Revision control for everyone (left): Rev, from 6prime, gives all Macintosh applications revision control.

Note-taking for everyone (right): AlphaSmart Pro, from Intelligent Devices, is much like the old Tandy Model 100, though it's probably best for note-taking.

The intersection between Apple and newspaper business

"I went down to the crossroads ... fell down on my knees."

-- Blues legend Robert Johnson

in a song revived by Cream in the 1960s.

Apple Computer Inc. and the newspaper industry have a lot in common -- both need to find ways to shore up dwindling market share.

For newspapers, it's readership relative to population. For Apple, it's the Macintosh share of the ever-increasing number of computer owners.

Publishers and Apple have been pilloried for bad management and a refusal to listen to customers. And they have had to face tough new competition in areas they formerly dominated -- Apple against Microsoft's Windows, newspapers against the explosion of information and analysis found on the Internet.

"Apple at the crossroads," commentators pontificate.

"(Apple CEO Gil) Amelio to give most important speech of his career," analysts aver.

To this correspondent, these statements are heavy on hyperbole and light on what's actually going on. (If I were a paranoid type, I would think it's an attempt by the folks at Redmond to gain even more market share for Windows, both 95 and NT.)

By most estimates, the 80,000 folks who were at Moscone Center in San Francisco Jan. 7-10 for the four days of the Exposition certainly weren't attending a wake. But neither was it a joyous celebration.

With the return of Steve Jobs (even part-time) and the acquisition of his company, NeXT, for a cool $400 million, perhaps Apple has gained what it needs for an operating system that will take the company into the millennium.

Sure, Apple lost more than $100 million last quarter. But this company is sitting upon $1.8 billion in cash, according to financial reports. It's not the monetary position of a corporation in collapse.

So here we are at this correspondent's 12th Macworld Expo, which now is as much a sell-a-thon as a place to introduce new products, roll out new versions of old products and, to use an overworked word, network.

With more than 400 exhibitors, no one person can ferret out every worthy new product, even in four days of tramping up and down the show floor. But there was plenty of interesting and innovative software and hardware on display, although nothing that could be classified as jaw-dropping new.

Well, not exactly. Apple was displaying the 20th anniversary special edition Macintosh ... behind a Plexiglas case, complete with private security guard. Anyone trying to photograph the pseudo-sacred icon without a press pass was admonished by the guard.

The object of all this affectation was truly worthy of the famous sobriquet "insanely great" that Jobs applied to the Macintosh. For a mere $8000 (others say $9000) you can get on a waiting list to purchase this artifact that combines all existing design technologies in a slim, trim machine that looks like it must be a Star Wars-Star Trek prop.

I mention this product because it epitomizes what Apple and its Macintosh remain to millions of loyal users ... not just something for the rest of us, but something to help realize the dream that technology can be a tool to bring out the best in us.

Trash Model 100 revisited
At the other end of the hardware spectrum at this Macworld Expo was the AlphaSmart Pro from Intelligent Peripheral Devices of Cupertino, Calif.

It's nothing more than a portable keyboard, which has been around the educational world for a few years. It looks a bit like the old Tandy 100 portable, with a small four-line, 40-character screen and a keyboard. It weighs much less, under two pounds, because it contains no modem or input device of any kind, other than the keyboard itself.

Everything typed is saved automatically (shades of the old Tandy). Above the keyboard are eight function-like keys for eight stories. Each key can hold about 2000 words, so there's plenty of room for the normal journalist's output.

The AlphaSmart Pro can run 100 to 200 hours on a pair of AA batteries. Back at the office, it can connect to a PC or Macintosh keyboard and with the press of a single key, send a story as ASCII text into the computer for further editing.

Since it's made for schools, this is a rugged device which, according to an account on the Web, survived a Sahara sandstorm with nary a stuck key. Lawrence could have written much of his Seven Pillars of Wisdom mounted on a camel with the AlphaSmart Pro.

For budget-conscious small papers, the list price is bearable -- just $299. And if you're connecting to a Mac, you can use the Mac keyboard cord. PC users must use a special cord that's provided.

Drawbacks are obvious. The screen is not backlit, so forget typing in low light conditions if you want to read what you are writing. There is no automatic off when the AlphaSmart has been idle for a period of time. And filing by modem, when you can't get back to the office, is not possible.

It doesn't have many word processing functions, either -- just a rudimentary search (no replace) and a variation of the usual keyboard commands to go to the beginning, end or scroll through any of the eight stories.

No cut-and-paste. ...

OK, call this the ultimate note-taker. But if you lose it, all that's gone is a couple of hundred bucks and a pair of batteries, rather than a $3000 or $4000 laptop.

Despite its limitations, this input device could still be of genuine use to a newspaper.

Revision revolution
On to the realm of software, where I found a package that provides, essentially, revision tracking for everyone.

The software, Rev by 6prime Corp., would have a place at a small weekly or magazine that didn't wish to paginate with Quark Publishing System just to get some revision control, but still used Quark XPress to lay out the pages.

