From Telecomputing Magazine HARVEST TIME FOR NICK ANIS: RETURN TO THE OLD PARADIGM? By Peter Young From his tasteful home in Diamond Bar, California, Nick Anis sits at the center of an influential spider's web. Whether answering his phone with a silky smooth "this is Nick," or checking out the latest hacker to log into his BBS, Anis and his stable of co-authors have emerged in the last year with a most profound challenge for the personal computer industry. Ironically, he himself may not fully realize what he has unleashed with his spate of Osborne/McGraw-Hill books, three of which were released by the Berkeley publisher in August alone (!), under the company's new "Dvorak" imprint. With his usual exuberance, columnist John Dvorak describes the Osborne/McGraw-Hill "Dvorak line" as "special books for a demanding audience. Welcome to a new age of computer book publishing!" While both Anis and Dvorak have a full allotment of hustling entrepreneurial instincts, it would be a mistake to dismiss all this publishing activity as mere hyperthyroidism. Dvorak and his principal implementor, Anis, are serious men with a serious purpose. They believe the personal computer "revolution" went off the rails some years ago and fell into the hands of the Philistines. They propose to reclaim that "revolution" for the noble purposes enunciated by its founders. Various trends now in motion suggest they have a real shot at this somewhat quixotic objective. In the last nine months, Osborne/McGraw-Hill has cranked up its presses for the following Anis books, all of which carry the Dvorak imprimatur either as co-author or as part of the "Dvorak line": *DVORAK'S GUIDE TO PC TELECOMMUNICATIONS*, John C. Dvorak and Nick Anis, Osborne/McGraw-Hill, December 1989, 1,053 pp., now in its second edition and fourth printing. $49.95. Package includes two excellent shareware disks with coupon for two more at no additional charge. *DVORAK'S GUIDE TO DESKTOP TELECOMMUNICATIONS*, John C. Dvorak and Nick Anis, Dvorak-Osborne/McGraw-Hill, August 1990, 778 pp., a spin-off from the dynamic duo's first collaboration with new chapters added for Macintosh, Amiga and UNIX users. $34.95, no shareware disks, but does include coupon offering three disks for $20. *DR. FILE FINDER'S GUIDE TO SHAREWARE*, Mike Callahan and Nick Anis, Dvorak-Osborne/McGraw-Hill, August 1990, 1,019 pp. $39.95. Package includes one shareware disk with coupon for two more at no additional charge. *GLOSSBRENNER'S COMPLETE HARD DISK HANDBOOK*, Alfred Glossbrenner and Nick Anis, Dvorak-Osborne/McGraw-Hill, August 1990, 787 pp. $39.95. Package includes two shareware disks, plus coupon offering of DISK DIRECTOR for $2. (Glossbrenner, characterized by Anis as "the Isaac Asimov of computers," several years ago pioneered the concept of books about on-line information resources and shareware; his own shareware favorites are marketed under the "Glossbrenner's Choice" label.) Purely for the hell of it, I zeroed out my digital scale and weighed the totality of the recent (1989-1990) Anis output. Would you believe 14 pounds? At this very moment, huge stands of timber in the Amazon Basin are being cut down so that this character can continue to meet his mortgage payments *and* reshape our thinking about small computers. And the Anis harvest isn't over yet; not by a long shot. Released this month is yet another instant bestseller in the "Dvorak line," this one written once again with Dvorak himself, and dedicated to the proposition that all of us can and should tweak an additional 10-20 percent performance gain from our PC systems. If this were London in the mid-19th century, one could envision Anis as a Dickensian employer, striding around the sweatshop, flogging his ink-stained wretches to unparalleled heights of productivity. But, no, it's all done electronically now on what Dr. File Finder (aka Mike Callahan) likes to call "the modem and the wires." For each of these books, Anis cajoles dozens of far- flung experts, most of whom he has never met (except electronically), to contribute bits and pieces of research. The payoff can be a consulting fee, licensing of the expert's product, cross-merchandising in advertising and promotion and/or a generous mention in the book's acknowledgement section. (In the original telecommunications book with Dvorak, a 5-page acknowledgements section listing dozens of experts includes this gem: "I'd like to thank Paul Somerson for the inspiration to do a book this large," this in reference to Somerson's very lengthy MS-DOS compendium