1992 Fools: TidBITS#114/01-Apr-92
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TidBITS#114/01-Apr-92
=====================
This week we've got more Microsoft corporate deal news, and it's
not even as strange as Apple and IBM. Tune in also for a new
method of protecting all your data from harm and a new program
that could eventually replace the Finder. Finally, for those of
you with compact Macs, there may still be hope for keeping up
with the Gateses and the Sculleys.
Copyright 1990-1992 Adam & Tonya Engst. Non-profit, non-commercial
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Topics:
MailBITS/01-Apr-92
Remote Backup
Microsoft & NeXT?
Future Finder
New Life for Old Macs
[Archived as /info-mac/digest/tb/tidbits-114.etx; 29K]
MailBITS/01-Apr-92
------------------
Ralph Amundesen wrote with some interesting information about IBM.
Evidently, IBM is so worried about OS/2 that the company has
expanded its battalion of salesbots by drafting the entire
company. I don't know if this will go as far as dark-suited IBM
folks out pounding the pavement ("Excuse me, Ma'am, may I come in
and demonstrate what OS/2 2.0 can do for you today?"), but all
344,000 employees are in it for fun and prizes. It's a step up
from grade school, but IBM employees could win medals, IBM
software, IBM hardware, or even cold hard cash. I sure hope they
don't stop in here since I don't have 30 MB free under SoftPC to
test it. Sheesh, wouldn't you think it would be easier to just buy
a few TV spots like Microsoft is doing?
Information from:
Ralph Amundesen -- rna4637@afdnet.uucp
Remote Backup
-------------
I'm beginning to like living in a metropolitan area - there's so
much more happening here in terms of computers. At a local
computer fair put on by the University of Washington a few weeks
ago, I came across a small local company with a product that could
become extremely popular with anyone who doesn't like losing data.
All hands in favor? :-)
This company, BackData, was formed when a couple of guys from some
of the local computer companies were sitting around eating Thai
food (or so they say - apparently Thai food is a big thing in the
computer community here in Seattle). They were talking about
losing data and how seldom people really backed up their entire
hard disks, even when they understood the potential consequences.
Lots of people don't back up at all, and a significant number only
backup up important files, thinking that it will be easy enough to
rebuild a hard drive from original master disks.
People who work on the important file backup method are depending
on two things to make the rebuild easy. First, they hope that they
can find and successfully restore programs from all those floppy
disks, some of which may have gone bad in the years since they
were last used. Second and more importantly, they rely on their
backups surviving the unlikely event of a fire or theft. Another
problem is that people seldom realize how much time they spend
customizing their systems, and it can take a number of hours to
get a system back to the way it should be. This is often even the
case when reformatting and restoring from a complete backup.
So the BackData guys realized that the best possible option is for
all the data on your hard disk to be backed up automatically at
night to another physical place. Short of hiring elves, the only
way to do this is via modem, but with some of the current high-
speed modems and sophisticated pieces of software out there, they
figured that it would be possible with a bunch of Macs and a lot
of storage devices.
The system as they have it currently set up runs on headless LCs
and saves all the data to 2.6 GB DAT drives. Each of the LCs has a
fast modem attached (they have several different types so you can
call specific numbers depending on what modem you have). In terms
of software, you just need AppleTalk Remote Access and Retrospect
1.3, which can back up any volume mounted on its desktop.
I haven't tried this yet, but the theory is that at some point in
the middle of the night one of their backup Macs calls your Mac
(which had better be on). A simple macro ensures that all your
volumes are mounted read-only on their systems, and then
Retrospect goes to work, backing up only the files that have
changed according to specific selectors that you set up
previously. This allows you to avoid backing up your System file
all the time, even though it will almost always be marked as
modified whether or not you've added any fonts or sounds. Once the
backup is done, another macro copies the catalog file to your hard
disk (so you can see what was backed up), dismounts your volumes,
and disconnects the modems to finish the process.
It doesn't really matter how long this takes since it's at night,
or at least it wouldn't matter if you weren't being charged for
all this. The BackData people have to make some money too. The
full kit, which includes AppleTalk Remote Access, Retrospect 1.3,
and a fast modem (I think they're using the cheap new ones from
Supra now, but that's subject to change) will run about $800,
although you can obviously buy the parts separately. Then there's
a connect time charge of $10/hour, which is fairly comparable to
many online services. Depending on the amount of data that you
modify each day and the speed of your modem, you could get away
with spending fifty cents to a couple of dollars per call. It
wouldn't be economical at 2400 bps, but if you could keep it down
to a six minute call each day, that's only a dollar per day, or
$365 per year, which isn't all that expensive in comparison to
buying your own hardware and software for backup. In addition, the
various pieces of the setup are all useful for other things as
well, so it's an extremely worthwhile combination.
