Murph's VAPORWARE Column for January 1993
Murph Sewall
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the January 1993 APPLE PULP
H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
$24/year
P.O. Box 380027
East Hartford, CT 06138-0027
Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 257-9588
Permission granted to redistribute with the above citation
Feature Wars.
PC prices can't go much lower, so IBM, Compaq, Gateway, NCR, Unisys and
others are switching to a strategy of adding more features without
raising prices. Coming soon: low-price systems with integrated graphics
accelerators, faster processors, and modular upgradeability. Later this
year, standard features may include sound cards, built-in CD ROM, and
Ethernet. - PC Week 14 December
Novell Finder.
Apple and Novell have concluded a deal to bring the MacOS's Finder and
file management software to NetWare and DR DOS. The agreement will
provide NetWare users with a friendlier environment and Macintosh users
with full access to NetWare services. Novell is vigorously denying a
rumor that a merger with Apple is contemplated.
- PC Week and InfoWorld 14 December
Ad Hoc Wireless Networks.
Look for a March debut of a battery powered, wireless AppleTalk
transceiver named Grouper from Digital Ocean, an Overland Park, Kansas
startup. The $450 wedge-shaped device can be affixed to the bottom of a
PowerBook and will operate for about three hours. Grouper can be
recharged with a PowerBook battery recharger. Four separate
spread-spectrum channels can each communicate with up to fourteen other
AppleTalk devices within a 250 foot radius. Digital Ocean says the
signal will even penetrate steel reinforced concrete.
- MacWeek 14 December
Next Generation Disk Drives.
Two new data storage technologies, "wet" disks and glass disks, are seen
by drive makers as offering greater capacities, faster access speeds,
and lower costs per megabyte. Both technologies permit the drive head
to operate closer to the platter which allows data to be written more
densely. A few manufacturers already offer special purpose drives using
glass disks and Conner expects to ship a 2.5 inch wet disk for laptop
computers to manufacturers early this year. - PC Week 14 December
MacOS Add-ons.
A Macintosh extension to simplify format translation between programs
and operating systems will be in the hands of developers this month.
Neither a public release date nor method of distribution has been
decided. Easy Open, formerly known as the Translation Manager, is a
system level implementation of the XTND technology originally developed
by Apple's Claris subsidiary. One of the nicer features: when an
attempt is made to open a document created by an application the user
doesn't own, a dialog box opens with a list of all applications the user
does own that are capable of reading (directly or through translation)
the document. AppleScript should ship this quarter with OCE (Open
Collaboration Environment) arriving in six to nine months.
- MacWeek 7 and 14 December
PC OS Enhancements.
OS/2 2.1 with Windows 3.1 support should be available at retail this
month. Beta versions of IBM's Workplase OS microkernel should be in
developers' hands before April Fool's Day. By midyear, Microsoft will
ship DOS 6.0 with an integrated set of menu-driven graphical utilities.
Anti-virus, data compression, and better memory management providing
access to an additional 200K of main memory are among the new features.
- PC Week 14 December
PowerStation in Your Lap.
IBM is negotiating with SPARC notebook maker Tadpole Technology to
develop the first PowerPC notebook computer. The Tadpole model will not
wait for the energy conserving PowerPC 603. It will be based on the
initial PowerPC 601 and run IBM's Unix variant, AIX. Introduction is
envisioned by the first half of 1994. IBM plans to purchase a minority
interest in Tadpole. - PC Week and InfoWorld 7 December
PowerPC Acceleration.
Apple's "A-list" developers have been seeded with NuBus boards
containing early samples of the PowerPC. Apple's plan is to have a half
dozen to a dozen native PowerPC applications ready to ship when the
first PowerMac ships at year's end, but one source reports that two key
engineers working on Apple's PowerPC development team have been hired
away by a multimedia developer. Replacing this talent may delay Apple's
next generation rollout - PC Week 7 December and MacWeek 14 December
Longhand.
