🚀 go-pugleaf

     Well, I went to the MacWorld Expo in Dallas this last weekend.  I had
not been to any of the previous Expos (i.e., MacWorld Expo/Far East or
MacWorld Expo/Far West.)  I must admit to being quite disappointed in the
Dallas show.
     First, let me say that I only went Saturday.  (It was a Thursday through
Saturday show.)  I missed only the Thursday and Friday conferences; one day
was more than enough to see the exhibits.
     I was most disappointed with the small number of exhibitors.  I can't
provide a _complete_ list of who was there and who was "not there but should
have been."  Perhaps someone else was more thorough than I and can supply such
a list.
     The big things were CAD, games, and big screens.
Special commendations go to:
	* Silicon Beach, for their game introduced at the show: Dark Castle.
	    I especially liked the 8-year-old kid who sat down and accrued
	    25,000 points to beat the old high score by 24,000+ points.
	* Monogram, for having a large, professional-looking booth, and being
	    helpful.  (Yes, they do intend to update Forecast to work with the
	    new tax laws.)
Other commendations, (mainly just for being there) include:
	* Altsys (Fontographer and FONTastic)
	* Ashton-Tate (dBase Mac)
	* Apple (just for having the biggest booth; there weren't any Apple
	  products shown.)
	* A.P.D.A. (very helpful.)
	* CE Software (MockPackage, etc.)
	* LetraSet (Page layout programs, and a nice booth.)
	* Vermont Microsystems (nice color monitors)
	* Levco ("performance enhancements", e.g., 68020-based)
	* Dynamac (portable mac)
	* Colby (another portable mac)
There were a respectable number of hard disk makers, game producers, and big
screen producers.

     Notable omissions include:
	* Anybody with a programming language:
	    Megamax showed up.  I didn't get a chance to ask them about
	      their future.  They seemed most proud of their Mac-to-gs
	      development tools.
	    Coral Software also showed up.  They have a Logo that looked good.
	      They also mentioned Coral Lisp.  It's supposed to be a COMPLETE
	      CommonLisp implementation.  They said it was 80% finished, but
	      they sure acted like they were not committed to the project.  I
	      think they were hoping someone would pay them to not complete
	      the product.
	    That's It.  No TML; No Think; No Consulair; No Manx; No Microsoft.
	      Not even MGlobal (of MacMumps fame) (from Houston) showed up.
	      This reminds me:  I heard that MPW is about to be released in
	      final form.  There will be a big jump in price.  ($100->$295?)
	* Anybody with a music-related product:
	    MacNifty showed off Studio Session, and SMU and Loyola(?) had
	      exhibits showing how they used music software in their schools.
	    No ConcertWare; No Mark of the Unicorn; No Hayden; Nobody with
	      a MIDI adaptor.
	* Anybody with page layout software:
	    (I don't know any manufacturers) No Pagemaker, etc.  Where's the
	    Desktop publishing craze?  There were some high-quality output
	    devices shown, though.  (need 2450 dots per inch?)
	* Booksellers:
	    No Addison-Wesley; No Hayden/Apple Press.

Conferences:
     I didn't get to go to many of these, but the ones I went to were boring
and unplanned.  Dennis Brothers was supposed to talk about "Machine Language
Programming".  He cancelled at apparently the last minute.  The replacement
speaker (the person who wrote MockPackage, etc.  I regret I don't remember his
name right now) was quite disorganized.  (Though he did a good job for short
notice.)  It turned into an aborted question/ answer session.  The other big
flop was the talk on education.  There were supposed to be two sessions (K-12
and Universities).  They were combined into one session (Universities.
Apparently the K-12 speaker(s) cancelled.)  Nothing of much interest came up.

     The big highlight:  All the free apples to eat.

======
Brian H. Powell			brian@sally.utexas.edu
  The University of		brian@ut-sally.UUCP
  Texas at Austin		cs.powell@r20.utexas.edu