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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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AutoDoubler Controversy

There has been a flurry of discussion on CompuServe about a controversial implementation decision that Salient made when creating AutoDoubler. For those of you who haven't paid much attention to compression software, AutoDoubler is a program that compresses files on your hard disk while you aren't using the Mac and then expands them quickly when you open them

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Apple Distribution Changes

You won't be able to pick up a Classic at your local fruit stand, but given the recent changes in Apple's distribution channels, that's not far off. The most recent, and in some ways most shocking, change is that Apple will be working with Sears to sell special Macintosh bundles

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Administrivia

Michel Langereis writes, "The 1992 MACWORLD Expo Benelux, to be held in Amsterdam from May 4th to 6th, has been cancelled, as confirmed by the organizers

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PowerBook Modem Fix?

PowerBook Modem Fix? -- Jonathan Feinstein of Shrink2Fit Software passes along a useful hint for people having problems connecting to remote modems from their PowerBook's internal Apple modem

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Classic PowerBook Rumors

Pythaeus tells us that Apple is preparing to ship its internal 80 MB hard disk drives for the PowerBook series. This should come as welcome news for PowerBook power users who have been feeling scrunched between the small 20 MB and 40 MB standard hard drives that have been shipping in Apple's notebooks. More interesting, and a bit more surprising, is the rumour that Apple will offer a trade-up deal to owners of the smaller drives

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INIT 1984 Virus

These things come in fits and spurts. We went a long time without a new virus, and the world was a better place for it. Then wham, two viruses within a few weeks of each other

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Imaging Updates

QuickDraw was pretty neat when it came out, since it allowed the Mac to be a true graphics-based machine. Later on, Apple added color, turning it into Color QuickDraw, the standard in color-capable Macs today

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Reflex Orphans Uniting

The unwashed masses of computer users do have clout, though it has seldom been used to effect change in the overall strategy of a company bent on, well, screwing its users

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Panorama II Clarifications

Well, no one's perfect, and I missed a few things in my review of Panorama II last week. My overall comments stand, but there are a few things I feel the need to clarify. It is easy to display the results of calculations on forms using what Panorama II calls an auto-wrap text object and a variable merged in with the text

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VIM explanation

VIM explanation -- Roger D. Parish writes: I heard a good explanation for the "VIM" acronym at the SHARE IBM mainframe user's group conference in Anaheim last week: Vendors Ignoring Microsoft :-) Information from: Roger D

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StuffIt Expander

A while back we ran an article about Downline, a utility that does a wonderful job at decoding Binhex files and StuffIt 1.5.1 archives. Of course, it would be nice if Downline understood Compact Pro and StuffIt Deluxe as well, since many people use those formats

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Microkernel Mac

When NeXT or Amiga owners feel the need to disparage the Mac in conversation, they often mention the fact that Mac doesn't have "true" multitasking, tacking a little verbal sneer on the tail end of "true." That generally means that the Mac uses what's called "cooperative multitasking" instead of "pre-emptive multitasking." I'm telling you this because Apple announced last week that it will be remodeling the Macintosh operating system to add pre-emptive multitasking and other operating system goodies including multi-threading, memory protection, support for dynamic link libraries, and some new I/O (input/output) features that will help peripherals to keep up with the CPU

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Macworld Modifications

Those of you who try to make it to every MACWORLD Expo possible have probably noticed that it's becoming harder and harder as World Expo increases the number of expos around the world

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Panorama II Review

I think it's fair to say that everyone has need of some sort of database software, even if only for keeping track of names and addresses. I'll admit that I'm no database guru, although I have worked with Double Helix a bunch, rescued some data from an old version of R:Base, and fiddled with various other programs. For a long time I used HyperCard to do all my database work, but I was always frustrated by the way my stacks looked and worked, not to mention the fact that HyperCard is not exactly speedy

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Administrivia

Some of you may notice that this issue does not contain the "end" tags that we've used for the past few issues. We decided to take them out for several reasons