Lexicus of Palo Alto plans to release handwriting recognition software
for PenPoint and PenWindows computers in March. Lexicus's Longhand uses
pattern matching algorithms and a 25,000 word dictionary to interpret
users' cursive and printed handwriting. The program will work with most
applications running on pen-based hardware. - PC Week 7 December
Full-Screen, Full-Motion.
Radius's $3,999 (specially reduced from $4,000) DigitalMedia Studio
should ship by March. The new product is based on the company's
VideoVision with the addition of a C-Cube Microsystems video compression
chip. The DigitalMedia system will deliver 30 frames per second at 640
by 480 (NTSC) or 768 by 576 (PAL). - MacWeek 14 December
Faster Vaporware.
Even though DEC's desktop Alpha operating system (Windows NT) remains
vaporware (and Microsoft is the company that knows vaporware best),
manufacturing efficiencies are expected to make it possible to introduce
a 200 MHz version of the CPU early in the year, six months ahead of the
original schedule. DEC expects to double the performance of Alpha by
spring 1994. - PC Week 7 December
Pentium Specific Applications.
By the time DEC has an operating system for its Alpha PC, Intel's
Pentium may be too entrenched in the marketplace to overtake. When the
Pentium (nee i586) ships (within 90 days), Intel expects software
developers, including Microsoft, Lotus, and Borland, to be ready with as
many 25 applications compiled to take advantage of the CPU's superscalar
design. Initial Pentium CPUs will cost manufacturers $850 each; early
systems are expected to retail for $5,000 and up.
- PC Week 23 November and InfoWorld 30 November
Image Server.
Apple's Enterprise Systems Division is working on a Multimedia server
that will use intelligent agents to retrieve graphics and text based on
relatively unstructured user descriptions. The product is not expected
to ship before the end of the year at the earliest. Radius's Macless
image server probably will beat Apple's to the market. Radius's SCSI 2
compatible four NuBus slot box will contain a digital signal processor
and one or more Radius Rockets. The box won't require a Mac to run
because Radius has licensed enough of Apple's ROM code to market a
server that doesn't require a Macintosh.
- MacWeek 23 November and 7 December
Visual C++.
Microsoft's C 8.0, which will be marketed as Visual C++, should go beta
this month. The completely rewritten version with an integrated
development environment is optimized for both code size and speed under
Windows. - InfoWorld 30 November
Wowing Them at MacWorld.
Fractal Design's Painter 2.0, a program that lets computer users
simulate oil paint, pastels, and water colors on a variety of canvases
and papers, will ship for the Macintosh at January's MacWorld and for
Windows in February. The upgrade for owners of the first versions of
the $399 package will be $79, and upgrades will be free for users who
purchased after November 1. Silicon Beach will be showing SuperPaint
3.5 at MacWorld as well. - InfoWorld 7 and 14 December
Wowing Them and Confusing Them.
Improv for Windows 2.0 is still scheduled for release this spring. Beta
testers report that the powerful, next generation spreadsheet is easier
to use than version 1.0 on the NeXT, but its complexity is still
sometimes baffling. As an example, "spreadsheet" only loosely describes
software that can construct twelve dimensional worksheets.
- PC Week 30 November
Accelerated Windows Printing.
Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard will ship a graphics devices interface
(GDI) cartridge for LaserJet printers during the first quarter. The
Windows Printing System will require a megabyte or RAM and be priced in
the "low hundreds of dollars." The initial version will not support the
recently released LaserJet IV printers. - InfoWorld 30 November
Falling Color Printing Prices.
Tektronix's new 300 dots per inch thermal wax color printers will ship
this month starting at a lists price of $3,695. The Phaser 200e with
PostScript Level 2 and HP-GL page description has 17 fonts in ROM and
prints two pages a minute. Parallel, serial, and AppleTalk are
standard, TCP/IP and DECnet interfaces are optional.
- InfoWorld 14 December
New Apple Printers.
Three new printers for the Macintosh will be introduced at MacWorld.
