Novell is supposed to buy DRI (Digital Research Inc, makers of C/PM in the past and DR DOS in the present). This will give Novell a network OS and a desktop OS, which competes with Microsoft's inclusion of networking hooks in DOS and Windows

One of the more interesting modem spin-offs recently is the DoveFax+. I'm personally not all that impressed with fax technology, but I think sticking fax capabilities in a modem is a good way to avoid killing more trees

The upcoming flight of the space shuttle Atlantis, which has been delayed a couple of times this month, will be a first for the information age. NASA's astronauts will be carrying aboard a Macintosh Portable that has been outfitted with an off-the-shelf modem and a customized version of the AppleLink software, and they'll be connecting to AppleLink and sending electronic mail from space. While this isn't the first time e-mail has been sent or received from space (earlier missions have included packet radio BBS experimenting), it will certainly be the first use of Apple's online service from space (assuming everything works as planned)

This is it, my last issue for a few weeks. Remember, send all TidBITS related mail to Mark H. Anbinder ([email protected] or [email protected]). My mail will be collected and forwarded eventually, but there's no telling what could go wrong

There's been a lot of grumbling among my academic friends about how hard it is to protect a Macintosh in a public lab. Apparently the best solution so far is to use Suitcase II to load DAs into the Apple Menu and to make the entire System Folder invisible

By now, I'm sure that you've all heard about QuickTime, Apple's multimedia extension to the Mac's system software. I personally have had trouble internalizing what QuickTime will mean to the normal Macintosh user

It seems that I can never catch up with everything I want to write about, and since we're moving in a week or so, I just thought I'd mention the items that will be lost in the shuffle

Ben Schaffe was kind enough to forward this message to me, posted for Naoto Horii on GEnie by Bruce Tomlin of SoundMaster fame. Ben also mentioned that MaxAppleZoom 1.4 was out, and when I looked on America Online, I saw version 1.43

In late breaking news (I just heard this morning from Mark H. Anbinder and others) it appears that Borland, one of the main PC developers, has purchased Ashton-Tate, makers of dBASE IV, FullWrite, and Full Impact

I just heard from Roy McDonald (president of Connectix) that they have a newer and snazzier version of MAXIMA. I haven't received the copy that he said they sent me, but I'll write more about it later

No company is perfect, so good companies are known by their willingness to admit defeat and recall and replace poor products. Apple has a rather checkered past in this regard in the past (remember the sticky hard drives fiasco?) but has issued a couple of product recalls recently that indicate honesty may be on the upswing. People always complain about the various versions of the Apple mouse, but a certain version has a problem that may be more serious than a bad feel or wimpy ball

Not to be mean or anything, but the Plus, SE, and Classic have two main problems. First, they're slow, and depending on what you want to use (like PageMaker 4.0 over LocalTalk from another Plus) comparisons to molasses in January aren't even fair

Anything that allows the user to leave the desk interests me. I'm always frustrated by not having my complete electronic environment with me when I'm working away from my Mac

For those of you struggling with MaxAppleZoom's recent demise, yet more hope exists. Bob Boonstra came up with a patch that he's found to work with both version 1.3 and 1.3.1 of MaxAppleZoom

A few weeks ago I talked briefly about Chris Derossi's Hierarchical Apple Menu (HAM) and some of its competitors-to-be. In the meantime I've heard some more information