I'm not sure what Macintosh Heaven would be like but, without a doubt, it would have to be close to the MacWorld Expo. MacWorld magazine put on "the first big show for one little computer" in Brooks Hall, and it was a doozy. Almost all the companies that have come out with either hardware or software, or are about to come out with any, were represented in some way.
We had a chance to actually try all the different hard disks at our leisure, including a few I had never heard of. MacBottom (??) and Paradise, for example, both look to be fast, compact and reasonably priced. Also all the big databases were represented. Odesta Helix, after more than eight months of advertising, is finally in existence. There was a giant black booth loaded with Macs running the program, and plenty of sales people to show off the new and different features to the perplexed (like me I). It looks to be powerful and easy once you get used to their clever visual way of presenting flowcharts. MacLion was there with an equally large booth. They had a big cage which had one section filled with MacLion boxes, but the other side was empty. Sure enough, they had planned to bring in a real baby lion, but they didn't get it quite together. Nonetheless, MacLion is a product that (I want to be one of six hundred reviewers to say this) roars. It is the only programmable database currently available for the Mac, and from what I've seen and heard it is a powerful one. Lotus Jazz was in evidence as well. Though they didn't have a booth, they periodically showed it off (what they had of their unfinished product) on Apple's famous 12 ft. Mac. in the middle of the hall. Jazz looks good, but is it really worth all the hoopla it's getting? I withhold judgment till they finish it.
There were also tax programs, new games of various sorts, more icon oriented desk organizers than one could possibly ever keep track of, a few new spreadsheets including a few integrated spreadsheet/graphics/text programs other jazz, modems and terminal programs, a great newsletter generating program (MacPublisher, which we hope to show at our next meeting), programming languages, inexpensive upgrades, disk holders, digitizers, free magazines and newsletters and anything else any one has thought of to do with a Mac.
The booby prize goes to Mac Slate from a group call Devionics, or something, who put out a graphics program that created an effect that looked like something between lassoing a straight line, and holding the Option and Control buttons down to get multiple copies, and Trace Edges. And for this they wanted $100.00!! They said it was an "artistic tool". I say it's bull ...
On the other hand there was a great new little graphics package.
It's called Click Art Effects, and it is a quasi Desk Accessory
that actually installs itself into MacPaint. This
gem will let you rotate a selected MacPaint picture to ANY angle.
It will let you distort your object in various ways, to create
instant depth perspective or a neat twisted effect. Just when
some of us might have gotten jaded to MacPaint, along comes Effects
to make us stay up late playing with silly pictures again.
Another highlight of the Expo was the parties afterward for "the
industry", sponsored by Mac World, A+ , Microsoft and such.
These were easily crashable. Amidst hundreds of suits and ties,
and high heels and dresses, champagne and hors d'ouevres, you
could find Bill Atkinson (author of Quickdraw and MacPaint) in
checkered sneakers and an oversized shirt, and Andy Hertzfeld
(writer of most of the Mac's ROM) in a T-shirt and backpack. I
even was able to hook up with someone at Microsoft, for example,
to be a Beta-tester for a currently unreleased product which he
was writing (hint- it's related to their BASIC 2.0 interpreter).
All in all, aside from the fact that Mac World never called
our volunteers for the Hands On booth, the Expo was the highest
Mac frenzy I expect to go to for a whole year.