info-mac@uw-beaver (01/30/85)
From: Werner Uhrig <werner@ut-ngp.ARPA> From eugene@ames.UUCP Thu Jan 24 12:51:37 1985 Subject: Apple Shareholder meeting telecast Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA Lines: 50 Xref: seismo net.micro:9680 Channel 48, San Jose [and other stations I am certain] broadcast the Apple Shareholders meeting. Interesting. If you have not heard, the Lisa 2/10 has been renamed the Mac XL. It is Job's hypothesis that IBM and Apple's dominance of the micro market is in part due to memory size: the II was dominant because it had 64K when others had 16K [applications program writers flocked to it], the PC was dominant because it had 256K, and the 512K Mac has applications writer flocking to it [twice the number anticipated (now 300)]. Apple wants to establish a leadership position thru innovation, product development and have an impact on society. A Clip was shown of Reagan saying, "When I was going to school, and apple was a thing we took to the teacher, now....." The next step in innovation will be to establish >10,000 LANs. The problem with LANs in the past has been a chicken and egg problem of getting LANs established. Enter the concept of the Work Group. [There will be a progression to larger communities and organizations in the future.] It appears, however, that Apple is fully cognizant that software is more important that hardware in the long run, so they have approached 100 software vendors to accomodate distributed systems. Next, Jobs extended the hand of Detente to IBM [they had a repeat of Apple Super 85 ad at the start]. Slide showing Jobs and one of the Soviet leaders with Detente as a newspaper caption. Apple wants coexistence. See PC card mentioned below. Product announcements: Appletalk, a LAN with up to 32 nodes, easy to install, cost $50 per node and integrated with software applications [expect new versions of MacWrite and Mac*. A Disk server. A Laser Printer ($7000) and one less node on your net [12 MHz, 68000, 2 MB memory of which 1 MB is for image. With Appletalk will be an Apple card insertable into the IBM PC and accompanying software to enable to have systems communicate. 1985 will be a year of getting this stuff to market. Expect new products in 1986. 1987, they felt, would be the rebirth of computing. Speculation: there will probably be the need for gateway hardware. Expect a larger Mac in the smaller box without the hard disk (XL). The presentation was a lot of multi-media show. Appletalk demo shows a letter icon inserted into an envelope icon and being past between two Macs. Laserwriter demo had a transparency printed on the stage. [Chariots of Fire theme music]. --eugene miya NASA Ames Research Center {hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,vortex}!ames!aurora!eugene emiya@ames-vmsb.ARPA