evans@mhuxt.UUCP (crandall) (08/22/85)
The current (8/26) Infoworld claims that Apple wil announce an expansion box for current Macs at the Macworld expo. It supposedly attaches through a modified RS-422 port and will have at least 5 slots with one or two used up by its own CPU and power supply. Any comments from people who have gone to the show?? Steve Crandall ihnp4!mhuxt!evans all of the comments are my own and not those of my employer or ferrets.
stew@harvard.ARPA (Stew Rubenstein) (08/25/85)
In article <1095@mhuxt.UUCP> evans@mhuxt.UUCP (Steve Crandall) writes: >The current (8/26) Infoworld claims that Apple wil announce an expansion >box for current Macs at the Macworld expo. It supposedly attaches through >a modified RS-422 port and will have at least 5 slots with one or two used >up by its own CPU and power supply. > >Any comments from people who have gone to the show?? No, sorry, there were no announcements from Apple at all, though they were at the show in large numbers. Apple said nothing publicly about new hardware, only a repeat warning to developers to heed the portability guidelines in the Supplement. The "Macintosh Office" concept is being downplayed; they admitted publicly that that concept was a mistake, that they didn't mean to go head-to-head with big blue... So what was announced, I hear you ask. Not a whole lot. 20 Meg HyperDrives. MacBottoms were available at the show. "The Keeper", a 5 (removable), 10, 20 or 30 Meg file server (yes, a real AppleTalk file server). 800K Floppy from DataSpace Corp., 205 Riviera Dr., Unit 9, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R 2L6. (416) 474-0113. I don't know anything about this except that it was there, it was working, and the guy said it would be shipping within 30 days. Jazz and Excel. Lots of database programs. For my money, OverVUE 2.0 was the big hit, but for one problem: If it doesn't have a whole 512K Mac to itself, it assumes a 128, which means a maximum 24Kb database. With a 512K it's 316Kb, a quite usable size (esp. when you consider that's blank- compressed). Anyway, this means you can't run it under switcher or with a RAM disk or with the 20Mb HyperDrive (which has to expand the system heap slightly). I hope they will fix this and issue an update; it's a pretty amazing program otherwise. New Magazine: MacUser. Lots of program reviews. Fairly decent editorial commentary. Lots of memory upgrade offerings, including one from Micro Conversions [(800)237-8622] which is Hyperdrive compatible, 1, 2 or 4 (!) Megs. Comes with a fan. The Personics head-controlled mouse had quite a crowd waiting to try it out. It looked pretty neat, but I didn't feel like waiting around. Seemed like most folks were able to get used to using it... And it's not that expensive ($199 I think). That's what I remember seeing that made an impression. The conferences were not too interesting for the most part. Andy Hertzfeld was getting a lot of switcher questions, and talked about a few undocumented hooks. "You gotta disassemble the ROM if you want to really know what's going on." Thanks, Andy. But hey, that's life in the fast lane... Stew Rubenstein rubenstein@harvard.edu { ihnp4!seismo, ut-sally, decvax!genrad!wjh12 } ! harvard ! rubenstein