for Bantam. Incidentally, note that the Somerson book was packaged with some good software; Somerson may have been an inspiration to Anis in more ways than one though, indeed, and typically, Anis carried the concept further by stuffing his bundled disks with more and better programs.) So, the memos and the drafts and the suggestions pour in over "the modem and the wires" to Diamond Bar like an electronic Niagara Falls. Then Anis and his co-author face the daunting task of making some semblance of sense out of it all. Grinding out the final manuscript pushes Anis, his 386-based Zenith, and his WORDSTAR 6.0 right to the wall. He likes WORDSTAR for its speed and its desktop publishing features, but uses the shareware classic QEDIT for quick and voluminous notes in a straight ASCII format. The first book with John Dvorak, *DVORAK'S GUIDE TO PC TELECOMMUNICATIONS*, set the mold for what was to come . . . and, indeed, for what is yet to come. Here is the not-so- secret "formula" for an Anis bestseller: * Secure a co-author who is something of a celebrity cult hero in the hacker community. Dvorak is the perfect example of this, with his contrarian polemics in several leading industry publications. Like him or hate him, Dvorak has a remarkably consistent point of view which reaches deep into the roots of the *personal* computer revolution (see below). Other co-authors such as Glossbrenner, Mike Callahan and Craig Menefee match the specification nicely. * Cajole numerous knowledgeable hackers into sharing their special insights and expertise. Brian Miller, SYSOP for the giant CHANNEL 1 BBS in Cambridge, Massachusetts, recalls what it was like to be in the trenches with Anis: "The summer of 1989 was a very stressful period for Nick; he was finishing up the Dvorak book." Brian, a model of gentle tact if ever there was one, adds: "It was a stressful period for a lot of us." * Package the big, heavy book with five hundred thousand bytes (or more) of compressed shareware code, which "unzip" into several excellent programs. In turn, this creates a need for considerable documentation, which can best be handled within the book itself. The prose style must be simple and clean, in the best tradition of a no-nonsense Dvorak column, and thus be easily understood by the widest possible audience ranging from neophytes to sophisticated users. * Stuff the back of the book with dozens of coupons -- offering an astonishing variety of "deals," most of them quite good, and some of them outstanding, from the cottage enterprises of the volunteer researchers. Anis has grasped something very fundamental about serious users, or wannabees: We never got over the thrill of ripping a boxtop and "sending in" for the Dick Tracy secret decoder ring. (Glossbrenner characterizes Anis as "a marketing genius." Yes, and a very hard-working one, at that!) * Create a simple tutor/menu program on one of the diskettes to integrate the various shareware programs in a style that makes them much more accessible to the wannabees. "Our installation programs are killers," says Anis. The shareware is thus wrenched into a posture that is more "user-friendly" than is usually the case. * Illustrate the book's cover with a dramatic, full face photo of the co-author, Dvorak-Callahan- Glossbrenner, and banner the cover with aggressive claims and generous descriptions of the package contents. (The forthcoming Dvorak-Anis book on PC performance departs at this point from the usual formula. Instead of offering another tight closeup of the scowling Dvorak visage, the November book will be illustrated with an artist's rendering of a turbo- charged desktop system coming down the runway for takeoff against a neon backdrop.) What are the distinguishing characteristics of the new computing paradigm, as argued so tenaciously by Dvorak in his various columns . . . and implemented now by Nick Anis in these "instant bestsellers" for Dvorak-Osborne/McGraw- Hill? 1. Computing, according to the tablets brought down from the mountain by Dvorak and Anis, is (or should be) based on the individual and *not* the corporation. Nothing appalls them more than the corporate drone who comes to work at 9, boots into LOTUS, makes spreadsheet entries all day, then at 5 washes up and goes home. Other drones in the corporate structure operate in similar fashion with dBASE or WORDPERFECT. These users, if they can be called that, miss the main point of computing -- the almost infinite flexibility of the system to do *anything* because it is (a) programmable, and (b) open to a wide variety of hardware and software add-ins, enhancements, upgrades and tweaks. 