by Lawrence I. Charters, Vice President,
Macintosh
August General Meeting
August is a vacation month for
the people who normally plan and set up General Meetings. In a tradition
dating back many years (don't ask me how many; I'm a relative newcomer),
the Game SIG (Special Interest Group) assumes control of the August
meeting for both the Apple II and Macintosh sides of the house. This
tradition seems to involve an exceptional amount of equipment; some of the
Macintosh games appear to require not only massive amounts of hard drive
space, but massive amounts of memory, CD-ROM drives, speakers, and maybe a
professional rock concert sound engineer or two.
Tom Witte, a Pi director and Vice President for Administration, joined
me in the lobby outside the auditorium as co-host for an all-morning
question and answer session. These are always entertaining; people come up
and swear they know nothing about the Mac and need help, then spend quite
a bit of time answering questions asked by others. If you have a chance,
watch the people asking the questions rather than those answering the
questions, especially if someone starts out with the almost standard
phrase, "This is probably a dumb question..." If the question is so dumb,
why is everyone listening so intently to the answer?
Since I wasn't in the meeting area, I didn't see what went on, so
asked Mike Dickman, Games SIG Chair, to offer a report:
The Mac portion of the meeting hosted by the Game SIG saw demos of
Myst, Civilization, and Warlords.
The Myst demo featured the QuickTime movie "The Making of
Myst" which comes on the Myst CD-ROM. For those who are
interested in games and have a Mac with a CD-ROM player, Myst
is a must-have item. In fact, it may be the best game anywhere, on any
platform to date. It has stunning graphics, great sounds and imaginative
puzzles. A sequel is expected in about a year.
Civilization is a simulation in a class with
SimCity and SimEarth, but here the object is to
establish a civilization consisting of cities which can build armies for
conquest, if you choose that as a goal, or build Wonders of the World such
as the Great Wall. Of course you will need some armies to survive even if
you are peaceful, because your neighbors will often not be.
Warlords is for those who want combat without any of that
peaceful stuff interfering. Eight players, any of which can be computer or
human, struggle for dominance in the fantasy world of Illuria. Starting
from a single city, players conquer other cities (there are eighty cities
total) which can in turn produce more armies to attack more cities. Play
is fast and addictive.
The Game SIG thanks everyone who brought games and equipment, even
though we didn't get to explore all the software that was provided. September 1994
Washington Apple Pi will be moving in September (with luck, before you
read this). If you have a big truck, a strong back, and some packing
boxes, or any combination of these, we can save Big Bucks by moving
ourselves. We are moving to save money on rent, and every dime we spend on
renovating our new quarters and moving the office will help save even more
money. Since no computer expertise is required, it would be Real Nice if
we saw something other than the usual band of volunteers.
Big things are in the works at the Sept. 24 General Meeting as
Washington Apple Pi hosts Microsoft. Microsoft will be on hand to show off
Microsoft Word 6.0, Excel 5.0 and
PowerPoint 4.0. Power Macintosh owners, in particular, are
keeping their fingers crossed, hoping the new Office suite finally takes
advantage of the PowerPC RISC technology. Those with older Macs will be
just as interested in seeing if Microsoft is making software for "the rest
of us," or for some mythical user known only to people in Redmond.
Warning: we will probably have a capacity crowd, so show up early. Not
to just get a good seat, but to get any kind of seat. We will also have an
impressive drawing after the presentation. October 1994
The October 22 General Meeting will be a collaborative effort designed
to show how ordinary mortals can produce spectacular color documents using
off-the-shelf hardware and software. Proxima will talk about their Proxima
Ovation LCD video projector (a star at Pi meetings for a couple years
now), Microtek will use their scanners for capturing art, Claris will show
how easy it is in either ClarisImpact or
ClarisDraw to produce spectacular graphic images, and
Tektronix will polish everything off by printing the color graphics with
both speed and fidelity.
This isn't just hype; you really will be impressed. Or your admission
charge to the meeting will be fully refunded. November 1994
Not wishing to conflict with Thanksgiving, the General Meeting will be
a week early, on November 19. Casady & Greene, one of the oldest
Macintosh software companies, will be showing some of their newest games
and utilities. They've been in the Mac business as long as Microsoft, but
with a difference: their products are inexpensive, and usually much more
fun.
Rounding out the meeting will be a full-fledged demonstration of the
Internet. Since most people don't have a direct link to the Internet, the
demo will be done with the same tools you are likely to use: a modem and a
Macintosh. Mosaic, Gopher, Fetch and other strange sounding tools will be
shown. We've had more requests for an Internet demonstration than almost
any other topic, so this promises to be a packed meeting, too. December 1994
Roughly a thousand people will descend on the winter edition of the
Pi's Computer Garage Sale, shopping for bargains, gossip and information.
In addition, for a modest donation to the Pi, you can have your Macintosh
go through a checkup to confirm health or, possibly, diagnose existing or
future problems. You'd probably like to know the details but, right this
moment, those haven't been confirmed. Drawing winners
Grip It Strips (vendor unknown): Alan Day
NEC canvas bag (NEC): John Shearer
Apple Mouse Pad (Apple): Mike Williams
Apple Mouse Pad (Apple): Onie Libeau
GTSI Mouse Pad (GTSI): Frank Nawora
GTSI Mouse Pad (GTSI): Glenn Paterson
MacMovie videotape: Timothy R. Childers
Little System 7 Book (Peachpit): Jerome Williams
Mac, Word, Excel Desktop Companion (Ventana): Susan
Kayser
Voodoo Mac (Ventana): David R. Reidenbach
Internet for Dummies (IDG Books): Michael Libeay
Super Maze Wars (Calisto): Attila Horvath Credits
Apple Macintosh IIci: donated by Falcon Microsystems
Proxima Ovation projection system: loan courtesy Proxima Corporation
Various Macs for demos: Washington Apple Pi members
Setup and worrying: Bill Wydro, Tom Witte, the Game SIG
Novice Corner, Question & Answer Help: Tom Witte
