KANSASFEST 1992: WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP IT'S BEEN.
By Joe Kohn
Copyright (c) 1992 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
Copyright (c) 1992 by Joe Kohn
(Permission is hereby granted to non-profit Apple User Groups to republish this article, in whole or in part, in their newsletters. Electronic re-distribution is encouraged via online network and/or BBS. This article may not be republished by any for-profit organization without the written consent of Joe Kohn.)
The Apple II Developer's Conference and the Apple Central Expo took place recently in Kansas City , and it was THE place to be. Known affectionately as KansasFest, I've just returned from 4 days of meetings and classes and lots of late night sessions. From what I saw at KansasFest, my faith in the future of the Apple II is once again restored.
Tim Swihart of Apple Computer Inc was this year's main speaker from Apple. He had some good news for us and he had some bad news for us. The bad news is that the former Apple II Business Unit has been renamed as the "Continuing Engineering" group, and it has only six employees. Fortunately, those 6 employees are as enthusiastic about the Apple II as any other Apple II fanatic I've ever met, and they have some future plans for enhancements to System 6.0.
According to Swihart, System 6.0.1 will be released at the same time the Apple II Ethernet Card is released. That card is nearing beta testing stage, and if no major problems are found, should be released within the next several months. In addition to containing some bug fixes, System 6.0.1 will contain an MS-DOS FST. Written by Greg Branche, who incidently is not a member of the Continuing Engineering Group, the initial release of this new FST will be "read only". Future versions may have the ability for IIGS owners to save data onto MS-DOS formatted disks, but until then, IIGS owners will have the ability to load data files directly from MS-DOS disks. Unfortunately, there are some severe limitations. The FST will only work with 5.25" disks that are inserted in an Applied Engineering Transdrive (that's the drive that comes with the PCTransporter), with 3.5" high density disks that are inserted in the 3.5" SuperDrive connected to a SuperDrive interface card, or with a Sysquest removable cartridge. So, many IIGS owners will not be able to read MS-DOS disks without purchasing additional hardware. Swihart also told us that the finder in System 6.0.1 will support keyboard navigation.
Swihart stated that the plans his group has are for continued support of current Apple II and IIGS owners. He offered an interesting profile of the currently installed Apple II base of customers, and backed up his claims with facts and figures. He said that Apple has sold nearly 1 million Apple IIGS'es, with 2/3's of them being ROM01 machines, and 1/3 being ROM3 machines. He reiterated that the vast majority of those IIGS'es are located at schools, and that many of them have only 512K of RAM, and are therefore really only being used as fast IIe's. He also stated that "the hottest selling Apple II" is the IIe card for the Mac LCII.
Most people attending KansasFest didn't really expect to hear great news from Apple, and I for one was relieved that the news wasn't worse. In response to a direct question by yours truly, Swihart confirmed that the IIGS is still "in production". For me, I really was
relieved and somewhat excited to see the incredible level of commitment from those Apple employees who were there.
During the several days of KansasFest there were numerous panel discussions where Apple II developers taught their colleagues. Personally, I found that many of the sessions were much more technical than in previous years, and not being a computer programmer, found myself actually skipping several sessions.
The real news, however, was made in the hallways and in the dorms. Everyone in attendance was there to have a good time, and I'm sure a good time was had by all. There were lots of late night sessions, with many programmers showing off their latest work. After the 2 days of sessions, there was an AppleFest-like show, and several new products were introduced, and many works-in-progress were previewed.
Since I just got home, I haven't had a chance to test out all the new software I got, but in the meanwhile, let's look at some of the products that were introduced.
The new RAM-GS from Sequential Systems is a 4 megabyte RAM card that cost me only $129 at the show. Vendors at trade shows often give attendees lower prices, and I believe that the mail order price for this new card will be in the $150 range. It uses a new type of memory chip called Zip. Developed by Mitsubishi, these Zip RAM chips just never caught on in the Mac or IBM world, and Sequential Systems was able to purchase thousands of them for very little money. The RAM board comes with a 2 year replacement warranty. It is available from LRO and Quality Computers.Check the latest inCider for exact pricing information.
Bill Heineman, of Interplay, was showing off an incredible new game, Out of This World. I've never seen anything quite like it before. It's a joystick controlled fast action arcade game, but the graphics are more like an animated cartoon than a computer game. Burger Bill, as all his friends call him, was taking orders but said that it would still be a few more weeks before the game is completed. I can barely wait.
