Heard a late report on the radio today. Apple has laid off about 200 people (rumor has it sales and sales support -- since they are shifting a lot of corporate sales back into the dealer network this might make sense). VERY suprising, though, was an announcement that Steve Jobs was being moved into a position 'with out and direct responsibility' (I THINK that was the quote). Evidently Sculley has decided Steve can cause more harm than good and made him muckey-muck without portfolio. Most details when I see them, but this is VERY interesting....

Overall, I think the move is good for Apple. There has been a drain of needed resources recently (Wozniak is gone, and Apple has been losing other key people here and there); partially because of conflicts with Jobs; partially because of other factors.

A lot of the turnover was in the Apple II ranks because, while they generate the majority of Apple's income and sales, they were being glossed over by the high PR Macintosh group. The reorganization should go far to heal these wounds and get the company pulling together again. I hope that bringing in the sales and marketing experience from the II group will bring pricing marketing in line on the Mac.

With the Amiga and the vaporware Atari that keeps getting rumored, Apple is going to have to become more competive and more cognizant of their customers to continue their successes. By getting their resources to cooperate instead of compete, hopefully we'll see better products faster for BOTH the II and the Mac.

Maybe now we'll see an "open" Mac and a truly fast hard disk (ie no more serial port nonsense), all those things that Jobs thought were a bad idea...

Announcing MacAfrica:  A One-Day Macintosh Programming Seminar To Raise Funds For Emergency Airlifts International

MacAfrica is a one-day seminar on programming the Apple Macintosh Computer, presented by David A. Wilson, Ph.D. This is a condensed version of the three-day Macintosh Technical Training Seminars given by Dr. Wilson for Apple Computer.  The seminar has a nominal value of $100, and we request that checks for donations be made out directly to Emergency Airlifts International.  We have chosen this charity, sponsors of Airlift: Africa, because all food, clothing, and medical supplies are purchased in the United States, and their distribution in Africa has been carefully documented by the news media.

MacAfrica will be held on Saturday, July 13 at Annenberg Auditorium on the Stanford Campus, beginning at 9:00 am and continuing until at least 6:00 pm.

The seminar will focus on four unique features of Mac programming: Resources, Events , Memory Management, and the hundreds of useful ROM routines.  Sample source code will be provided in Lisa Pascal, Megamax C, and MacPascal for various demo programs.  Lectures will include QuickDraw, Windows, Menus, Desk Accessories, and Debugging.  An optional 300-page notebook and two 3.5-inch disks full of sample programs will be available for attendees only.

Attendees must register by July 6, and attendance will be limited. MacAfrica is sponsored by Personal Concepts and the Stanford Macintosh Users' Group.  It is not associated with Apple Computer.



General Information

1.  Attendance is limited - you must pre-register by July 6.
2.  MacAfrica will be held at Annenberg Auditorium, in the basement of the Cummings Art Building at Stanford, just to the right of Hoover Tower.
3.  Lectures begin at 9:00 am sharp. Please come early to pick up your materials, and get settled in.  Doors open at 8:00.
4.  We recommend a brown-bag lunch, as lunch will be less than 45 minutes. Soft drinks will be available.
5.  Please do not bring Macs - there will not be any place for them.

Agenda
------
Morning
Introduction
Preview
The Macintosh Family
Development Systems 101
Resources
Sample Programs
Strategy for Program Design Tools for Program Design
Pascal and C Review

Afternoon
ROM Overview
Events
Menus
Dialogs
QuickDraw
Windows
Debugging
Development Systems 102
Where To Go Next

Questions and Answers

Notes only (no time for lectures)
Desk Accessories
The Scrap Controls
TextEdit
Miscellaneous subjects:
File System, Printing, Serial I/O Memory Management Trap List and Quick Reference

Aldus released PageMaker four days ago (on July 15th). Those mail order houses that have been advertising it for the last several weeks should now be able to come up with the goods. You should also be able to find PageMaker at Apple dealers that serve the business community.

