Re: Salvation's Wings

[jp1@aol.com (JP1)]

>>"And what exactly does this peculiarly-named disk management software do??"<<

Some pertinent info:

First, the correct title is "Salvation Wings," not "Salvation's Wings."  It's a
suite of the five GUI "utility applications" developed and published  for the
IIgs by the company Vitesse in the early 1990s.

The original concept was for five stand-alone GUI utilities for file archiving,
optimization, virus detection/removal, file/folder/volume repair, and general
"desktop operations."  The five products were designed to be in stark contrast
to Glen Bredon's "text interface" all-in-one utility package, ProSel.

The first of the five developed--and Vitesse's first product--was the archiving
application, called "Salvation."  Believe it or not, some Apple IIgs users took
offense at the name "Salvation," feeling that it was blasphemous.  (It's
true--I took most of the calls myself.)  To avoid unhappiness, Vitesse changed
the name to "Bakkup."  (Why not "Backup"?  Because a company in the PC world
had a _hardware_ product titled "Backup," and their lawyers claimed that
potential customers would become confused and buy the wrong product.  It's
true--I took that call, too.)  The app was designed and coded by Chris Warner.

The optimizing application, designed and coded by Joe Jaworski, was Renaissance
  No users or lawyers seemed to go nuts over the name.

The virus detection/removal application was also designed and coded by Joe
Jaworski.  It was called Exorciser.

The file/folder/volume repair application, Deliverance, was designed and coded
by Chris Warner.  It was a shame that Vitesse went astray of its original plans
and the IIgs market  collapsed before Deliverance was developed completely.  We
had some really great things in mind for Deliverance that would have made it
invaluable to IIgs users.

Wings, designed and coded by Joe Jaworski, was for "general operations"--it was
an alternative approach the "desktop" shell environment.  (File/folder copying,
naming, deleting, application launch, file comparison, volume (re)naming, file
search, and many, many other features.) In the field testing we did, we saw
that most users found Wings' way of displaying files and folders more intuitive
and efficient to use than the desktop w/ icons approach.

Side bar: Joe expanded and refined Wings as a PC application for Vitesse, who
released it with the name "Salvation" in the era of Windows 2.0.  Salvation was
so superior to the MS "explorer" and "filer" utilities, it was a joke. 
However, since MS gave their utilities with Windows, and Vitesse actually
_sold_ Salvation, most Windows users passed Salvation by.  The core of
Salvations' code goes back to 1990...and with only a few small quirks, it's run
great under all verisons of Windows up through and including WinXP.  (Might not
run under WinNT or Win2000--I've never tried it.)

After all five applications had been released separately, the company president
decided to market a "package" that comprised them all, calling it "Salvation
Wings."  (Or there might have been a colon between the two words.  It was after
my time.)

John P.
(part of the Vitesse team when it was an adventure)