May 93 - From Frying Pan to Fire
From Frying Pan to Fire
Steve Mann
Things just keep forging ahead whether you like it or not. We just finished tying up all
the lose odds and ends from MADACON, and now WWDC looms on the horizon. Depending
on when you read this column, MADA will be, is, or has been at WWDC. We arranged to
have a table in the Concourse section as in previous years. We will be recruiting new
members, selling the MADACON '93 CD-ROM (yes, it's done), and offering some
WWDC product specials (if everything goes according to plan, there should be an
insert in this issue of FrameWorks detailing the specials). In addition, we are holding
a special WWDC meeting at the San Jose Hilton. I'll report all the details next issue in
my WWDC report.
One final piece of MADACON '93 business before we move ahead to new challenges.
Those of you that went to our conference in San Diego know about the banquet. For those
of you not in attendance, some background. The day of the Sea++World banquet it
rained. In fact, it was quite stormy. Having polled the attendees as we registered them,
we knew that many of the conference goers were very interested in seeing the Shamu
the Killer Whale show. We shortened the day's conference agenda and arranged special
bus transportation specifically so that people could get to the park in time.
That Thursday, it was so stormy that SeaWorld canceled the final Shamu show of the
day. Unfortunately (probably due to inclement weather) they forgot tell us. Quite a few
conference goers got on the buses and schlepped through near-squall conditions to see a
show that no longer existed. They were not pleased.
There is a happy ending. After contacting SeaWorld and expressing our displeasure,
they sent us a batch of half-price admittance tickets, each good for multiple adults and
children. These tickets are valid through the end of 1993. Any MADACON attendees that
will be back in the San Diego area this year are welcome to contact us for a ticket.
Depending on the response, we will probably have some leftovers for members who did
not actually make it to MADACON as well. Our thanks to SeaWorld for their
customer-oriented service.
NEW (AND NOT SO NEW) PRODUCTS
Enough fish stories. Once again, I'm pleased to announce some new product acquisitions.
First, in response to numerous member requests, we are now an official distributor
for Rational's Booch Components. After the Bedrock team announced at MADACON '93
that they were licensing a subset of Rational's second-generation C++ class library, a
lot of people expressed an interest in this product. After a quick inquiry, we signed up
to sell the components. The discount is not as substantial as we like to offer our
members (the retail price is $495, the MADA member price is $440), but it's the
best we can currently offer under the terms of our agreement with Rational. Look for
articles about this component library in future issues of FrameWorks.
Second, as I mentioned in my opening, the MADACON '93 CD-ROM is finished. It
contains close to 600 MBytes of stuff. We were able to get at least slides for almost all
sessions (about five are missing). Unfortunately, Taligent would not let us include
Mike Potel's slides from his outstanding banquet keynote, but we were able to include
the soundtrack. There's also a QuickTime™ movie with slides and audio of the keynote
Bedrock session. It's a great overview of Bedrock (of course after WWDC, it will
probably be very old news). There are lots of demo programs (like ObjectMaster 2.0,
Ad Lib 2.0, BETA, Camelot, NeoAccess, and the complete Iconix product line), source
code (C++, MacApp, Serius, Prograph, and BETA), and a huge quantity of stuff about
Microsoft's Foundation Classes version 2.0 (including MPW-compatible source code),
courtesy of Steve Sinofsky.
Finally, thanks to the tireless efforts of Dan Strnad of Apple's Developer Technical
Support group, we included the highlights of the MADACON '92 CD-ROM, including
everything that happened on Apple Day, the Developer University Intro to MacApp 3.0
course, Kent Sandvik on debugging, an advanced C++ tutorial, and more. Dan also
slipped in the latest versions of Swatch and ZoneRanger, two Mac debugging tools. The
MADACON '92 content really captures the essence of MacApp 3.0, including some
information that cannot be found anywhere else. The MADACON '93 content is a broad
assortment about things we may be using in the future.
Finally, I like to announce the availability of Ad Lib 2.0B1. As most of you know, Ad
Lib is the only third-party ViewEdit replacement that lets you build and manage
MacApp 3.0-compatible views. This version has lots of new features and
enhancements. See page three for more details and ordering information.
product evaluators
Finally, I like to mention that we're looking for some volunteers to help us evaluate
products for possible publishing or distribution. Since taking over as MADA's
manager, I've felt strongly that we need to offer the best possible OO tools to our
members. It's one way to add serious value to each membership, and, quite frankly, it
helps us stay in business. Unfortunately, we're starting to get so many inquiries about
publishing (the good news) that we can't possibly look at all of the products in a timely
fashion (the bad news). We need members with C++, MacApp, frameworks, and basic
software development and debugging experience that have a few hours a month to
evaluate products for us. In the near future, we will probably need people with OODL
and Think C experience as well. If any of you are interested, please contact me at
408/253-2765 or MADA@AppleLink.Apple.Com.