info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (11/16/84)
From: Dick Kalagher <kalagher@mitre> An Apple representative was the quest speaker at a local Macintosh users group last night. He said that Apple realizes they have to penatrate the business market in order to be truly successful. As part of this strategy, they will have a network called "Appletalk" in January. It will connect up to 32 Macs with twisted pair cable. He thought that the interface would cost about $50, but it had not been priced yet. Initially the network will only allow Macs to send files to each other. In 1st qtr 85 they will release a 20MB hard disk that can act as a file server on the network. He also thought that the Corvus hard disk would be cabable of acting as a file server. Apple will also have a laser printer for the network. Cost will be $7000 and speed is 8 pages/minute. He said that Microsoft will have a card for the IBM PC that will allow it to connect to Appletalk. When asked if the rumors of Lisa's demise were true he said "absolutely not true". He did say that the Lisa 2/10 will probably be the only model supported-- i.e. look for the 2 and the 2/5 to be phased out. When asked if the price for the upgrade would come down soon, he responded with a quick NO. He responded to questions about an Apple internal hard disk, color Mac etc. by saying that Apple was fully comitted to the Mac and we would see lots of new things in the future. Several software procucts (non-Apple) were demonstrated. Assimilated Products will have a very nice RAM disk for the 512K mac.($30) it lets you boot from a disk and automatically set up a RAM disk and load selected files into it. The size can be varied, up to 316K. Haydon Musicworks looks like a winner at $79. There is an animation editor that looked quite nice if you want your Macpaint documents to move.(I don't remember the publisher.)