I have been a beta test site for PageMaker for the last several months, and would like to offer my comments to the net. My perspective is that I have been working in technical publications for the last six years. My first book was done the hard way, with pencil, scissors and glue. Since then I have worked on a variety of mainframe wordprocessing and typesetting systems.

In a nutshell, PageMaker is so slick, so versatile, and so easy to use, I want to shout about it.

For those of you who don't know what it's about, PageMaker is an electronic page-makeup program. You can use it to pasteup text and graphics to create pages for slick, graphic-arts-quality publications, right on the Mac. It works with the ImageWriter, the LaserWriter, and (get this!) professional phototypesetting machines. The program requires a 512K Mac and an external drive.

PageMaker directly accepts documents produced by MacWrite, MacDraw, MacPaint, and Word. It also accepts anything else you can get on the clipboard. (I haven't tried PageMaker with Word, but since Aldus has made good on all their other claims, I'm sure it works with Word, too.)

Once documents are on a page, you can edit the text, stretch and crop the graphics, add other simple graphic elements, and move everything around until you are happy with the result. During the process, you can zoom in and out to see the pages at different magnifications. Among other features, text columns are "threaded" together so that when you lengthen or shorten a column, text automatically flows into or out of the other columns as required, even from other pages.

The list of features goes on, but rather than repeat them here, let me refer you to Aldus' demo disk or to one of the recent reviews (see MacWorld, July 1985; Professional & Corporate Publishing, March 1985; or the Seybold Report on Publishing Systems, Volume 14, Number 9). Or better yet, look at some sample pages, like the PageMaker manual itself. It's phenomenal what you can do with a Mac and a LaserWriter.

People are undoubtedly going to choke on the price ($495 list), especially when they compare it to the price of MacPublisher and Ready-Set-Go! ($99 and $125, respectively). But PageMaker has so many more capabilities it's really a question of comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended). The bottom line is that if you have a LaserWriter, you can't afford NOT to have PageMaker.

One point that reviewers have generally failed to appreciate is the significance of PageMaker's use of PostScript. PostScript is a device-independent, page-description language which is rapidly becoming the industry standard. PostScript can describe just about anything you can think of putting on a page--from text to vector graphics to bit maps. Because it's device independent, the resolution of your carefully crafted page is limited only by the resolution of the output device. Although this doesn't work miracles for bit-mapped art (e.g., MacPaint, MacVision, and Thunderscan graphics), it means text and vector graphics can take full advantage of the LaserWriter's or a phototypesetter's capabilities.

In practical terms, this means you can put together a newsletter using your ImageWriter, tweak the layout until it's right, and then--without changing a single byte--print it on a LaserWriter or a phototypesetter. Out come typeset pages, complete with all your text and graphics. (Can you imagine the crispness with which a phototypesetter would reproduce the vector graphics from your MacDraw document?)

The first phototypesetters to be able to interpret PostScript--and thus be usable with PageMaker--will be the Linotronic 101 and 300 from Allied Linotype. (Allied is the new name for Mergenthaler, the prestigious, 100-year-old typesetting firm. In keeping with the times, Allied is calling their products "imagesetters" rather than "typesetters.") An Allied rep just told the Seattle Macintosh User's Group that the Linotronic 101 will be available in 150 days.

After all this gushing I owe you some caveats:

First, although the ImageWriter can print PageMaker documents, it really takes the LaserWriter (or a phototypesetter) to take advantage of PageMaker's capabilities. The slickest of layouts is going to look amateurish unless the text and art are crisp, and the crisper the better. In other words, the LaserWriter needs PageMaker, and PageMaker needs the LaserWriter.

Fortunately for paupers like you and me, according to Aldus, businesses (such as computer stores?) will soon offer printing on the LaserWriter as a service: You hand them a disk and they hand you pretty pages. Presumably, someone will offer a similar service with the Linotronics.

