GEnieLamp Nov 1992 Who's Who In Apple II """"""""""""""""""""" By Phil Shapiro [P.SHAPIRO1] >>> WHO'S WHO? <<< """""""""""""""""" ~ A Profile of Morgan Davis ~ ~ Creator of the ProLine Bulletin Board System ~ GEnieLamp Morgan, how did you first become interested in programming the """"""""" Apple II? Can you remember the specific time and place? Davis I was a junior in high school (1981), when I had a short one-week """"" introductory class on computers. Fortunately, the computer was an Apple II. That started my (so far) life long interest in them. GEnieLamp Over the years you've created some superlative tele- """"""""" communications products (including ModemWorks and ProLine). Can you tell us a little how you first became interested in tele- communications? When was the first time you saw the word CONNECT? Davis Actually, my communications history goes back much farther than """"" what you suggest. While in sixth grade, after tiring of only being able to listen to a short-wave scanner, I wanted to get my amateur radio operators license, but succumbed a few years later to the easy access of CB radio. My interest in communications started out in radio. It was in 1983 when I got my own Apple IIe and had a job writing books on BASIC programming for CompuSoft Publishing, Inc. They had an acoustic coupler modem that I was able to take home during the weekends and connect to the IIe. I would cruise the local bulletin boards for 48 hours and then take the unit back to work on Monday. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and decided I needed a modem I could use all the time. So, I bought the best modem you could get for the Apple II series at the time, a Novation Apple-Cat II with a blazing 300bps throughput and a $400 price tag. I must have been saving my paycheck money diligently, because it wasn't too long thereafter when I purchased the 1200bps upgrade option for about $250, as I recall. The popular external modems at the time were Racal Vadics -- very expensive, very cutting-edge. The Hayes Smartmodem wasn't in full popularity until much later. I didn't have a real Hayes-style modem until around 1984, perhaps '85. Before I had a Hayes-compatible external modem, I had already built an Apple-Cat-only version of ModemWorks. It was distributed as "shareware" (a new concept at the time) through a small company a friend and I founded called "Living Legends Software". I distributed ModemWorks, ProLine, and a few other programs through LLS between 1984 and 1988. On February 14th, 1989, the Morgan Davis Group was created, and I've been selling my own products through it ever since. While the Apple II market has shrunk over the years, MDG has expanded its product line and increased revenues each year. GEnieLamp In the late 1980's you worked for a year or so at Beagle Bros. """"""""" Did your job involve software programming work? Davis Yes. This is a minor point in history. """"" GEnieLamp Was it more along the lines of telephone technical support? """"""""" Davis Heck no! :-) I was hired in February, 1989 (the same month I """"" started MDG) when TimeOut was really enjoying its success. Bert Kersey had sold Beagle Bros to Mark Simonsen, and Simonsen decided that he'd like Beagle to become a heavyweight contender in the Macintosh market. I was hired, along with about six others initially, to work with existing Beagle programmers (who only had Apple II experience at the time) to create a product that would dethrone Microsoft Works, Microsoft's integrated package with a long, successful history. Our product, code named Cheetah, was to be designed and developed into intercommunicating modules that included more features than Works -- all in eight months -- a ridiculous timeframe for a group of Apple II programmers, most who didn't even own a Macintosh (like myself) and had little or no experience using one, let alone programming it. From 1984, I had spent a lot of time working with Macs, but I had only developed software for the Apple II. I bought a Macintosh IIx through Beagle and paid it off through my salary over a number of months. My responsibility in the Cheetah project was to develop the communications module. Amazingly, I had it getting me online and transferring data in about two or three months. The hard part, however, was putting a Macintosh interface on top of it all. Familiar with the serial port on the IIGS, getting the Mac to speak to a modem wasn't hard. But having to learn the other 99% of the Macintosh's toolbox, operating system, and development environments took a long time. The other programmers had similar hurdles to overcome, and many dropped out of the project early on (Rob Renstrom and Alan Bird, who went on to start WestCode). The team went from 12 down to about 4 programmers, still holding the same initial feature list and the same