Retrieval is a slightly stickier issue. Essentially, the process
works in reverse, with one important exception. You call them and
make sure your DAT tape is in the drive of a Mac at a certain
phone number. After your Mac calls the storage Mac, you then run
Retrospect over the remote connection, since it won't be able to
see the DAT drive otherwise. BackData doesn't expect everyone to
want to do this, and if you have to restore the entire hard disk
the phone charges may run pretty high. So for a standard
consulting fee of $50/hour, BackData will send someone over to
your office or home and will perform the restore there, helping to
reformat the hard disk and do whatever else needs to be done to
get you up and running.
I expressed some doubt about the reliability of cobbling together
these off-the-shelf programs, and the BackData folks admitted that
they're in the process of writing several dedicated programs that
will automate the process much more cleanly, one for DOS and one
for the Mac. Their programs didn't sound as though they'd be as
flexible as Retrospect, but would work much more cleanly over the
phone lines, especially with restoring data. Interesting concept
this, and one which could eventually go national with an 800
number. It's basically a form of insurance, but one which could
save a lot of important data in the event of disaster.
BackData -- info@backdata.com
Information from:
BackData propaganda & representatives
Microsoft & NeXT?
-----------------
Microsoft is just full of surprises these days. First Fox, what
could be NeXT? The latest news from Redmond is that Mr. Bill has
apparently overcome his dislike of Steve Jobs and the company will
be porting its most popular applications to the NeXT. This move,
which Microsoft and NeXT haven't announced publicly yet, makes a
fair amount of sense for both companies but is rather surprising
given Mr. Bill's words of several years ago linking the
combination of Microsoft and NeXT with frost warnings in the
nether worlds.
As I said, though, the announcement makes a good deal of sense if
you look at it closely. It's obviously positive from NeXT's
perspective. The technically-neat NeXT workstations have suffered
not from a lack of decent software, but from a lack of decent
software from big name companies. There's Improv from Lotus as
well as the ubiquitous word processor from WordPerfect, but not a
lot else from the biggies. Jobs may be pushing the NeXT as the
ideal custom application machine for business, but big business
doesn't like to buy extra special-purpose machines and would like
to have Excel and Word running on those NeXTs as well. After all,
no one was ever fired for buying Microsoft, but NeXT is still
another story.
What's in it for Microsoft, though? A good question, since
Microsoft makes most of its money on operating systems and it
certainly won't sell so many versions of Excel and Word for the
NeXT to really recoup the development costs, low as they may
because of the ease of developing in NeXTstep.
I've heard rumors in and around the deal that Microsoft will gain
some rights to the NeXTstep environment, which is the main
incentive for them. It's a known fact that the kernel in Windows
NT is a close relative to the kernel in Mach, the Unix variant
used by NeXT, so it could be rather easy to port NeXTstep to NT.
It may simply be worthwhile for Microsoft to gain the several
years of real world experience that NeXT's developers have
invested in NeXTstep. Heck, if it's worth trying with Fox, it's
worth trying with NeXT and it's probably cheaper too.
Let's face it, Windows is by no means a penultimate graphical
interface, and in fact, it's poor in a lot of ways. The suit with
Apple may not help in that regard. But, look, here's NeXT which
needs some credibility in the business world and has a snazzy
graphical interface that leaves Windows in the dust. Microsoft can
provide the first and needs the second.
Another factor we can't overlook is the faltering ACE initiative,
since there are so many members, each with an individual agenda.
It's hard to merge the interests of divergent but major players
like Silicon Graphics (which I believe just bought MIPS), DEC,
Compaq, and Microsoft, and Microsoft is certainly not one to put
all its eggs in the same ACE basket. Apple and IBM ruled
themselves out as allies by creating Taligent to compete directly
with the future Microsoft, and Sun as usual is doing its own
thing. The only semi-major player left is NeXT, and everyone
admits that for all NeXT's marketing mistakes, they've got a great
combination of an excellent graphical interface and a good Unix
implementation. Everyone was astonished by the Apple/IBM deal, and
in many ways this proposed deal isn't even as radical, although it
could have even more far-reaching implications for the industry.