(So you want your own Linotronic 101, eh? Hey, go for it! They only cost $30,000. Actually, that's cheap compared to what similar systems cost only a couple of years ago.)

Another important point is that PageMaker is really intended for documents 1 to 16 pages long--such as newsletters, menus, brochures, little instruction manuals, etc. These it can do with beautiful efficiency.

PageMaker can also be used for longer publications, but the going definitely gets tougher. As I mentioned before, Aldus pasted up their manual using PageMaker (and it looks great), but as the manual itself implies, such tasks are no simple feat. (The manual suggests using a hard disk to make larger jobs a little easier.)

For smaller publications, though, PageMaker really sings. As one reviewer said, "If you were to sit down and use the program, and did not see that you were using a Mac, you'd think you were using a $100,000 page make-up system."

Drool, drool, drool.

Sculley kicks out Jobs for good

In the July 25 Wall Street Journal, Apple prez John Sculley met with stock analysts to lower their expectations, saying that Christmas sales aren't going to be so hot so they're sitting on costs and keeping down inventory.  It goes on to say:

In comments after the meeting, Mr. Sculley described Apple's recent reoganization as painful but necessary.  Chairman and co-founder Steven P. Jobs was removed from day-to-day operating responsibilities in the  restructuring about seven weeks ago.

"I didn't come to Apple with the intention of taking Apple away from Steve Jobs," Mr. Sculley said. "(But) it became increasing clear that Steve and I had two very different ideas on how the company ought to be run."

He said, "The outcome is very clear. There is no role for Steve Jobs in the running of this company, either today or in the future . . . (but) there is a role for Steve Jobs as chairman of the board."
Mr. Jobs didn't attend the meeting. ....

Microsoft has begun mailing out letters to the owners of Multiplan/Chart informing them of an upgrade policy that allows them to purchase Excel for a payment of $100.  Along with the letter containing this information is a brochure describing the product.  Here are a few excerpts:

"Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet.  The world's biggest, most sophisticated microcomputer spreadsheet.

But it's even more than that.  Because Microsoft Excel also has business graphics.  For visual representations of numbers.  And a database that helps you extract and analyze spreadsheet data.

With Microsoft Excel and a 512K Mac, you have more sheer number-working power at your command than even with Lotus 1-2-3 and an IBM PC.  So if you work with numbers, now you have a choice: work with yesterday's technology.

Or work with the most powerful numbers tool available today...

No other spreadsheet program comes close to the spreadsheet in Microosoft Excel. None.

With 16,834 rows and 256 columns, it's big enough to handle your biggest, most complex problems.

And it's blindingly fast. It doesn't waster your time recalculating numbers that don't need recalculating. A powerful macro facility lets you automate repititive tasks, or set up templates so it's easier for other people in the office to use your worksheets.

And Microsoft Excel's macros are as simple to use as click, record, and play back....

Only Microsoft Excel lets you turn you printed reports into more effective communications tools. by making the numbers or text in any cell or group of cells bold, italic, underlined or outlined. And you have unlimited number formatting options, including currency, date, and time...

You can work with several spreadsheets on the screen. And you can use the numbers and formulas from any of the spreadsheets in any of the others...

And you can import files from 1-2-3,...and send them back again.

You have a choice of 42 pre-designed charts to help you communicate exactly what you have in mind.... 

And whenever you change the numbers in a worksheet, the charts change automatically.

Customize charts by adding text, arrows, borders, and other embellishments. So your charts are as presentable as possible...

Microsoft Excel's database can also help set up complex models. Extract any expression, value or text in a worksheet. And sort on up to three keys, by row or column."

They say it requires a 512K mac and an external drive is recommended.

And it's blindingly fast. It doesn't waste your time recalculating numbers that don't need recalculating. A powerful macro facility lets you automate repititive tasks, or set up templates so it's easier for other people in the office to use your worksheets.