The LaserWriter Pro ($2,399 and $2,999) uses the same technology as HP's
LaserJet IV. The Apple Color Printer (around $2,600) is based on
Canon's BJP-C80 bubble-jet printing engine and has a 360 dots per inch
resolution. The Apple Color Printer has no processor or internal RAM
and no AppleTalk interface--networking will be handled by a software
spooler, Grayshare, that will be bundled with the printer. The two page
per minute StyleWriter II will have the same price as its slower
predecessor. - MacWeek 23 November and InfoWorld 30 November
New Network Management Utilities.
Utility maker Symantec plans to ship a half dozen network oriented
utilities by fall. Norton Desktop optimized for Windows for Workgroups
is already in beta test. A full-blown network management package with
built in security, automatic software distribution, and performance
monitoring is due in the third quarter. - PC Week 14 December
XYWrite for Windows.
Technology Group, the Baltimore company that bought XYQuest and N.B.
Informatics, plans to ship a Windows version of XYWrite in March (maybe
later) that will provide an upgrade path for Signature (the IBM version
of XYWrite that was cancelled at the last minute--see the January,
March, and October 1991 columns) and Nota Bene as well as XYWrite.
XYWrite 4.0 for DOS will be available much earlier, probably before
March. - PC Week 30 November and InfoWorld 14 December
Mouseless.
SuperMac Technologies will introduce 17 and 20 inch sizes of its
SmartTouch monitors at MacWorld. At $3,000 to $5,000, the monitors are
seen as ideal for kiosk applications rather than for desktops.
- InfoWorld 14 December
Getting Squeezed.
Now Utilities is about to announce its own entry (Compress Express) into
the increasingly crowded compression utilities market. The market for
compression has become so active that Apple is studying the possibility
of integrating file compression into the Macintosh operating system.
- MacWeek 7 December
Energy Savers.
IBM demonstrated an energy efficient desktop computer with a recyclable
case at last November's Comdex. The 25/50 MHz 486SLC2 prototype
requires only 50 watts in active mode and a scant 16 watts in sleep
mode. Electricity costs could be a low as one-tenth that of current
desktop computers. IBM expects to begin shipping the Energy Desktop
within a few weeks. The CPU is only 12 by 12 by 2.5 inches and can be
wall mounted. The prototype had an active matrix flat panel color
display. - PC Week and InfoWorld 23 November
20 Hour Notebook Battery.
Early this year, AER Energy Resources will offer a six pound external
battery for Apple's PowerBook line. Fully charged, the $649 zinc-air
battery should keep the Macintosh notebooks running for slightly more
than 20 hours of typical use. - MacWeek 23 November
More Hobbit RISC Systems.
NEC and Toshiba have both promised to develop pen-based systems using
AT&T's Hobbit RISC processor (see last August and December columns).
NEC will serve as a second manufacturing source for the processor and
Word Perfect has announced plans to write applications for the devices.
- PC Week 23 November
Developer Raiding.
Microsoft hopes to attract as many as 500 developers to this month's
Microsoft Windows Programming Conference for Macintosh Developers.
Microsoft is readying a Windows-based development tool code-named Altar
that designs programs to run in both Windows and Macintosh environments.
Altar will compete with Apple and Symantec's Bedrock (see last August's
column). - PC Week 23 November
Late.
Getting the bugs out of Notes 3.0's dozen major new features continues
to delay the release date. After missing summer and fourth quarter 1992
dates, Lotus hopes to ship in March. Lotus still expects Notes to be
one of the first applications to ship for Windows NT (Microsoft seems
determined to delay NT long enough to make that possible). In fact, two
new versions of DOS Windows (including Windows for Workgroups 4.0)
probably will ship before NT. Word Perfect Office 4.0 (see last
November's column) will be late, but perhaps will ship not too far into
the second quarter. Word Perfect anticipates shipping Presentations 2.0
for Windows next month. dBase for Windows surely won't make it in the
first half of the year and some observers do not expect the program to
ship anytime this year.
- InfoWorld 23 November and 14 December and PC Week 23 and 30 November
/s Murph Sewall <Sew...@UConnVM.UConn.Edu>