eight-month deadline. Not surprising, we didn't make it. GEnieLamp Can you tell us a little about the work environment at Beagle """"""""" Bros (formal/informal)? Davis Beagle was a fun place to work at during the days when it was """"" under the fathership of Bert Kersey. On many occasions, I would stop by at the Beagle offices to visit or drop off a Living Legends product they might have ordered. It always struck me as the greatest Apple II company to work for, second only to Apple, of course. I'd love to continue a happy story, but I'm afraid there isn't one. Things were quite different after the TimeOut succe$$. Beagle moved to an expensive technical park in Sorrento Valley (the Silicon Valley of San Diego). The atmosphere was casual, but not informal. When I came aboard, I think they had about 25 employees. There was "management structure", company policy manuals, legal agreements to sign, and a marketing V.P., the only person really overseeing R&D (that was us). Not at all like the small, attractive company I used to dream of working for. The Cheetah project lacked serious direction and management. I became aware of this after long time Beagle programmers, like Randy Brandt, decided not to be involved with the project. A friend of mine who later went on to work for Aldus (Silicon Beach at the time), left because of the pressure and idiocy that went on up in the higher ranks. They had an insight that I didn't. After about a year, Cheetah's team consisted of Joe Holt (the only accomplished Mac programmer there), Tom Birchall (experienced at HyperCard, but not application development), and myself. In the months ahead, Beagle's employee count atrophied to about 12 following layoff after layoff. There were a few who got out before their number came up. I stuck with the initial Cheetah plan until April 13 (a Friday, no less), 1990, when Mark Simonsen called me into his office at the end of the day and expressed the company's difficult financial situation, of which I was all too aware. That was my last day. I went home that evening in a daze, disappointed that what could have been never happened after a year and a half. When my good friend Joe Holt heard what happened, he left Beagle to work for Adobe Systems. I went on to pursue MDG full time, and have been doing just that ever since. It's a real shame. There was amazing talent at Beagle Bros in every department except the ones that count. We had excellent writers, artists, an established sales force, awesome Apple II programmers, a few promising Mac programmers, and everyone (below a certain level) got along expertly. It just seemed like we were always working against management, or more accurately, operating under the lack of real management. To bring a long story to a quick ending, things got worse in the two years that followed my departure. For months, Beagle operated on a shoestring with just five or six employees. They sold their Apple II products to Quality. And then last Friday, they shut down for good. I'm certain the worsening economy only helped to speed up Beagle's demise. GEnieLamp Is Sophie a real dog? """"""""" Davis She was (past tense). Sophie left us for Beagle Heaven a few """"" years ago. GEnieLamp Your ProLine bulletin board system has earned an enthusiastic """"""""" following with Apple II users and user groups around the country. In what year was ProLine first released? Can you describe some of the new features of the latest ProLine version, ProLine 2.0? Davis ProLine was first conceived and named in early 1984. It wasn't """"" released until 1985 as a commercial product through LLS. ProLine 2.0 was major upgrade, entailing a nearly total rewrite of the core system. At the lowest level, I had developed the Object Module Manager to make ModemWorks 3.0 a reality. This allowed me to create interchangeable modules for taking care of specific functions, like terminal emulation, transfer protocols, serial I/O, and so on. ProLine 2.0, mostly written in Applesoft using MD-BASIC, was able to take advantage of the new features in ModemWorks by just "recompiling" all the existing code with some new libraries. So, 2.0 offers additional terminal support (VT-100, 102, 220, and ANSI), a full complement of protocols (X/Y/ZMODEM), all new online documentation, and a new 350 page owners manual. GEnieLamp You run the Morgan Davis Group publishing company with your """"""""" wife Dawn. Does running the company take up all your time? Or are you able to work a separate job as well? Other than moral support, Dawn doesn't get too involved in MDG these days. She's started her own licensed family day care facility (in our home--where I no longer keep my office for obvious reasons!). With seven kids to take care of, she's pretty busy these days, and loving it. Running MDG does, indeed, take up ALL of my time. There are