There's a new desktop program, Universe Master, that does many of the same things as ProSel-16, but sports a standard GS/OS desktop interface with pull down menus. Developed by D. Proni, the same programmer who wrote SignatureGS, I have high hopes that Universe Master will work as advertised. I realize that many novice users are intimidated by ProSel,and I hope to be able to offer an effective alternative.
Procyon, the company that developed GNO, was showing off Switch It. For anyone who is familiar with the old Mac program Switcher, Switch It works just like it. With sufficient memory, you can actually suspend your work with one program, run another program, and then return to your original program and pick up right where you left off. Switch It places a small arrow in the menu bar, and by clicking on the arrow, you can run another program. It was pretty impressive, but needed some more work. Although it is not strictly multi-tasking, it's the next best thing, and I hope that procyon can pull it off.
Lunar Productions introduced Foundation, a Resource Editor. Using it, you can actually change the wording found in pull down menus, or can rearrange the items in those menus. Although still under development, Foundation will eventually contain an Icon editor for System 6 icons, and a sound editor for System 6's rSound sound files.
Lots of new shareware and freeware programs were also introduced at KansasFest. The 2 that impressed me the most were Eyes and Ears by Chris McKinsey. Eyes will display just about every type of graphic or word processing file with the double click of the mouse button. You can click on a Teach, ASCII, AppleWorks or AppleWorksGS file, and Eyes will display it, almost instantly. Same with all currently supported graphic types. Ears plays digitized sound files and music files, just by double clicking on a sound or music file. Ears works with raw binary sound files, rSound files and HyperStudio sound files. Likewise, it plays back SoundSmith songs, NoiseTracker songs and synthLAB songs. I was so impressed with both of these new Finder Extensions that I paid Chris his shareware fee on the spot. Chris also gave me a demo version of his upcoming game, TimeLord.
I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the soon to be updated graphic conversion utility, Super Convert. Jason Harper will provide a niftier user interface, and will offer support for larger size graphics, such as 1024 x 768 graphics found on MS-DOS systems. I was very impressed.
I was also thrilled to be able to spend some time with the 7 Australians who traveled half-way around the world to attend. In addition to Richard Bennett, the programmer who created Seven Hills' Express print spooler, it seems as if all the officers of the Sydney Apple II User Group were there.
There was also a gentleman from Germany in attendance, and just as I was leaving, I heard that he was offering his home-built SCSI Interface card for $170. Initial reports seem to indicate that it is 40% faster than the ramfast. Hopefully, more details will be forthcoming.
KansasFest was as much a social event as it was a computer conference. There was a huge contingent of people there who are involved with GEnie's Apple II area, and it was fun to meet some of them for the first time. There were people in attendance who were 8 years old, and people who were 80. At one point, a very old man approached me, he must have been real close to 80, and asked me if I had any details about the soon-to-be-released UltraMacros v4.0. I ended up introducing him to Randy Brandt, the author of UltraMacros, so he could get all the details from the programmer.
I was surprised at the diversity of the age groups represented, and there were a lot of shareware programmers there who were high school students. There were many college aged students, and even a few people that were my age. It's clear to me that there really is an Apple II Community composed of people who share a love for, and a commitment to, the Apple II computer. Who knows? Maybe some of the 8 year olds will be leading seminars at next year's KansasFest.
Fortunately, West Coast Apple II users won't have to wait a whole year for a large Apple II computer show, as there's one planned for San Francisco in April, 1993. Dubbed Apple Expo West, it will be produced by Bob Berkowitz, the same man who ran the past 2 Apple Central Expos (the real name of the weekend show at Kansasfest). I can barely wait. Berkowitz will also be involved in the Apple Expo East to be held in Boston from October 2-4, 1992.
Everyone I spoke to who attended KansasFest had a great time. We got to laugh at the Roger Wagner Roast, and got to hear Roger himself laugh about the bugs in HyperStudio. We got to witness Steve Disbrow,
publisher of GS+ Magazine, put on an absurd skit and sing "I'm a programmer; I code all night and I sleep all day" complete with a chorus of very well known Apple II celebrities. We even got to hear Matt Deatherage, of Apple's Developer Tech Support, play the piano and "sing" a song. In between all that fun, some of us even managed to get an hour or two of sleep each night.
For me, KansasFest was the high point of the year.

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