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From: steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield;232HMB;3-6292;;MF62)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Claris and 7.0 'friendly' apps? (long)
Message-ID: <1991May14.205813.2466@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 14 May 91 20:58:13 GMT
References: <12102@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <1991May14.151326.3835@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Sender: root@agate.berkeley.edu (Charlie Root)
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 48

In article <1991May14.151326.3835@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> lester@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Jim Lester) writes:
#>dsaltarelli@cmcvx1.claremont.edu (saltarelli, donald joseph jr.) writes:
#>
#>>I heard a rumor on a local Mac BBS that Claris has some super-apps up its
#>>sleeve.  Does anybody have any additional information?
#>
#>>Since Apple owns a major portion of Claris, will this fact show up in terms of
#>>7.0 'friendly' applications?  Wouldn't it be nice to have MacWrite 7.0, MacDraw
#>>7.0 etc.. which can publish and subscribe?  (and maybe a spreadsheet too that
#>>combined with the hypothetical new versions of write and draw would tear down
#>>MS Word and Excel...!)

I went to a System 7 demo today conducted by an Apple engineer.
He demonstrated publishing and subscribing between Claris
Resolve, the new spreadsheet, and MacWrite II+. I don't think
either have yet been released. He generated a graph in the
spreadsheet and published it. He subscribed to the graph in
MacWrite II+. Then with both windows showing on the screen,
he changed the numbers in Resolve. Nothing happened until he
saved the file at which point the graph in MacWrite II+
adjusted.

Having seen that demo and gone through the HyperCard demo of
System 7, I have two opinions. One is that System 7 does offer
some nifty new features, though it also eliminates some old
ones I liked (such as cycling through applications by clicking
the icon in the upper right; 7 uses that icon for a pull-down
menu). The other is that there are still a lot of problems to
resolve before I will upgrade. For example, a clean version of
MacTCP won't be available until June or July (you need it for
NCSA Telnet among other applications). At the moment, AUFS
doesn't work properly. Apparently, if you try to trash a file,
it crashes. Second, some people are now offering updates
(Suitcase, DPI/PLI, Microsoft). Others, such as Symantec,
tell me they will be announcing an update in a few weeks,
even though Apple's Compatibility Checker says that version
2.1 is available. (Symantec blamed the delay on Apple changing
7, even though the "golden" version has been out for two weeks.)

Then there is my database program, McMax, with unknown
compatibility. Finally, though I ordered the upgrade package
today (our academic price is $95; $4 less than list), it will
be five or six weeks before it is expected to arrive. (I prefer
not to upgrade without a set of manuals around.) Given all the
local support I have in a campus environment, I'd be even more
cautious if I were somewhere else. System 7 is a radical change.

Steve Goldfield