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TidBITS#179/07-Jun-93

Two new PowerBooks and some volume software pricing deals blossom a week early on the Apple tree, followed by an excellent article on those pesky hardware handshaking cables that you need for fast modems. We also review Peirce Software’s Smoothie, and provide bits about Retrospect A/UX, MacIntercomm, QuickTime 1.6 bugs, and phone line oddities. Finally, an announcement of the book I’m working on about connecting to the Internet from a Macintosh.

Adam Engst No comments

Administrivia

Sigh. It turns out that the Post Office added another ZIP code to our area shortly before we moved. Of course, no one told us about this, and we didn't notice right away

Adam Engst No comments

Retrospect A/UX

Retrospect A/UX, which is almost identical to Retrospect 2.0 but includes full support for both Unix and Macintosh file systems, was announced recently by Dantz Development

Adam Engst No comments

The highlight

The highlight of the annual Computer Bowl occurred when Bill Gates, who was a judge, posed the following question to the contestants: "What contest, held via Usenet, is dedicated to examples of weird, obscure, bizarre, and really bad programming?" After a moment of silence, Jean-Louis Gassee (ex-honcho at Apple) hit his buzzer and answered "Windows." Mr

Adam Engst No comments

Modem Follies

Modem Follies -- A number of people wrote in about Mark Anbinder's article in TidBITS #176 concerning a strange line noise problem. It seems that this problem was big news in Australia some time back, as Ian MacColl reported, and some of the theories there included some phones drawing too much power from the line, a capacitor charging to maintain stored numbers, or the affected phones reporting to their superiors at Telecom Australia Headquarters (a popular choice, since the problem was cyclical). Ed Segall proposed an alternate theory based on a problem he had and solved

Adam Engst No comments

MacIntercomm

MacIntercomm and MacIntercomm Lite, originally developed by Mercury Computing, have been acquired by New World Computing (NWC). MacIntercomm is best known for its ability to transfer files at full speed in the background no matter what the foreground process

Adam Engst No comments

QuickTime 1.6 bugs

QuickTime 1.6 bugs are popping up all over. Jon Pugh reported on Info-Mac that he isolated a conflict between QuickTime 1.6 and Now Toolbox 4.0.1p that caused problems when resolving an alias that mounts a network volume

Mark H. Anbinder No comments

Apple Volume Software Licenses

Even more exciting (to some) than today's hardware introductions is Apple's announcement of the long-awaited Software Volume Licensing Program, enabling companies and other organizations needing multiple copies of Apple software to purchase them economically and efficiently. Starting today, products available for volume licensing are System 7.1 upgrades, Macintosh PC Exchange, At Ease, Apple Font Pack, AppleTalk Remote Access (ARA) Client, Data Access Language (DAL) Client, TCP/IP Connection for Macintosh, MacX, SNA-ps 3270, and SNA-ps 3270 GC

Maury Markowitz No comments

Cable Conundrums

I draw attention to the article on high speed modems in TidBITS #163. Incidentally, you need a special hardware handshaking cable for these modems to reach their true potential

Adam Engst No comments

Smoothie With A Capital SMOO

I'm beginning to like one-trick ponies. I like Toner Tuner, which lets you reduce the amount of toner or ink or ribbon you use when printing, and although I personally don't have much use for it, I think those of you who do presentations will like Smoothie, from Peirce Software