Rev is clever: An application that uses 750K of RAM, Rev is not a System 7 extension that could cause conflicts.

Just drag the icon of the document that's a candidate for revision tracking into Rev's window. A finder-like outline is created under the application's name. Then save in normal fashion.

Upon every save, Rev creates a small "diff" file that contains just the differences between the current file and the last saved version, stamped with the date and time. Diff files are small, since they contain only differences, and Rev lets you specify the number of diff files retained for each document, deleting older ones automatically.

Suddenly you want that paragraph back that you took out two days ago? Just double-click on the diff file that contains that graf, and Rev opens a brand new document representative of that version, with the paragraph there.

You could then copy that graf and paste it in the current document, or just use the older version, assuming you didn't care about any other changes. That's all it does.

Not too complex, and for sale only at 6prime's web site -- http://www.6prime.com/.

Open sesame
A more complex and exciting software technology, OpenDoc, seemed to be gaining momentum.

In brief, OpenDoc is the next step in software. It gets back to the basics, by breaking a document into containers and parts. In the multipurposing world of the 1990s, a document can be many things and have many functions, besides just ink on paper.

With electronic, née desktop publishing, graphics, charts, tables, irregular text wraps and outlining have all become part and parcel of most word processing programs. These many functions have led to the problem of software bloat, or bloatware, with word processing programs some of the most notorious offenders.

If memory serves, MacWrite and MacPaint, two original Macintosh programs, could both fit on one 400K floppy disk. Today, one of the driving factors in getting CD-ROM drives into all new computers has been the savings on program installation disks. Even the simplest software now seems to consume at minimum two or three 1.4-megabyte floppy disks.

Enter the CD-ROM, which allows companies to include bonus clip art and demos of their other programs and still not run out of room. The same program delivered on floppies might involve 15 to 20 disks. CDs are much easier on the end user.

So we come to OpenDoc, one of the most innovative software concepts that Apple has released in the last several years. (The most successful, QuickTime, has been made cross-platform, and has become a multimedia standard in both the Windows and Mac worlds.)

It's too early to determine how OpenDoc will fare, but based on my crash course at Macworld Expo and at home, the future should be bright, once some interface quirks get straightened out.

In brief, OpenDoc is parts, or components, all linked together in one OpenDoc document, known as a container. Now parts is parts, but in this case parts can also serve as containers. Then it is called a container part.

The first all-OpenDoc word processor, WAV, is that sort of creature.

To create a WAV document, you have to double-click on a stationery icon, which acts as a proxy for that OpenDoc container part. If you want a graph in your document, drag in a graph part. Want to make a doodle? Drag in a drawing part. Want an Internet connection built right in? Drag in a Cyberdog part. (Cyberdog is the suite of parts that takes care of basic Internet functions.)

There's parts aplenty, with more small developers getting on board every day. In fact, at Macworld, several of these new start-up companies came together in a large shared booth under the Component 100 bandwagon.

In a paradigm of the OpenDoc process itself, you could stroll from small station to small station and see what various component parts might add to your document. And several bundles of different parts were being offered as show specials -- a smart marketing tool for these start-ups.

Once a WAV document is started, it's not too hard to put together, but does have some strange quirks. Since there is no close function, if you quit WAV and don't save your work, a dab of OpenDoc doo-doo is deposited in your trash. This is no problem, except for those who think something is wrong if the Mac trash bulges.

But the founders of Digital Harbor, the Utah company that makes WAV, have put a lot of thought into an easy word processing interface. They should, since the company was founded by a group of WordPerfect Macintosh refugees who left when Novell sold the product to Corel.

The part/container metaphor does take a little getting used to, and the way the menu bar changes each time you switch to a different part may at first make you wonder where you are as much as show you what part you are working with.

Given the right set of parts, a document can be as simple or complex as needed, and be easily repurposed with the switching of a part or two.

Other powerful parts of this technology, which will begin to be a part of the Mac OS with version 7.6, which is now shipping, is the easy implementation of drag-and-drop for changing documents without always resorting to the clipboard, and finally making the old publish and subscribe easier to use.

More established word processing software, like Nisus Writer and Corel WordPerfect, are OpenDoc compliant.

It remains to be seen if other big companies will jump on the bandwagon. Apple, for one, has plans to get rid of the Finder as it is now known and turn it into an OpenDoc container.

As an enabling technology for putting the user in greater control of what goes into a document, this is good stuff. OpenDoc won't paginate entire newspapers yet, but it could someday become an XPress or PageMaker with the right parts. A simplified page layout part, Dock 'Em, from MetaMind Software, is available now.

This could get very interesting.

-- George Powell

Apple
Computer Inc.,
(408) 996-1010;
Intelligent Peripheral Devices Inc.,
(408) 252-9400;
MetaMind Software Inc.,
(415) 381-8063;
6prime Corp.,
(408) 252-9828.

From THE COLE PAPERS, February 1997, Copyright © 1997, All Rights Reserved.