[Editor's Note: At various times I've complained about installer programs, which I generally think are overkill for a well-written, compact program. However, now that more and more programs have tons of little accessories like XTND filters, dictionaries, help files, and tutorials galore (and you thought Barbie dolls came with lots of accessories), many companies have decided to go the installer route

I watched the User Group TV broadcast on September 25th with a couple of media center professionals who were REALLY impressed with Apple's broadcasts last year for educators and developers

Simon Tortike just announced on Usenet that he is transforming his DigiGraf digitizing application from shareware to freeware. Simon said that he no longer has the time to support the program to the extent that he feels he must to justify its existence as shareware

"Now this is a Macintosh peripheral!" - John Sculley TelePort Modem and TelePort/Fax Modem Global Village Communications 1204 O'Brien Drive Menlo Park, CA 94025 415/329-0700 415/329-0755 Customer Support 415/329-0767 Fax America Online: GLOBALVILL AppleLink: GLOBALVILLAG Rating: 8 Penguins out of a possible 10 Summary: -- Introduced in the fall of 1990, the TelePort broke Macintosh convention by being the first peripheral other than a keyboard or pointing device to take advantage of the Apple Desktop Bus

The coolest Macintosh telecommunications gadget is the TelePort modem from Global Village Communications. Global Village has created a small, unobtrusive modem that doesn't need a power cord and won't even take up one of your serial ports

The TelePort's fax capability is elegant and easy to use. If you purchase the fax version of the TelePort or purchase a fax upgrade later, you receive a TelePort/FAX file to join the TelePort control panel in your System Folder

John Sculley, in his keynote speech at the last San Francisco Macworld Expo, held up a TelePort, and announced that it was the most Mac-like Macintosh peripheral he'd ever seen

In the first part of July TidBITS had a full review of Retrospect 1.3 that was quite complimentary - heck, it's a good program. Since then we've heard more about Retrospect and its developers, Dantz Development, that might interest you. For a while now SuperMac has wanted focus on its graphics hardware and to divest itself of its software group

I'm still getting used to the wealth of computer events in the Seattle area. Seattle's dBUG had Claris in to show off ClarisWorks and MacDraw Pro a few weeks ago and last Thursday we went to a talk by Mr

Just before we left Ithaca, International Business Software started a great deal on a DataClub whereby for some low price (around $75, if I remember correctly) you could get a three-user pack of DataClub along with WriteNow, Panorama, and MacCalc, I think

This document came about because of the System Heap/INIT paranoia I've seen lately. It represents the total sum of the knowledge I have accumulated from writing system level software (INITs/cdevs/System Extensions) for three years and is accurate based on my experience and the experiences of many other Macintosh programmers. It will help you make rational decisions about resolving INIT conflicts, dispel some common myths, teach you a thing or two, and explain what really happens with all this System Heap stuff. Neophytes, forgive me if I confuse you with the programmer-speak necessary to explain this topic

For starters, your Macintosh has a fixed amount of memory installed in it, which acts like desk space for things you are currently working on. In real life, when you want to work on something you might take it out of your filing cabinet and put it on your desk where you can work on it effectively

If a program wants to achieve some kind of a global effects (like QuicKeys allowing you to define macros that work in any program), it has to find out how to graft itself into your system and keep a portion of memory for itself that will stay around even when a program quits (remember folks, the memory a program allocates for itself is freed up again when it quits). We are talking sophisticated stuff here

When an INIT causes a problem, you'll hear ten people shout in unison, "Have you increased the size of your System Heap?" There are utilities out there that let you manually make the System Heap bigger in an effort to fix crashes due to INITs

Many people do not realize this, but with all versions of MultiFinder, the System Heap can actually grow even after start up time, easing INIT memory conflicts