Murph's VAPORWARE Column for November 1991
Murph Sewall
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the November 1991 APPLE PULP
H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
$24/year
P.O. Box 18027
East Hartford, CT 06118
Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 257-9588
Permission granted to redistribute with the above citation
These are rumors folks;
we reserve the right to be dead wrong!
No More Apple 2 CPUs?
Apple will soon release an updated operating system for the 16-bit Apple
IIgs. However, rumor has it that the Apple II production line will soon
shut down for good leaving the //e card for the Macintosh LC as the last
"Apple" still in production. Of course, the same source has erroneously
forecast the demise of the Apple II line uncounted times in the past.
- MacWeek 15 October
Universal Image Standard.
At the recent Seybold Conference, Adobe Systems demonstrated a
technology, codenamed Carousel, which will permit users to display the
same compressed full color PostScript image on nearly any computer. At
the conference, Adobe chairman John Warnock showed the same file on a
640K DOS box, a Macintosh, and a NeXT workstation. A formatted, full
color magazine page can be compressed to as little as 33K and
transmitted over networks by the Carousel technology which should appear
as a product in 1992. - InfoWorld 7 October
Soviet Software.
Apple has licensed hand writing algorithms developed by Moscow's (yes
the one in Russia) ParaGraph JV for use in a future pen-based product.
The software can recognize cursive as well as printed and block letter
writing. Two departments of the Soviet Academy of Science were
associated with initial stages of this project which has been in
development since 1989. - MacWeek 15 August
Thinking Big?
Is no one safe? Thinking Machines has announced yet another partnership
with Big Blue. The details weren't disclosed, but the likeliest
scenario involves IBM offering some of their rather nice hard disks and
possibly RAM in exchange for access to Thinkco's massively parallel
supercomputer technology. - found in my electronic mailbox
Low End RS/6000.
Problems with the system I/O chip have delayed the planned fall
introduction of RS/6000 PowerStations in the $7,000 to $11,000 range
until late this year with volume shipments shortly after the first of
the year. These systems will list for approximately one-half to
two-thirds the price of current low end models and offer one-half to
two-thirds the performance (there's progress for you). The
PowerStations for the masses are rated at 16 to 30 SPECmarks (a more
meaningful indicator than MIP and MFLOPS?).
- InfoWorld 23 September and PC Week 7 October
Just Your Type.
Adobe Systems is working with Xerox and International Typeface (ITC) to
produce a version of ITC Bodoni as the first font in the Type 1 multiple
master format. Adobe's multiple mastering software, scheduled to ship
in late 1992, will permit users to vary a variety of typeface features
in addition to size and style. Adobe also announced a custom Type I
font coprocessor to be built by LSI Logic that will soon begin appearing
in PostScript devices. The coprocessor renders fonts from 25 to 200
times faster and permits printers to operate at their rated output.
- InfoWorld 30 September and 7 October
Greater LaserWriter Throughput.
Apple has announced that work is underway with Adobe Systems to rewrite
the LaserWriter driver "from the ground up." Even older PostScript
printers, to say nothing of Apple's new IIg and IIf are capable of
printing much faster. The existing Print Manager doesn't generate
PostScript data fast enough to keep up with the printer's processor.
The new driver, due to be released this Spring, will increase text
printing by 20 percent and more complex eight-bit images by as much as
ten times faster. - MacWeek 8 October
Now That October Has Come and Gone.
Apple is hoping to make next spring as interesting as this fall. There
are at least six products that may hit the market by March or so. A 33
MHz 68040 Tower Mac (the Quadra 933?) is almost ready to go. Other
hardware introductions might be a 68030 Macintosh LC (probably 16 MHz
with no built in FPU), a more powerful (25 MHz, 40 MHz?) IIsi, a color
PowerBook 170, and a faster StyleWriter based on the improved Canon
engine. Anticipated software includes Macintosh System 7.1, with new
SANE, 32-bit clean ROM patch, ATM, and integrated background printing
for all printers. - found in my electronic mailbox
Spring Forward and Fall Back.
Sun users may experience deja vu as Solaris 2.0 seems on the way to
repeating the problems associated with the introduction of SunOS 4.0.
The beta program that was due to ship in the fourth quarter has been
delayed until after the first of the year. A number of managerial necks
will be on the block if something doesn't ship by the summer of 1992.
Therefore, something will ship, but knowledgeable insiders indicate that
Solaris 2.0 really will be one of those version zeroes better left to
others to try first. For that matter, pessimism already exists about
version 2.1. - found in my electronic mailbox
The NeXT Word.