Information from:
Pythaeus
Future Finder
-------------
Are you happy with the Finder? Most people like it a fair amount,
and there's people who would die before using anything else like
DOS. But let's face it, the Finder is far from perfect, and even
Apple knows it. Unfortunately for Apple, one of their original
human interface gurus, Bruce Tognazzini (better known as TOG, and
author of "TOG on Interface") has reportedly just departed for
Sun.
I don't mean to imply that the Finder is dead or dying, but from
some plans that I've heard, it will have some real competition in
about a year. Keisuke Hara, the author of a slick Finder-
replacement DA called MaxFiles, is hard at work on a new program
that will truly replace the Finder, something no other program has
ever successfully done. It's not a trivial project, and Hara does
not expect to finish any time soon, but here are some of the
highlights from our discussions of his new Finder-replacement,
currently called FileMax.
File database
Perhaps the main problem with the Finder is that it tries to be
too many things to too many people. Whenever that happens, people
become disappointed. At its base level, the Finder is a database,
one that keeps track of the many files and folders on your hard
disk and the various attributes that each of those files and
folder have. On top of that database sits a graphical shell for
working with database records (the files). That term, "working
with" is intentionally general because so many of the Finder's
functions seem to be rather tacked on at the end without much
thought for how they should really act. A classic example of this
is the awkward method of dismounting a floppy by dragging it to
the trash.
So the first thing that FileMax will have is an extremely fast
database engine that will work with the current Desktop file(s) so
you can always go back to the Finder if you wish. Most people will
never mess with the database engine of FileMax simply because it
doesn't really do all that much different from the current Finder
database engine. The main difference is that FileMax will be
completely wired with AppleEvents so that other programmers can
extend the functionality of the Finder quickly and easily by
hooking into the various events.
New interface ideas
This is where we get into the more interesting proposals for
FileMax. To solve the Finder problem with dragging floppies to the
trash, FileMax will have a DiskBox that holds aliases to all your
floppies. (Actually this DiskBox idea is in the process of being
implemented for System 7 already by an enterprising shareware
author - look for it soon.) When you want to dismount a floppy,
you simply drag it to your DiskBox icon, which is actually a tiny
program. That program ejects the disk and saves an alias of the
contents of that disk so that you can find its files easily later
on. Speaking of finding files, FileMax will have a more powerful
Find command than currently exists in the Finder today, most
notably in that you can create what are called "collections" of
files with the results. So if you find all your MacWrite documents
that haven't changed in two years you can create a collection of
them (which is optionally either the original files or a bunch of
temporary aliases) and then do whatever you want with that
collection.
Aliases will be much improved in FileMax. If you want to create
one, merely hold down the command key and drag the appropriate
icon where you want the alias to be, much like option-dragging
copies a file now. FileMax will also be better about making the
aliases work exactly like the originals, even in places they don't
right now. For instance, Get Info... on an alias now does not
allow you to work on the original file, which is the main reason
you would use Get Info on an alias in the first place.
Still, this stuff is interesting, but not that radical. There are
a few radical concepts in FileMax which may become extremely
popular. The first is what's called a "super folder." It's a
normal folder in which you put a set of files, then you set a
"super folder" bit in the Get Info, and the folder no longer opens
when you double-click on it. Instead, it runs all the applications
contained inside and opens all the documents. Option-double-
clicking would open the folder like a normal folder for editing of
the contents. This feature could be especially handy for reducing
the massive clutter that now comes with many applications. In
addition, programs that are stupid about the locations of their
support files like Word 5.0 (the Word Commands folder has to be at
the same folder level as Word 5.0 itself) could simply be combined
in a single super folder and ignored. Finally, it would be trivial
to set up work sets of various applications and documents by
storing aliases to the various files in different super folders.
Balloon help was a neat idea, but frankly, Apple implemented it
badly. Most people who realize that it's there turn it on briefly
and then turn it off, and even if you want to use it on occasion,
you're still insulted with the balloon popping up as you select
Hide Balloons. FileMax will have balloon help too, but will also
have a Control Panel for setting the equivalent of a user level.
So if I consider myself to be a level three user out of a possible
five, I would only see the balloons that are coded for more
advanced users. There is also an exception rule for the first time
you see something, since a simple control might need explanation,
but only once. Like some of the shareware and freeware utilities,
FileMax's balloon help will also be easy to toggle with a key.
Perhaps most interesting though, will be the replacement of the
Get Info dialog box with an editable balloon when you are pointing
at a particular icon. This will let you view and edit comments and
click the locked and stationery bits without having to select the
file, choose a menu item, and then close the Get Info window when
you're done. That's way too clumsy.
