Tuesday, September 09, 1997

Reuters: Private Firm to Send Spacecraft to Asteroid.

NASA: Global Surveyor, a satellite that will orbit Mars, will arrive there on Thursday and start mapping the planet.

US vice-president Al Gore says "We are changing from an analog to a digital world, but the basic rights of the American people have not changed. Many of the basic protections of people are missing in cyberspace."

Actually many of the basic forms of censorship are missing in cyberspace. It wouldn't surprise me if Al Gore wanted to try again with the Communication Decency Act, or something like it.

Another vice-president, Apple VP of Developer Relations, David Krathwohl, wrote a letter to developers about the cancellation of cloning. "We know that expanding the platform is essential to ensure the success of Apple and our developers; however, in order for everyone -- Apple, developers, licensees, and Mac customers -- to attain their long-term goals, Apple must return to profitibility as soon as possible."

He speaks for developers, but he doesn't speak for me. My long-term goal is to build a base of users and then build a profitable business. All my users are Mac people now. So I have an interest in the viability of the Mac platform. I think competition in hardware would make the Mac viable. Better products at lower prices. More advancements, more diversity. That's what would have kept customers interested in the Mac platform.

This new Mac platform, with Apple as the sole arbiter of hardware innovation, is much less interesting.

Dori Smith put up a web page explaining the problem with Frontier on the new 9600 machines. Basically it doesn't boot. Oooops. Well, we got a crash log and the problem is obvious. A fix is coming soooon. It has nothing to do with the motherboard. It *is* a timing issue.

NY Times: Motorola, IBM to expand market for PowerPC chip.

Wired News: Buckminster Fuller gets his corner of the web.

Reuters: More flowers for Diana's beautiful gravesite.

SJ Merc: More Apple tea leaf reading.

Steve Bogart says it's a market not an ecosystem.

October 13-15 in New Orleans: I'm leading the Town Hall sessions at c|net's Web Builder Conference in New Orleans. We'll have fun! Especially if lots of Scripting News web geeks are there. Frontier 5 should be in public testing by then. Fingers crossed.

Next week in Crested Butte Colorado, I'm leading the opening "Who are we?" session at the Digital Storytelling Festival. I love Colorado in the fall!

On September 30 in San Francisco, I'll go opposite Bill Gates! Microsoft is having a party to celebrate the shipment of MSIE 4.0/Win at the same time as the DaveNet Live session at Moscone. Seybold will be an industry venue this year. You know where the cooool people will be!

Matt Deatherage in TidBITS: Apple doesn't want to compete.

8/23/97: "Apple Avoids Competition".