keller@uicsl.UUCP (12/01/84)
Think
I have heard that the 512k Mac is not the real "FAT Mac" and that
the real one will be announced at the Apple annual meeting in January.
Now a rumor about that:
Apple is buying 20MByte 3.5 inch hard disks from Tandon for use in the
new version of the Macintosh.
About other things:
I haven't heard a good explanation for the continued shipment of single
sided floppy drive. Got any?
Why not a faster printer? Say, something between the Imagewriter and the
soon-to-be-announce laser printer.
The rumors that I have heard are as follows:
The January meeting will provide us with:
- a local area net
- a laser printer
- a color Mac
- hard disks for Mac
- the replacement of the Lisa series with a Mac based series
Now some things that I see as unavoidable in the future:
- a lap sized Mac with LCD display (is there a cmos 68000?)
- obvious extensions to the basic Mac that will result in something
that looks similar to the workstation products from Sun, Apollo, etc.
If they would just put the Mac in a package with some slots for
plug-in boards like the Apple ][ they would please a lot of people.
- a Smalltalk or LISP machine (they will be forced into one of these
because of things like TI's integrated circuit version of the MIT
Lisp machine and because they want to be at the cutting edge)
- a much increased output from Apple's in house programming staff
(they can't grow like they have been without developing more software)
The number one question is...
Will people still think that the Mac is special enough to buy when IBM
matches the windowing environment with software for the PC and PCAT?keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) (12/04/84)
>The number one question is... >Will people still think that the Mac is special enough to buy when IBM >matches the windowing environment with software for the PC and PCAT? Not unless they don't bother to provide a version that includes a parallel hardware expansion bus for devices like D/A, A/D converters, Digital Oscilloscope boards, co-processors and the like. In fact, if they delivered one with a 16 bit wide bus and CPU interrupt lines, they'd have IBM's P.C. bus beat by a mile. Keith Doyle {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd "You'll PAY to know what you REALLY think!"