2. But if the point of the computer "revolution" is to empower the individual, this most emphatically does *not* mean that the single user can survive in splendid isolation. Thus the critical importance of "the modem and the wires," particularly for home-based professionals. It is no accident that the first two Dvorak-Anis books deal with telecommunications. Similarly, the third and fourth books in this remarkable series focus on what you can get from knowledgeable use of "the modem and the wires," and how you can organize within your system what you've picked up "out there" at very little cost. 3. It is not at all necessary that every user become a programmer. But it is *essential* for Dvorak-style computing that the user be adept at such basics of systems housekeeping as file management and performance-tweaking. 4. Most commercial software packages for most users most of the time (all exceptions granted) are absurd over-kill . . . measured against most of the tasks that most of these users are performing most of the time. Worse, these shrink-wrapped packages containing 10 or more high density floppies carry a heavy penalty in unnecessary overhead -- ranging from the hours that must be spent plowing through documentation manuals, to the hardware performance which must be geared to providing capabilities for countless "features" that are seldom if ever used. (Notable exceptions here are WORDSTAR and XYWRITE, which have always offered an installation procedure that permits the user to make a series of modular choices.) Bottom line: Dvorak-style computing argues for software that is cheap, fast, basic and light, e.g. shareware and public domain packages, the original SIDEKICK, early versions of PCTOOLS, etc. Money thus freed up from heavy software purchases can then go to more important items -- like DRAM memory chips, a larger hard drive, a better monitor, a faster modem, phone company toll charges, $25-50 books by Dvorak and Anis, etc. 5. Because the resources of individuals are far more finite than the resources of corporations, and because individuals must rely on other individuals for generous sharing of expertise, it is essential in the Dvorak model that such de facto standards as MS-DOS and the "open" AT bus not only be preserved, but strengthened. OS/2 holds no charms whatsoever for Dvorak and Anis; ditto for the proprietary MCA bus. "Innovate *within* the standard," as Compaq's Rod Canion used to say. It seems almost superfluous to add that copy-protected software was always regarded by Dvorak as an abomination, and he along with Anis take a similar position on current legal efforts to put a barbed wire fence around any package's "look and feel." The Dvorak/Anis paradigm of *personal* computing is often dismissed by rival pundits as mere egotistical ranting. Yet there are straws in the wind that indicate their time may be coming round at last. To paraphrase the Yeats poem: "Who is this beast slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born?" Good grief, it's John Dvorak and Nick Anis! One big straw in the wind is the glaring failure thus far of OS/2 to penetrate corporate offices; Windows, si, OS/2, no. Another straw in the wind is that many corporate Lotus users are choosing 2.2 rather than 3.0 for their upgrades. Why? Because they simply have no rational requirement whatsoever for top-of-the-line Lotus, and their bosses know it. Here's another straw in the wind: Mighty IBM's PS/2 line, by every measure, has thus far been unsuccessful in regaining market share from the stubborn, mostly Asian, clone vendors. The clincher, the forthcoming recession, is now barreling down the pike at an accelerated rate and according to consensus forecasts is already impacting corporate America and its spending plans. Now may not be quite the right time to tell your favorite vice president that you need a couple of thousand dollars worth of new hardware and/or shrink-wrapped software. That V.P. just may pat you on the back, authorize $39.95 for the latest Anis-Dvorak book, and tell you that this is your *last* chance to deliver on the promised productivity gains of the computer "revolution." If it happens that way, take your V.P. up on the deal, read the book(s), try their software and lo! Wozniak, Jobs, Felsenstein, Adam Osborne and other first generation hackers and entrepreneurs may turn out to have been right all along. Copyright 1991, Telecomputing Magazine -- All rights reserved.