Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!think!whitney From: whitney@think.COM (David Whitney) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Applefest in Boston today Message-ID: <21000@think.UUCP> Date: 21 May 88 06:14:43 GMT Sender: usenet@think.UUCP Reply-To: whitney@think.UUCP (David Whitney) Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA Lines: 61 Well, I went to the Applefest today (well, yesterday) and was pretty much unimpressed. The Hynes Convertion Center is still under construction, and as a result the show itself occupied a pretty small space on the second floor. I haven't attended such a small show in a long time. It's size reminded me of the second Applefest in Boston way back in 1983 or something. New products being displayed: GSWorks was out there. It crashed a lot. They had several people desperately trying to show off this potentially great product and it continually crashed or just plain wouldn't work right. It's entirely graphics-based (how'd you guess?) so it runs pretty slowly. But there is hope for that... Applied Engineering had a prototype accelerator card on display. Looks like it makes things about twice as fast. It literelly was a protoype - the board was wire-wrapped and was too big vertically to fit in the machine. It did work very nicely though. If the hot rumors of the GS+ don't come together, it looks like I'll buy one. The guy had no specs on it. They Fed Ex'd it out to him the day before and said "if you break it, don't bother coming back to Texas." No other info was sent along with it (like release date,price,speed,etc). I get the feeling that the very card I saw was AE's only working version. Checkmate Technology doesn't seem to have any plans for accelerators for the GS. The Boston Computer Society had at least one Apple //e charged up with a Zip Chip. Yes, they do exist and they are FAST. Flight Simulator was actually playable. The guy told me the the company actually had some chips at the SF fest and sold them to people on the spot. SO, it seems there have been some lucky souls who have had them all along. The manufacturers of the Rocket chip were there. Looks like it's a Zip Chip. I haven't gone through their literature yet. Apple is releasing AppleLink for general use by the public. I'm not sure of the details, but it looks like the general schmuck who subscribes won't get exactly the same kind of service that the developers have been getting. Forums and the like from the developers will be summarized and posted for your perusal. Looks to be a big money source for Apple. Also, Applelink software exists for the //. Don't know which versions of the //, or when it will be available for // users (it may already be out - I don't know). As for the rest of the show, there wasn't much to go "ooh aah" about. Nothing really new aside from what's mentioned above. On a personal note, I stopped by the Genie booth, and they were perpetually logged in. I picked up their current catalog of software, and my creation, Z-Link was there since April (early). 99 people have downloaded it so far, and not one of them has sent me money. Makes me upset, but what can you do? It happened that the Genie people were using ProTerm, and I've picked up on some ideas to incorporate into Z-Link. You watch - Z-Link will become a pretty good deal when I'm done with it. David Whitney, MIT '90 Still learning about my Apple //GS {the known universe}!ihnp4!think!whitney and all of its secrets. Any and all whitney@think.com technical info appreciated. DISCLAIMER: If they only knew what I was doing and saying here...