Later this year, a small New Mexico company, Abacus Research and
Development, will ship Executor, an application-specific Macintosh
emulator for NeXT workstations. The initial $80 release will only run
Microsoft Word 4.0, but subsequent versions will work with multiple
applications (for $700). The current Executor emulates all Macintosh
Toolbox functions but doesn't include the Macintosh Finder nor support
System 7.0 features, color, or sound. However, it is said to run
selected applications on a 68040 NeXT computer at Macintosh II speeds.
- MacWeek 24 September
24-bit Color Video.
Radius Inc. has announced an exclusive marketing arrangement to use
Apple's Touchstone video technology in a family of Macintosh add-in
boards to be released in the first quarter of next year. Touchtone
provides 24-bit convolutions, a filtering process that supports 16.7
million color videotape output. - PC Week 23 September
Keeping Your Act Together.
Dantz Developers who sell Retrospect backup utility software will soon
offer a program designed to make sure one's home, office, and possibly
laptop computer have the most current versions of files. The program,
which will be named Intertie, works by examining mounted volumes and
replacing older versions of files on a target volume with newer ones
from the source volume. Intertie should appear by the end of the year
for $149. - MacWeek 15 October
Unicode On Schedule.
The effort to replace the venerable ASCII standard with a new 16-bit
standard named Unicode (see last April's column) is making progress with
the release of Volume One which assigns codes for every major alphabet
and symbol in the world except the Han characters of Chinese, Japanese,
and Korean. Volume Two containing the Han characters is scheduled to be
published (by Addison-Wesley) early next year. - MacWeek 24 September
Mailorder Blues?
Apple may not the be only one considering consigning part of their line
to mailorder vendors (see last May's column), IBM is rumored to have
made a deal with German mailorder distributor Georg Zipfel to sell
PS/2's through the mail. The move is seen as creating an opportunity to
focus IBM's own salesforce on the sale of RISC workstations. Meanwhile
CompuAdd is poised to announce plans to sell the lower end Macintoshes
(Classics, LC's, IIsi's and maybe PowerBook 100's) in 100 of its
Superstores - MacWeek 17 September and PC Week 7 October
Will Somebody Sign For It?
IBM suddenly withheld the expected introduction of its Signature word
processor (see last month's column) because a strategic decision had
been made to unload the entire desktop software division. Lotus is said
to be close to striking a deal to acquire Signature as a compliment to
its Ami Pro Windows word processor. - InfoWorld 30 September
OS/2 2.0.
IBM will delay delivery of OS/2 2.0 until March to improve the
appearance of the WorkPlace Shell and the way it works with Windows.
IBM vice president Joseph Guglielmi, has said that when it is shipped
the operating system will be launched with a number of new applications
that fully exploit 32-bit capabilities. Mr. Guglielmi added that more
than 400 developers have agreed to ship applications that take advantage
of OS/2 in 1992.
- PC Week 30 September and 7 October and InfoWorld 14 October
Unsubstantiated Whispers.
Here are two items that may turn out to be something or nothing. The
leading PC chipmaker has been showing Intel brand PCs to focus groups.
And, there is a plan to send developers alpha copies of Apple's (and
IBM's?) Pink object oriented operating system in January.
- InfoWorld 30 September
MacSony.
Before last month's new Macintosh introductions, Apple chairman John
Sculley had time to slip off to Tokyo to finalize the deal for Sony's
$500 home computing CD ROM and television device based Macintosh System
6 technology (see September's column). - InfoWorld 14 October
Miscellaneous MacWare.
The pretty packaging for Lotus's 1-2-3 Macintosh software has been
appearing in the mail order ads for a couple of months, but the shipping
date has been repeatedly delayed. If the spreadsheet does ship this
month, it will still make the company's "sometime this fall" deadline.
Caere is expected to ship System 7 savvy OmniPage Pro 2.0 during the
fourth quarter. The $995 program will include a spelling checker as
part of its comprehensive text editor. Symantek will soon announce a
merger of its SUM and Norton Utilities for the Macintosh (good news,
since about half the current Norton offering doesn't work with System
7). Not to be outdone, a new version of MacTools Deluxe is scheduled
for announcement at the January MacWorld. Central Point is said to be
especially proud of their failed drive data recovery algorithm. Also at
MacWorld, Blyth will introduce Omnis 7 a relational database with full
System 7 support including publish and subscribe.
- InfoWorld 30 September and MacWeek 1 October