always hundreds of things to do, and it seems like I can't keep up. Since I write and develop our products, handle phone support throughout the day, keep up with online tech support, write and typeset the manuals, handle sales and marketing, fill orders and shipping, I am PLENTY busy. We're at that uncomfortable stage of being too small to hire additional help, but too big for one person to handle. Somehow, I manage, but I feel the company's growth is being retarded due to lack of manpower. How I long for a 36 hour day, and the endurance to survive one. GEnielamp After ProLine, your next most popular software product is """"""""" probably MD-BASIC, a structured BASIC preprocessor. The essence of MD-BASIC is that it allows programmers to side-step the sticky "spaghetti-code" problems inherent in Applesoft BASIC's open-ended structure. It's even possible to write MD-BASIC programs from within a word processor. Can you tell us a little about your motivation for creating MD-BASIC? Davis Actually, our most popular product is ModemWorks, then ProLine, """"" and then MD-BASIC. I think MD-BASIC has the potential of being an extremely successful product, but because of minimal advertising and practically no magazine coverage, not many people know about it. When you market the premier Apple II bulletin board system that encompasses over 100 BASIC programs, you have a lot of motivation for improving your Applesoft development scheme! I love the C programming language, so I took the best features in a C compiler and rolled them into something that allows you to write BASIC programs in a word processing environment (that in itself is a far cry from what you have in Applesoft's "immediate" programming mode). MD-BASIC's source files look a lot like BASIC, C, and Pascal, and when they get run through the MD-BASIC compiler, extremely compact and efficient Applesoft programs come out. So you can now write highly structured and well-commented BASIC programs using a word processor *and* get better results in the end. MD-BASIC optimizes your code and strips out the dead weight that bloats most programs written the old, painful way. Its the proverbial "win win" situation. GEnieLamp Are there any shareware or commercial software products on the """"""""" market that were developed using MD-BASIC? Davis I know from product registration cards we receive that a lot of """"" companies use it. In fact, almost anyone who is doing serious development work that involves either a little or a lot of Applesoft is probably using MD-BASIC. Most can't stop saying good things about it. I love reading unsolicited endorsements like that here on GEnie. We, of course, use it for all of our products. We don't have a single Applesoft-only product, but almost every disk we put out includes some short "Startup" program on it which we write using MD-BASIC. It's easy to crank out new, impressive programs with it in short order, because you can easily make use of work you've developed in the past by maintaining your own set of library routines, just like with real high-level languages. GEnieLamp If it doesn't violate any confidentiality agreements, can you """"""""" tell us if MD-BASIC is being used by any commercial software publishers? Davis Of those most GEnie members would recognize, Tom Hoover uses it for """"" developing his GEnie Master program. SoftDisk programmers use it. There are many others. I'd have to open our customer database to find more. GEnieLamp Just a few months ago you released yet another BASIC """"""""" programmer's tool, the Real-time Applesoft Debugging Environment (RADE). Is this tool intended to be used in conjunction with MD-BASIC? What are the most common programming bugs that RADE helps overcome? Davis Since RADE is invaluable for debugging any Applesoft programs, its """"" not just for MD-BASIC programmers. It can be used to debug ANY Applesoft programs. It is even a great educational tool, allowing you to snoop through programs other people have written. Because of its "stop action" ability to freeze a running program and let you analyze each statement as it executes, it is indispensable for discovering and understanding the tricks accomplished programmers use in their programs. It's also indispensable in uncovering those elusive bugs that can't be hunted down easily. For example, while a program runs, you can monitor the flow of execution to see just which statements are being executed. At the same time, you can watch a set of variables to see how they change in real-time. You can modify the values of variables while a program runs to see how that might affect your program. You can look at the program listing. And you can do all this without having to stop your program or mess up the screen display. Plus, RADE's history feature keeps track of all your debugging operations so you can