by Lawrence I. Charters, Vice President,
Macintosh
Magnificent Bout; Film at 11
Before you get buried in the details, let me first say that I was
delighted with the September General Meeting. We had a large crowd, the
demonstration was both informative and controversial, the audience was
keenly interested in what they were seeing -- you couldn't ask for more.
There were plenty of ruffled feathers, snide comments, loaded questions,
and transparent evasions, plus startling honesty, bold statements of
vision, razor-sharp wit, and cold, hard facts. I enjoy meetings with a lot
of passion and emotion, and these are usually in short supply at 9 a.m. on
a Saturday. But not this September.
Microsoft was the guest, and they came in style, flying in their own
projection and sound equipment, plus a Power Macintosh 8100, plus Dave
Martinez (davemar@microsoft.com), product
marketing manager for Microsoft Office for Macintosh. For those who aren't
certain what "Microsoft Office" might mean, this translates into the
latest versions of the top-selling Macintosh application of all time,
Word 6.0, plus the sole surviving big-name spreadsheet on the
Mac, Excel 5.0, plus the top presentation package in the
briefing and presentation-crazed DC Metro area, PowerPoint
4.0.
There were a number of controversies, starting with the size of the
crowd. Microsoft estimated the size at around 200, but three different
people attempted a crowd count (difficult with people drifting in and out)
and came up with figures of 338, 348 and 349. The general feeling was that
more people attended the WordPerfect 3.0 presentation earlier
this year, which is a surprise. I had confidently predicted that
Microsoft's presentation would draw the biggest crowd of the year, so
maybe next year I'll buy my crystal ball in Orem, Utah.
Dave proved to be an enthusiastic believer in Microsoft Office. This
may not strike you as all that startling, given his job title, but most
vendors give presentations that can be ranked somewhere between tepid and
reptilian. Dave, in contrast, not only had a pulse, he was also
warm-blooded: he didn't just want you to buy his product, he wanted you to
think it was neat, because he thought it was
neat.
If Dave was excited, so were some members of the crowd. OK, maybe
"excited" isn't the best term; they were angry and
alarmed and resentful. Here was a representative
of the world's largest software company asking them to buy a collection of
software that, if fully installed, occupies an astounding 70 megabytes of
hard disk space; the recommended RAM for running the entire
package is 16 megabytes. Nothing less than a 68020-equipped Mac will do,
either; every Mac introduced prior to the Mac II in 1987 (plus quite a few
since then) will be left behind.
I loved it: Dave, armed with nothing more than a Macintosh 8100 and
the power of a monster company (plus the microphone), on one side. On the
other, a legion of doubters, nay-sayers, nit pickers -- and customers,
armed with questions and pointed comments.
President Lorin Evans opened the bout by suggesting you could buy a
fully equipped Apple II computer, hardware and software, for the price of
Microsoft Office. And have money left over to get some frills.
The early rounds went heavily against Microsoft. Dave was rattled to
learn that the big drawing prizes, brand-new copies of Microsoft Office,
hadn't arrived. [We later learned that someone forgot to send them.] He
then made a major tactical error, saying he would show a "brief" slide
show (via PowerPoint 4.0). An hour after he took the stage,
he finished the slide show.
If the slides weren't all that impressive, the questions were: Dave
was under siege, buried in a torrent of questions concerning everything
from how Office is packaged (1.4 megabyte floppies or CD-ROM only; no 800K
disks will be offered) to Microsoft's programming practices ("But
why does it have to be so big?") to the merits
of different technologies for linking applications together. Dave,
representing Microsoft, came out firmly in favor of Microsoft's OLE 2.0
(Object Linking and Embedding), as exemplified in the new Office
components. The audience was either mystified at the need for any such
thing, or expressed cautious interest in the multi-vendor OpenDoc standard
favored by Apple, WordPerfect, Novell and a number of other vendors.
Running behind, both on the judge's scorecards and in time, Dave made
a rally: he launched Word 6.0. Racing through a blizzard of
new features, he showed Word automatically correcting
typographical errors, automatically formatting boring paragraphs into
styled, and stylish, text, and my favorite: dragging text between one
document and another.
Where Word 5.1 had one tool bar, you can fill your entire
screen with toolbars in 6.0. A macro language, offered for years in
Nisus and WordPerfect, finally has made an
appearance in the form of a BASIC programming language embedded in
Word. Even better, the same language is present in
Excel 5.0 (we, ah, forgot to ask about
PowerPoint). If that wasn't enough, Excel and
Word both work with AppleScript, too.
Document conversions between the Mac and Windows versions of
Excel and Word are a thing of the past: both
platforms use the same file format. There is a minor difference between
the Mac and Windows versions of PowerPoint, but the
conversion allegedly requires nothing more than a few seconds delay.
[PowerPoint 4.0, by the way, ran the Pi slide show, done in
PowerPoint 3.0, without a hitch.]
Excel offers mostly cosmetic changes, with one big
exception: "pivot tools." Detailed commentary will require hands-on
experience, but it looked like the new Excel
will allow you to do far more extensive data analysis than in the past,
slicing and dicing databases in ways that used to require extensive macro
programming, when it could be done at all.
