

I once promised a friend that I would avoid allusions to baseball in TidBITS, but it's going to be hard to resist the comparison to the free agent market in this one, and if you can't grow 'em yourself, buy 'em

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MacWindows

The computer industry is if anything incestuous. Apple can sue Microsoft with one hand while agreeing to further enhance TrueType with the other. And lest I confuse my imagery even more, a third hand of Apple Shiva (the many-handed Hindi god of reproduction and destruction, not the people who make the NetModem :-)) is reaching out to compete directly in the Windows market