easily scroll back through them and find out what might have happened way back when the program first started running. RADE is an awesome product that makes the BASIC development cycle a snap. It's unobtrusive (takes up just 768 bytes of main memory), it lets you switch between your program's display and RADE's debugging screen to avoid disturbing your program's output. It's great for anyone who programs in Applesoft. GEnieLamp Outside of programming the Apple II, what are some of your """"""""" hobbies and interests? What do you like to do for fun? Davis With a family of four and a business like MDG, I don't have much """"" time for myself. However, if, by some fluke of good luck, I do get some free time, I'll spend it reading or listening to music -- something truly relaxing. I'm a pretty good racquetball player, so I keep in shape that way. I spend most of my time on the weekends with my kids. So we do a lot of outings to places like San Diego's Zoo and Wild Animal Park, the Natural History museum, Aerospace Museum, Fleet Space theater and Science Center, parks, swimming, etc. Lots of stuff kids and grownups both enjoy. GEnieLamp What is the accomplishment of which you're the most proud? """"""""" What have been the most intriguing experiences for you? At first, I was going to say that I'm not really proud of any particular thing. But, I guess I'm proud of all my work, because I'm just amazed that my stuff works when I complete a project (or think I have completed one -- I don't think I have yet!). Writing a program and then documenting it (complete with typesetting) is a long and arduous process. It can take up to six months for one small project. When you alone work on one project solid everyday for six months, the tendency to burn out is prevalent. I'm really happy when we finally get to the shipping stage. The most intriguing single thing so far was writing a PostScript generator for ProLine's online help system. ProLine has always had command-formatted built in help files which were processed for display on a computer screen or dot matrix printer. But with ProLine 2.0, I wanted to be able to ship a manual that included the online documentation in nice laser printer output. Needless to say, I learned a lot about PostScript, which I had always feared as being out of my league. It's pretty cool that a BASIC program in ProLine can crank out 300 professionally typeset pages from PostScript code in a manner of minutes. I'm sure there will be something even more intriguing happening tomorrow. GEnieLamp As someone who has spent a great deal of time creating """"""""" and supporting telecommunications software products, can you comment a little about the likely future directions of telecommunications? A recent magazine article said that the U.S. Postal Service forecasts hard copy mail growing to 250 billion pieces annually before the turn of the century. Rather than spending huge amounts of money on expanding the current postal sorting and delivery system, wouldn't it make more sense for the U.S. Postal service to subsidize terminals for every home and business? (Along the lines of the French Minitel system.) Davis I think we're coming to this. Just look at the proliferation of """"" FAX machines. To a lesser extent, look at the people who pay their bills electronically with CheckFree. Granted, CheckFree still utilizes the postal service, but with direct bank deposits, you'd totally eliminate the paper. Its the closest thing to owning a Star Trek-like transporter we have now. In the communications world of the future, your home address is only valid for people who need directions to get there and the occasional parcel package that a computerized shipper, such as UPS and Federal Express will use. Otherwise, our address will be in the form of computer accounts or personal access ID numbers that are used to reach us on our portables (or pen-based systems) wherever we go. The post office won't provide this technology. The phone and cable TV companies are more likely to develop this simply because of their existing roots in communications technology (fiber optic, cellular, satellite, etc.). GEnieLamp How can Apple II software developers find out more about your """"""""" products? Simply write or call us at: Morgan Davis Group 10079 Nuerto Lane Rancho San Diego CA 91977-7132 USA +1 619 670 0563 +1 619 670 9643 (FAX) +1 619 670 5379 (BBS) We're putting together a newsletter, Groupnews, which we'll be sending to all of our customers next month. Groupnews talks about our latest product line and upgrades. We'll be happy to send a copy to anyone who is not currently in our customer database by supplying us with a 29 cent postage stamp and their address. Incidentally, our GEnie address has changed from the difficult to remember "M.DAVIS42" to the much simpler "MORGAN-DAVIS".