New SFDialog
I wrote above about the concept of the collection in terms of
dealing with the set of found files. FileMax actually will take
the concept of the collection further yet, patching the System in
an area which isn't generally handled by the Finder. One of the
oldest and most outdated parts of the Macintosh interface is the
Standard File Dialog because it was designed for 128K Macs running
a single application on a small screen. FileMax uses a simple
modeless (in contrast to modal, which means that you have to exit
that mode, i.e. close the dialog, before you can do anything else)
dialog displaying a collection of files and any application-
specific features like file-type selection buttons. The collection
is displayed in an outline mode reminiscent of the Finder's
outline mode in System 7, but much faster and with all the volumes
as the top level. What differentiates this collection from a
normal outline is that it respects the application's wishes in
terms of which files to display, and since it's modeless, you can
use FileMax's Find function or any other function while in that
collection. It also features two special folders at the top of the
outline hierarchy, Recent and Permanent, which track recently-
accessed and permanent files and folders, much as Super Boomerang
and ShortCut do. Saving is slightly different, because you have to
assign a name and location to your file. At the top of the outline
is the name of the current folder (which is also indicated
graphically in the outline list but you can shrink the whole thing
so you don't have to look at the outline) and a text entry box for
the filename. Alongside is a Save button which is grey when no
changes have been made. Since this Save dialog is modeless, it's a
single click to save your file at any time. Save As is simply a
matter of changing the name or location and saving again. I'm
drooling for this one, and I'm sure it will become even smoother
before release.
Other tweaks
Because FileMax will be completely wired with AppleEvents and is
totally modular, some obvious openings for products appear. Many
of you miss the Finder Sounds hack that went away with Finder 6
because Apple removed the sound hooks in Finder 7. That, along
with the custom icon family features of SunDesk which stopped
working in Finder 7, will both be back in FileMax. The
possibilities for additional customization, even with something
like UserLand's Frontier event scripting program, are endless.
Other little tweaks that will please the die-hard Mac user include
much faster copying of files (done by another small application in
the background if desired, as in DiskDoubler), stable file
comments, iconization of open applications, drag & drop printing,
and an outline list view that starts with the mounted volumes,
which does not cut off long files names, and which allows you to
customize the order of the fields, so if you want to have name
followed immediately by label, date, then size, so be it. One
thing that's not in FileMax is a hierarchical Apple menu, or an
Apple menu at all. Instead FileMax will have a resizable floating
palette that will list whatever the user wants to put in it,
including running applications. One interesting feature of this
palette is that it can turn itself into a menu if the user drags
it up to the menu bar, satisfying both the big screen and the
small screen users.
I've talked a lot about what this program will do, based on
various discussions, but to tell the truth, I don't think this
program will ever make it to market. I see no reason why Apple
won't just hire Hara and buy the rights because it's easier than
allowing a third-party shell like FileMax to become common in the
marketplace, something Apple doesn't really want to happen because
it would hurt the Mac in terms of consistency. I also suspect that
the Apple system software teams will realize that FileMax embodies
a lot of good ideas, probably helped along by many people who have
thought long and hard about what's wrong with the current
Macintosh system software. I would certainly hope that they would
be able to accept external input into what's right and wrong with
the Finder and modify it to make it both easier and far more
powerful at the same time.
Information from:
Kiesuke Hara, MaxFiles author
New Life for Old Macs
---------------------
As long as we're trying to get people to raise their hands this
issue, how many of you out there have a compact Mac and would like
to upgrade it? I thought so. If you've got a Classic you can go to
a Classic II, and if you're the proud owner of an SE, you might be
able to find an SE/30 upgrade lying around at some dealer's back
room. Otherwise you're out of luck, or maybe not...
We've heard some rumors of a project at Apple called Phoenix
that's one of those labors of love carried out under the very
noses of the Grinch-like bean counters. A group of Apple
engineers decided that it was a shame that everyone with an older
compact Mac was stuck with it, more or less, especially since
Apple seems to be relegating the compact Macs to the low end of
the product line. So they set to work designing an upgrade in
their spare time (where do these people get that kind of spare
time anyway?) and by the time the managers noticed and told them
to cut it out and get some real work done, the Phoenix project was
already pretty cool. It's not definite yet, but some of the ideas
the Phoenix team came up with are being considered seriously
enough that we might live to see the day that an ex-128K Mac can
run System 7.
