Deciding what events in the computer industry merit mention in TidBITS is a difficult task, since the headline grabbing events are not always the most interesting ones
The Macintosh virus count increased by one last Monday when a new virus called either MDEF or Garfield was found at Cornell University. Contrary to an article in MacWEEK, the virus was found by Gordon Suggs of Cornell Information Technologies and Adam Engst of TidBITS
Bob Boynton reports on a Washington Post article that claims Sony will introduce the Data Discman, a portable text reading system. The hand-held system consists of a 3" CD-ROM drive, a ten line screen, and a small keyboard
Microsoft never formally announced Windows 3.0, so its release last week was not officially late, though users had been waiting anxiously since early this year
Despite numerous criticisms, HyperCard has been extremely popular among Macintosh users because of its ease of use and flexibility. Clones were inevitable, and Silicon Beach introduced SuperCard and Olduvai introduced PLUS (now marketed by Spinnaker) to complement HyperCard
A common question on Usenet is how to use the Mac to read mail and Usenet news directly, without having to use a mainframe or workstation and their less-intuitive interfaces
A/UX, Apple's version of Unix for the SE/30 and Mac II line never gained a great deal of popularity. Version 2.0, due out in June, should help A/UX's reputation significantly though, judging from the rave reviews it has received on Usenet
Fax machines are useful in certain situations, no doubt, but indiscriminate use of fax machines strikes some as problematic, especially considering that thermal fax paper cannot be recycled
Apple handed out CD-ROMs containing alpha release 9 of System 7.0 to developers last week. Some interesting features of System 7.0 will include (if you haven't seen this everywhere already) a new and improved Finder, built-in file sharing capabilities, file aliases, outline fonts, application communication abilities, and virtual memory
Recently the CheckFree electronic banking service has become available on the Mac after being available on the PC for some time. Based on reports from subscribers also on Usenet, CheckFree might be an expensive proposition
In a news item that was completely missed by the trade magazines this week, Symantec and Peter Norton Computing announced plans to merge. A number of people on Usenet saw the news in the LA Times and the NY Times (sorry, no specific references were mentioned)
Those people who either attend or work at educational institutions are often eligible for significant discounts on computer hardware and software. The computer companies view the discounts as a good way of attracting future members of the business world to their products, and members of educational institutions view the discounts as just reward for the often-lower salaries of higher education in comparison to big business
Manuel Bouyssou from Paris reports that the first 68040 machine on the market will probably be the next NeXT (perhaps the NeXT YeT? This is another name that's going to be difficult, much like the upgrade to Symantec's MORE, which was called MORE II, but which many people felt should have been called Still MORE.) The 68040 will run at 50 MHz and the black box will contain 8 megabytes of memory, a faster floptical drive with access times around 40 to 45 milliseconds, and an internal 300 megabyte hard drive
TML Systems is developing a set of seven software modules that, when completed, will challenge Microsoft Works 2.0. Collectively called Zebra, the modules share tools with each other so appropriate tools are available in any module (i.e
We at TidBITS have a fondness for interesting ways of connecting computers together, which accounts for a number of past articles on networking with radio waves and electric lines