Dave's best trick, available only to those with ample RAM, was the
creation of a complete Excel spreadsheet, embedded in a
Word document. Note: he did not create the spreadsheet in
Excel and then copy it to Word; he
created the spreadsheet in Word, with links to
all the Excel tools and functions. This will either be
salvation to spreadsheet wizards or a great way to demonstrate conspicuous
computing. Probably both. Editorial Diversion
When the Pi first began negotiations to show Office, back in May, all
the applications were still under development. A demonstration of Office
at MacWorld DC was noteworthy for two things: less than two dozen people
showed up in a room that seated 300, and Excel wouldn't even
boot. On the other hand, there were enough refreshments for a small
army.
Microsoft has obviously been very busy since then; the new
Word, Excel and PowerPoint are
impressive. They are also frightening; some in the audience were wondering
if they should even dream of upgrading several hundred Macs, or even a
single Mac, to the new Office, given the daunting memory, storage, and
processor requirements. Say you have 400 Mac IIcx computers. Yes, they
have 68030 processors, so will run Office. Yes, they have 1.4 megabyte
floppies, so you can install Office. Yes, they have (mostly) 8 megabytes
of RAM, so you have enough memory. But they also have (mostly) 40 megabyte
drives, so you can't install all of Office; you'll have to
leave off the extra TrueType fonts, templates, sample files, tutorial
files -- even at a bare minimum, Office requires 18 megabytes of disk
space. And you still need disk space for whatever files you might want
that weren't written by Microsoft, such as a decent database
program, and maybe System 7.5, and...
And then there is the nagging suspicion that a Mac IIcx may not be
enough. MacWeek, taking an early look at Office, found the
new packages running slow even on a Mac IIfx -- and a IIfx is several
times faster than a IIcx, or II, or IIx, or IIci, or SE/30, or LC, or LC
II, or LC III, or...
On the other hand, maybe Microsoft really is a big fan of Apple
Computer. The new Office looked quick and crisp on a Power Mac 8100
running System 7.5; maybe this is Microsoft's way of luring the Macintosh
faithful to the promised land of the PowerPC? "Sweetheart, I'm going to
buy a Power Mac so I can run my new Microsoft Office upgrade." "OK. Sounds
like a good idea to me." We Now Return
As I said before, I thought this was a great meeting.
Aside from the endless slideshow, Dave put on a dynamite presentation, and
put up a spirited defense of his employer's software products, upgrade and
marketing strategy, and even software technology. A liberal rain of
Microsoft Office for Mac baseball caps encouraged even the shy to speak
up. And there were goodies.
In addition to copies of Microsoft Office, there were also nice cloth
Microsoft briefcases, plus the ball caps. Every user group member who
wanted one also got a $40 rebate coupon for Microsoft Office; when
combined with a rebate coupon included in Office, it makes for a hefty
discount on the price of purchasing or upgrading. Microsoft also promised
the Pi a full copy of the new Office (which, along with System 7.5, should
just about completely fill the hard drive in the Pi's Mac IIci), and
donated a number of their Microsoft Home packages to the Pi: Isaac
Asimov's The Ultimate Robot (CD-ROM), Art Gallery
(CD-ROM), Creative Writer, and Dinosaurs
(CD-ROM).
Finally, one special little goodie will debut at the next General
Meeting: a Pro Presenter. This is a small infrared receiver that attaches
to a Mac ADB port, plus a hand-held control. Press one button, and a
PowerPoint slide show moves forward. Press the other, it goes
backward. I can't wait to try it out. 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.
New feature: 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. A team of recognized Mac gurus has
volunteered to perform the honors. 1995 Meeting Dates
General Meetings for 1995 are scheduled for the following dates (all
the fourth Saturday of the month). Mark your calendars (or, better yet,
put them in your electronic calendars to give you advance notice):
Jan. 28, 1995
Feb. 25, 1995
Mar. 25, 1995
Apr. 22, 1995
May 27, 1995 Drawing winners
Microsoft Office ball caps: several dozen people.
Microsoft Briefcases: Grace Gallagher, Charles Stancil, Don Essick, Lou
Pastura, Mark Rogers, John Ailes, Roger Firestone, D. Bingham, Joseph
Goldscher, Joan Martensen, Mike Schmeible
Pro Presenter: Washington Apple Pi
Microsoft Office (Word 6.0, Excel 5.0,
PowerPoint 4.0, MOM, RAMDoubler): Jay Miller,
Georgia Sadler, Charles Ostrofsky, Marilyn Schmal, and Washington Apple
Pi Credits
Apple Power Macintosh 8100: courtesy Microsoft Corp.
Electrohome video projector: courtesy Microsoft Corp.
Setup and worrying: courtesy Microsoft Corp.
Question & Answer Help: Tom Witte
To date, I've received several dozen comments from people out of the area,
and two from people out of the country, but only three from people who've
actually attended the meetings.