The basic idea behind this upgrade is that the motherboards in
these machines are old and relatively useless. However, since
Apple has made such strides in miniaturizing the motherboard
components, the Phoenix team was able to design a universal
compact Mac motherboard and some extra hardware for each specific
model to make sure it fits in correctly. The case too is a
problem, so they came up with a universal compact case to replace
the old ones, but most of the other components like the screen and
power supply and internal supports are re-used. Needless to say,
this is not the sort of thing you can install at home, and it
probably won't be incredibly cheap.
Since the Phoenix team never imagined that their work would ever
see the light of day at Apple, they went all out in designing the
new motherboard. Rather than cripple the machine with a narrow
data path, they made sure it was a true 32-bit machine with a 25
MHz 68030, and even included a coprocessor. Along with all the
standard ports, they added a video out port and some internal
video RAM so the Phoenix Mac can run two monitors without an
additional card. Like the rumored new monitor that includes
speakers and microphones, the Phoenix Mac will have two internal
microphones and a much better speaker than was in the original
machines.
But what about slots? There was no obvious way to fit a card into
the different internal superstructures of the various compact
Macs. Rather than just give up on the idea of providing a PDS or
NuBus slot, the Phoenix team took an idea from the now-defunct
Jasmine. At one point, Jasmine marketed a drive called something
like the Backpack, which attached to the back of the Mac and took
up very little room. So the Phoenix team designed a slot adapter
like the one in the IIsi and put a pop-out in the back of the case
to access it, much as the SE and SE/30 have.
Like the IIsi, you don't have to buy the backpack-style card case
unless you want to add an extra PDS or NuBus card (both can be
supported). If you do want to add one, you can just buy the card
case and your card, open the card case, install the card, and then
attach the whole thing to the Mac. It's the same general idea as
the NuBus extenders from Second Wave, but since it fits snugly on
the back of the redesigned case, it's easy to travel with or swap
from machine to machine.
From what we've heard, the Apple honchos liked the concept of the
card case for the compact Macs, but they were even more taken with
the concept of using a card case with a PowerBook. The PowerBook
would have to have a new connector to the motherboard, so it
wouldn't work with the existing ones, but such a solution would be
cheaper and easier than the proposed (and now delayed, perhaps
indefinitely) docking station. Since most people aren't likely to
want more than video out, which the new PowerBooks will have, and
one card, perhaps an Ethernet card, the card case is ideal, not to
mention quite easily transported along with the PowerBook.
There were apparently a few extra neat ideas in the original work
the Phoenix team was doing (if it's anything like Seattle, they
probably did most of this stuff in a Thai restaurant). One of the
best, though not one which received a lot of support at the
management level was a stand-alone LCD screen based on the active-
matrix display in the PowerBook 170. (Interestingly, Dolch
Computer Systems just released a color LCD projection panel that
can double as a stand-alone screen for a mere $8500.) They
originally wanted to put it, or a color active-matrix display,
into the upgraded compact Macs, but decided that it would be way
too expensive. As a stand-alone though... How much would you pay
for a nice 640 x 480 active matrix screen with backlighting? I'd
certainly like one for my system and would consider it up to about
$700. Just think, if you had a six-slot Mac and a spot of extra
cash you could set up a grid of six active matrix panels side by
side. Since they don't interfere with each other like normal
monitors do, it could be a single desk-sized desktop, say 1920 x
960 or more likely 1280 x 1440. That's a lot of pickles, er,
pixels.
I'm still surprised that the Phoenix team's work wasn't ignored at
Apple. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Apple is
going to be putting out these three operating systems for the Mac,
the fancy new version of the current MacOS, the upgraded version
of A/UX known as PowerOpen, and whatever Taligent makes of Pink.
They claim that those operating systems will be scalable to all
Macs, but I doubt a Mac Plus will be able to handle it. This
Phoenix upgrade gets Apple out of a jam (or would that be a
butter?) by ensuring that anyone can upgrade to a Mac capable of
all the neat new voice and handwriting technologies and the
operating systems behind them. Of course, as Murph Sewall says at
the top of his Vaporware Digest, "These are rumors, folks. We
reserve the right to be wrong." Just because you read it in
TidBITS doesn't mean that it's going to happen (but this upgrade
has our vote!).
Dolch Computer Systems -- 408/957-6575
Information from:
Pythaeus
Related articles:
MacWEEK -- 30-Mar-92, Vol. 6, #13, pg. 1, 18
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