info-mac@uw-beaver (01/28/85)
From: <bang!crash!bwebster@Nosc>
Notes and commentary on the Apple Shareholders' Meeting
held 23 Jan 85 at Flint Center, De Anza College, Cupertino, CA
As all of you who stuck around 'til the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl
know, Apple announced the "Macintosh Office" at their shareholders'
meeting. This consists of a number of products designed to make the
Mac palatable, and even desirable, in the IBM-dominated office market.
Here are the announcements:
(1) AppleTalk: a simple, cheap, yet (apparently) effective means of
hooking up 32 Macs-and-other-things together in a loose network.
The AppleTalk device is a small white box about the size of the
mouse. It hooks up to the modem (and printer?) port via a standard
Mac connector. It has two holes for connecting to other small
white boxes via cables in a daisy-chain manner (Mac-or-other-thingA
connects to Mac-or-other-thingB, which also connects to Mac-or-other-
thingC, und so weiter). Cost per Mac is $50, which gets you one small
white box, one 2-meter cable, and one page of instructions. Ten-meter
cables will be available also, and 100m cables will come out at the
end of the year. Here are the product specs:
Toplogy: Bus
Architecture: Open
Maximum number of connections: 32
Medium: Shielded twisted-pair
Connection: Passive drops
Operating distance: 1000 ft
Speed: 230.4 Kbits/second
Link access protocol: Carrier-sense multiple access
with collision avoidance
Frame format: Synchronous data link control
Configuration: Self-configuring; no switches, etc.
Apple's goal is to have 10,000+ AppleTalk networks up by the end of
this year. They are urging developers to make AppleTalk a standard
part of all new applications. Developers (and would-be developers)
can get more info by ordering Inside AppleTalk ($75) from Apple
Computer, Inc., 467 Saratoga Ave., Suite 621, San Jose, CA 95129.
(2) Other-thing-1: LaserWriter: This is a computer thinly disguised
as a printer. It has a 12MHz 68000, 1.5MB RAM, 0.5MB ROM, and interfaces
for AppleTalk and RS232. Resolution is 300 dots/inch. It has a number
of fonts built in, including Times, Helvetica, Courier, and Symbol.
All Mac fonts are supported as downloaded bitmaps. Font sizes range
from 4pt to whatever will fit on the paper. Max speed is 8 pages/minute.
It supports the POSTSCRIPT protocol and a subset of Diablo 630 commands.
It can print on regular stock, letter head, colored stock, transparency
forms, envelopes, and labels.
The LaserWriter costs $6995, which is high for printer, but very cheap
for a typesetting system, which it comes close to being. The press
kit I have was all printed on a LaserWriter; the quality is very,
very high. The February issue of MacWorld has a slew of articles on
the printer; pick it up and browse through it to get a feel for just
what this machine can do. Like AppleTalk, the LaserWriter is due out
in March. And, like AppleTalk, there is developer documention on the
LaserWrite: Inside the LaserWrite ($75), from the same address. Be
sure to add 6% ($4.50) sales tax if you're ordering from within
California.
(3) Other-thing-2: FileServer [have you noticed how pervasive the use
of mid-word capitalization is in this industry? The only other place where
I've seen it so much is in wargames, particularly those with a science
fiction bent. Must be because it looks "futuristic" or whatever. bfw]
This is a computer thinly disguised as a hard disk (20 or 40 MB). Specs
aren't available yet, nor is this device, at least not until this fall.
It appears that it, too, will have a 68000 and bunches of RAM and ROM;
the press releases talk about developers being able to write different
applications to run on it. Multi-user applications. Hint, hint.
Apple (wisely) isn't putting all of its eggs in its own basket, so it
revealed that at least four other companies are announcing file servers
for AppleTalk: Sunol, IOmega, Micro Design, and someone else. I
imagine that a number of other firms have irons in the fire as well.
(4) Other-thing-3: the IBM PC. Jobs and Scully both stated that
Apple is *not* going to push IBM out of the Fortune 500; in an
"either-or" situation, most firms are going to go with Big Blue. So
Jobs proposed "detente", and Scully, "cooperative competition". The
upshot is that Apple is trying to make the Mac fit in to an IBM-dominated
world via a number of products. First, Apple will release this fall a
card that plugs into the IBM PC (and compatibles) to allow them to
hook into AppleTalk. Second, the Apple Cluster Controller and AppleLine
allow Macs to talk with IBM mainframes. Third, Sytek (?), the people
doing PC Net for IBM, have announced that they will provide a Mac
gateway into PC Net, though it wasn't clear if that was for a single
Mac or as a bridge from AppleTalk.
(5) Other-thing-4: the Macintosh XL. This is simply the Lisa 2/10
with a new name. Honest. That's all it is. The Lisa 2 and 2/5 have
been discontinued. The press releases didn't say anything about prices,
but the San Jose Mercury News said that the 2/10, er, Mac XL now has a
list price of $3895 and that the Mac 512K now has an official list price
of $2795.
(6) Software announcements. First, Jobs gave a demo of Andy Hertzfeld's
Switcher program, which allows 3 applications to be in RAM at the same
time (on a 512K Mac). It, too, is supposed to be out in March; one person
I heard commented that it would be given away with the 512K machine.
Second, the press release had the following statement: "...during 1985
we will enhance the Macintosh user interface and file system to signifi-
cantly improve Macintosh performance, particularly with hard disks."
Hallelujah.
Postscript: after the meeting and press conference that followed, I drove
over to Scotts Valley to visit Philippe Kahn at Borland Int'l (the
TURBO Pascal people). As many of you may know, Commodore has announced
that TURBO Pascal will be the bundled language with their Macalike, the
Amiga. I have also heard persistent rumors that Borland is doing the
OS for the Amiga as well. As usual, I pumped Philippe for info about
the Amiga, and, as usual, he deftly fended off most of my questions
(the people at Commodore should be pleased with his sealed lips). He
did mention a few things about the machine--the OS directly supports
up to 7MB of RAM, and the thing has slots (yippee!)--but his main
comment was that even if he did tell me all about it, I wouldn't believe
him; that the machine has everything I could ever want in it; and that
it would blow the Mac away. 'Twill be interesting to see what acutally
hits the shelves, and when.
..bruce..
Bruce Webster, BYTE
bang!crash!bwebster@nosc
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